Blog #10

While reading the chapter “Career Development in Postsecondary Educational Institutions,” I really began giving my own personal career exploration more thought.  According to the text “approximately one quarter of those who attended some form of postsecondary education never used occupational information (Brown, 2012, p. 293). I find this interesting that 25% of people chose to pursue a certain career and did absolutely no research into what that career involved.  Although I wouldn’t consider myself to have used all the career services that are available when deciding what I wanted to major in when beginning college, I still used different resources such as O*NET and the Occupational Outlook handbook to gain some knowledge of career choices.  Although my initial plan of being an Optometrist did not work out, I took some steps (although not nearly enough) in becoming familiar with that particular career.

I was also interested when I read in the text that “college graduates list the career center as the second most often used source of information about careers” (Brown, 2012, p. 296).  I was surprised by this since I never used the career center as an undergraduate and never even considered using it as a resource.  Looking back on it now, I wish that I would have taken advantage of all the services Millersville had to offer when I was an undergraduate. While writing this blog I decided to take a look at Millersville’s career services website and was surprised by all the information that could be found on the website such as internships opportunities, career exploration, and resume writing among many other things. 

There are many other resources I could have used as an undergraduate such as speaking with my advisor, attending job fairs or graduate school fairs, and attending workshops or seminars.  I can remember job fairs and graduate school fairs being held very often when I was an undergraduate student.  I knew as a psychology major that I wanted to attend graduate school in order to further my education and be able to provide more career opportunities for myself.  Reading this chapter made me wonder why I never attended a graduate school fair!  When applying to graduate school, I had no idea what to expect and took very little time in selecting which schools I wanted to apply to.  I feel I would have been better prepared and know what exactly to expect from graduate schools if I had attended the graduate school fairs.  Overall, I believe that it is important for students to take advantage of the career services their schools have to offer in order to make an informed decision about their futures.

Reference

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10^th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.