Usually some calling of clamorous conspicuity is selected.

Twenty years ago the law was the favorite avenue upon which fond
parents would thus set the feet of their offspring; the law, they
thought, would enable him better to "make his mark"--that is, to
parade up and down before the public eye and fill the public ear with
declamation. Even yet that profession has clientless members,
miserable in their hearts over their self-consciousness that they are
not lawyers and never can be lawyers, who would have been useful,
prosperous, and happy if they could have been permitted to be
architects or merchants or farmers or doctors or soldiers or sculptors
or editors or what not.

One of the cleverest of our present-day writers of fiction started out
to be a lawyer. But he could not keep his pen from paper nor restrain
that mysterious instrument from tracing sketches of character and
drawing pictures of human situations. Very well! He had the courage to
obey the call of his preferences; and to-day, instead of being an
unskillful attorney, he is noted and notable in the present-hour world
of letters.

Anthony Hope in England is another illustration precisely in point. On
the other hand, Erskine, who was intended by his parents for the army,
was destined by Nature for the bar. This master-advocate of all the
history of English jurisprudence felt it in his blood that he _must_
practise law; and so his sword rusted while he studied Blackstone.
Finally, he deserted the field for the forum, there to become the most
illustrious barrister the United Kingdom has produced.

I therefore emphasize the importance of finding out what you can _do_