Week #1

After leaving class last week, I definitely spent a fair amount of time thinking about my current and past jobs and the road that led me here, as well as my hopes for my future career and the path that will lead me there. Like many others have already shared, I too started college with a completely different major than what I ended up with; I began as an Elementary Education major, because I loved kids, and the large majority of females in my family were teachers as well. I should have gotten the hint that it may not have been the right path for me when I started getting sub-average grades in several of my education classes and was dreading going in for my field experiences, but I ended up trying to stick it out through student teaching. After withdrawing from student teaching and the Education program, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the rest of my life because teaching was all I had ever wanted to do. Once I started taking psychology classes, I knew I was on the right path. But sometimes I still question myself or have doubts about whether or not I’m really doing what I’m meant to do.

In thinking about how I’ve reached the point I am at today in my career path, I realized that my main reason for choosing to pursue a degree in Clinical Psychology is because it’s something that I love to do…I’ve always loved helping people live their lives better and more effectively. As I was reading through the first chapter in our text, the section labeled Why People Work immediately jumped out to me, because my automatic response was, “Well, people work because they have to in order to survive. Duh.” But as I read through the section, it became clear that there are, obviously, many reasons by people work, and why they work at the places they do; it also went on to discuss the idea of job satisfaction. Brown (2012) states that, “If we assume that work is one of the central components of life activities for most adults, it is easy to assume that satisfaction derived from work is an important determinant in an individual’s total satisfaction” (p. 18). I hadn’t really thought of it from that point of view before, but it makes a lot of sense when you think of it in the context of real life. For example, if someone asks me how so-and-so is doing, my first response is often related to their state of happiness as related to his/her job (“Oh, she’s great! She’s loving her new job at the hospital!” or “Well, he’s really having a tough time at work; he’s been super stressed lately.”).  In fact, that’s usually my first response when someone asks me about my happiness/life satisfaction; my default is always to comment about my job. Hmm. I just think it’s interesting that one’s job has SO much influence on life satisfaction in general.

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