Career Exploration Workshop #2

Our meeting place for today's workshop was in a different building, and I got lost. I went in the wrong door, walked down the wrong hallway, and asked the wrong person for directions. I was told to go out the front door, walk around the building, and enter through a different door at the back of the building. Fortunately, I ran into a classmate who had figured out where we needed to be.

It felt good to enter a room where the faces were familiar.

Yesterday, in preparation for today's workshop, I completed the interest survey. I was a bit surprised at the results. Of the categories [Skilled] Crafts, Scientific, The Arts, Social, Business, and Office Operations, I felt sure that Social would be my number one category: everything I've done to this point has involved working with people. According to my 120 responses, my highest career interest area is Business, which still involves working with people but with more of an organizational focus. Bingo! This fits with my interest in organizational and community practice within the field of social work. The Social interest area was a close second.

We started this morning's session pretending we were at a party where pretend people were in small groups around the room talking about what interests them. Taped to walls around the room were six lists of what interested the "people" in each group. It was our job to find the list that most interested us; there were no labels or indications of specific careers.

My first choice was a list that included "work with people, influencing, persuading, organizational goals."

We did the exercise two more times. My second-most interesting list included "help, enlighten, develop, and skilled with words." My selection for round three was the list that included "observe, learn, and solve problems."

The first list of words described the Enterprising category, which is equivalent to Business. The second list described the Social category. No surprises so far. Then it gets interesting, no pun intended. The third list described the Scientific category.

Hold the phone, I am not a scientist. However, on a good day I match up with many of the qualities that describe a scientist: original, creative, independent, rational, curious, likes to solve math problems, and does not like rules.

This process is not meant to be an exact science, again no pun intended. It is meant to help me look at what interests me from a variety of angles.

And that is what happened today.

As we talked about what we learned about ourselves I jotted down these notes: stretching view of myself; getting comfortable with who I am, not who I've always tried to be; tension within.

Our facilitator said we may find ourselves moving out of our comfort zone. There are things we know how to do. Then there are things that interest us that are are new to us, and we may need to leave our comfort zone to explore those interests.

I have decided that the comfort zone isn't all it's cracked up to be.