Post #3

           As I was preparing to do the readings for this week, I was curious as to how spirituality and religion were going to relate to career development.  For me, I have always seemed to keep those things rather separate from my work however last week I was in a job interview and the interviewer asked me how my faith was visible in my work.  This struck me as odd, but then I saw this article title, Spirituality, Religion, and Career Development:  Current Status and Future Directions and immediately thought of my interview experience. 

Some of the logic behind this theory makes sense to me.  Unfortunately I am not an overly religious person so I do not necessarily know if I can use this in my own life, but as I think about my parents, I can definitely see how religion may have helped them with their career decisions and job satisfaction.  The book states that these individuals seem to find a “meaning and purpose in a career” (Duffy, 2006, p. 55).  One negative that I found related to this idea was then that these individuals seem to take their work home with them.  I have always been a fan of going to work, doing a good job, and then leaving all of those thoughts at the office.  This article explained that individuals who thought of their work in a spiritual light seemed to, “integrate their work lives with their personal lives” (Duffy, 2006, p. 57).  Although I see what the article is saying, I do not necessarily think that is a good thing.  I believe that you cannot be working all the time.  Individuals are going to get burnt out if they feel like they can never leave their day job.  For the same reason that someone who loves working on their own cars, may not want to be a mechanic, I think it is important to have that line between what you do to make money and what you do to unwind and escape work. 

                This article was also very interesting to me in the aspect of its description of jobs versus careers.  In my first post I made the argument that the book’s definition of career was very different from what I had always thought.  This article’s definitions almost completely emulated what I had said.  In comparing a job to a career it states that a job “is primarily done to make money and is unfulfilling; and a career, which is moderately fulfilling but involves a constant process of trying to get promoted” (Duffy, 2006, p. 55).  Then it also added a definition to my idea stating that a calling, “is valuable as an end in itself and serves the greater good” (Duffy, 2006, p. 55).  

Brown, D. (2012).  Career Information, Career Counseling, and Career Development.  New York: Pearson Education, Inc.

Duffy, R.D. (2006). Spirituality, Religion, and Career Development:  Current Status and Future Directions.  Career Development Quarterly 55(1), 52-63