Honors Senior Project · Sugar Bowl Academy · 2026–27
View From the Summit: How People Find Careers That Fit
What factors most strongly shape a satisfying career, and how should high school students use that knowledge when thinking about their futures?
I grew up in Abu Dhabi and then San Francisco. Both cities have enormous wealth flowing through them, but one felt noticeably happier, and that showed me early that wealth and success are two different things. This project is my attempt to find out what actually makes a career satisfying, and to share it with high schoolers like me.
This page is a working record of the project: the research, the outline, the full first draft, and what comes next.
My Answer
A satisfying career depends less on salary or finding the perfect passion, and more on the work itself, the people around you, and the skills you build.
High schoolers should judge jobs by the work, meet more people, and start exploring now, even though not everyone has the same access. The paper makes that case in three parts.
1. Work over pay. Once basic needs are met, meaning, autonomy, and how a job is designed shape satisfaction far more than salary.
2. The people around you. Mentors, sponsors, supportive supervisors, and even loose acquaintances are among the strongest factors in career satisfaction and opportunity.
3. Fit is built, not found. Interests, purpose, and adaptability grow through exploration and practice, and high school is the right time to start building them.
How I’ve Worked
June 2026. Wrote the project proposal and settled on the essential question.
July. Read and summarized my first eight research papers and chose which podcast episodes to analyze as case studies.
August. Reached 16 annotated sources and finished a pre-outline.
September. Added four more sources for a total of 20, and identified four researchers whose work I had read to ask for advice as secondary mentors.
October. Turned a mind map of the research into a full outline of the paper.
November. Finished the full first draft: 22 pages, plus a works cited of 23 sources that includes two of my own podcast interviews. Now revising.
The Research
I read and annotated 20 peer-reviewed sources, mostly from vocational psychology and organizational behavior.
They are grouped below by the claim each one supports, with what I took from it. Titles link to the papers.
Work over pay
The Relationship Between Pay and Job Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis of the Literature
Judge et al. (2010), Journal of Vocational Behavior. Pay has only a small link to job satisfaction. In one comparison, lawyers earning $148,000 a year were less satisfied with their jobs than child care workers earning $23,500.
Income and Emotional Well-Being: A Conflict Resolved
Killingsworth, Kahneman & Mellers (2023), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Two researchers with opposite findings on money and happiness reanalyzed the data together. Happiness keeps rising with income for most people and levels off only for the unhappiest fifth. It measures overall happiness, not job satisfaction, so I use it carefully.
Maximizers Versus Satisficers: Decision-Making Styles, Competence, and Outcomes
Parker, Bruine de Bruin & Fischhoff (2007), Judgment and Decision Making. People who always chase the best possible option report more regret and worse life outcomes than people who settle for good enough.
Integrating Motivational, Social, and Contextual Work Design Features
Humphrey, Nahrgang & Morgeson (2007), Journal of Applied Psychology. Across 259 studies and 219,625 people, 14 features of how a job is designed explained more than half of the variance in job satisfaction.
Significant Work Is About Self-Realization and Broader Purpose
Martela & Pessi (2018), Frontiers in Psychology. Meaningful work has three parts: significance, broader purpose, and self-realization. Money alone does not make work meaningful.
Research on Calling: What Have We Learned and Where Are We Going?
Duffy & Dik (2013), Journal of Vocational Behavior. Seeing work as a calling is linked to job and life satisfaction, especially for people who get to live it out. Callings have a dark side too.
The Psychology of Working Theory
Duffy, Blustein, Diemer & Autin (2016), Journal of Counseling Psychology. My main counterpoint. Decent work (income, connection, and work that feels chosen) comes before passion, and not everyone gets to choose freely.
The people around you
Predictors of Objective and Subjective Career Success: A Meta-Analysis
Ng, Eby, Sorensen & Feldman (2005), Personnel Psychology. Salary, promotions, and satisfaction are only loosely related. The strongest predictors of career satisfaction are sponsorship and supervisor support.
Career Benefits Associated With Mentoring for Protégés: A Meta-Analysis
Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz & Lima (2004), Journal of Applied Psychology. Across 43 studies, mentoring had a weak link to pay and a stronger link to career satisfaction.
Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored Individuals
Eby, Allen, Evans, Ng & DuBois (2008), Journal of Vocational Behavior. Mentored people did better on almost every outcome, but the effects were small. Mentoring mostly shapes attitudes, and it is not a magic fix.
A Causal Test of the Strength of Weak Ties
Rajkumar et al. (2022), Science. A LinkedIn experiment with more than 20 million members found that acquaintances, not close friends, did the most to help people move into new jobs.
Outcome Domains and Assessment Measures in School-Based Youth Mentoring Programs: A Systematic Review
Tiraieyari & Krauss (2026), Frontiers in Education. School-based mentoring is promising, but most studies measure grades and attendance, not careers.
Fit is built, not found
Implicit Theories of Interest: Finding Your Passion or Developing It?
O’Keefe, Dweck & Walton (2018), Psychological Science. People who believe passions are found, not developed, lose interest faster when a new interest gets hard. This paper reframed the central advice of my project.
Purpose, Hope, and Life Satisfaction in Three Age Groups
Bronk, Hill, Lapsley, Talib & Finch (2009), The Journal of Positive Psychology. For teens, even searching for a purpose is linked to higher life satisfaction, so students should not feel pressure to already know their career.
The Perspectives of Social Cognitive Career Theory Approach in Current Times
Wang, Liu & Deng (2022), Frontiers in Psychology. What you grew up around and what is happening in your life now both shape which careers you choose.
Tales of the Unexpected: Integrating Career Shocks in the Contemporary Careers Literature
Akkermans, Seibert & Mol (2018), SA Journal of Industrial Psychology. Unplanned events, good and bad, redirect most careers, and how people respond to them matters.
The Ability to Manage Unexpected Events and the Vocational Identity in Young People
Sica, Ponticorvo & Di Palma (2022), Frontiers in Psychology. Five learnable skills (curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism, and risk-taking) help people turn chance into opportunity.
The Role of Career Adaptability Resources in Dual Career Pathways
Ojala et al. (2023), Psychology of Sport and Exercise. Career adaptability changed for 60% of Finnish student-athletes during high school, so it can be built. As a ski racer at a ski academy, I read this one as a case study of my own life.
A Systematic Review on Career Interventions for High School Students
Wang, Li & Wang (2024), Frontiers in Psychology. Across 25 studies in 11 countries, school career programs improved adaptability, decision-making confidence, and exploration.
Students’ Career Exploration: A Meta-Analysis
Kleine, Schmitt & Wisse (2021), Journal of Vocational Behavior. Self-belief and specific goals get students exploring, and exploring leads to clearer career decisions.
The Outline
Before drafting, I mapped the whole paper in Canva: every claim, the sources under it, the counterpoints, and how each section hands off to the next. The finished draft follows it closely.
I. Intro. Why Abu Dhabi and San Francisco, two very wealthy cities, felt so different; the essential question; and my answer.
II. What is a satisfying career? Career success has two sides, objective (pay, promotions) and subjective (how satisfied you are), and the two barely line up. My question is about the subjective side.
III. Work over pay. Why pay falls short, and what the work itself gives you. Counterpoint: decent work has to come first.
IV. The people around you. Mentors and sponsors, weak ties, school-based mentoring, and how the adults around students shape which careers seem possible. Counterpoint: not every student has a family with a network.
V. Fit is built, not found. Growing passion and purpose, where interests come from, and adapting to chance. Counterpoint: no one controls everything, which is exactly why these skills matter.
VI. Conclusion. Back to the opening question, three lessons for high schoolers, the limits of the advice, and what my podcast guests show about putting it into practice.
The First Draft
What Should I Do With My Life? The full first draft is done: 22 pages, plus a works cited of 23 sources.
It opens with a puzzle from my own childhood: why wealth and happiness didn’t line up in the places I grew up. From there it works through the research in three parts: why the work itself matters more than the paycheck, why the people around you matter more than almost anything else, and why career fit is built through exploration rather than found. Two of my podcast guests, Jason Bogardus and Matt Paul, serve as case studies.
It ends with three lessons for high schoolers: judge a job by the work, not the starting salary; widen your circle; and stop waiting for a passion to show up.
This is a working draft. I’m revising it now, so wording and citations will change.
The Podcast as Evidence
View From the Summit is my interview podcast about how people find work that fits them. For this project, the episodes are my case studies.
I started it because of what this research keeps finding: students, especially the student-athletes at Sugar Bowl Academy, should see as many careers as possible early. Many guests are part of the Sugar Bowl community, so students can reach out to them after an episode, which puts the research on mentors and weak ties into practice.
Two episodes carry the most weight in the paper. Jason Bogardus grew up in Portland knowing nothing about finance until he met classmates in college whose families worked in it, which is what social cognitive career theory predicts about how background and current context shape interests. Matt Paul called himself “really lucky” for fixing two teammates’ camera settings on his first day in a SEAL platoon, which led to his intelligence work, but he had been practicing since his dad gave him a camera at 14. That is planned happenstance: chance creates the opening, and skills decide whether you can walk through it.
Guests so far. MaiLy Pham Kopatsy (Fenty Beauty), Jason Bogardus (Morgan Stanley), Nadia Costa (GVR), Matt Paul (Loose Cannon Pictures), Bridget Legnavsky (Sugar Bowl Resort), Peter Phillips (Medley Partners), and John Anderson (formerly PayPal).
What’s Next
Revise the draft, starting with the opening and the citations.
After that come the other two pieces of the project: a student-friendly guide that turns the research into advice my classmates can use, and a final presentation. I will keep this page updated as each piece is finished.