I was fortunate in that I was able to spend the last 32 years of my career in a position where I found the majority of my undergraduate and graduate educations to be extremely useful. The position was as the Academic Advisor UNL's high school distance education program. This happened in spite of not being exposed to a great deal of career counseling or career information. Such barely existed, if at all, in secondary schools in the late 1950's. 
In order to find a satisfying career and have similar experiences to mine, is certainly behooves students to take as much advantage as they can of experiences that are presented to them to be as certain as possible that they are headed in the right direction. It is fine have goals as to where you would like to live, however, taking a more scenic route getting there might prove to be the best thing that ever happened.