Circumstantial Persuasion

In lieu of an actual blog, I thought I would post a little nugget of my grad work. Right now I'm taking a class called Career Development. I pinky promise this is a legit, required grad school class... but the assignments are very touchy-feely, find yourself assignments... and this is one of them.

Disclaimer: I'm not knocking my program. I think classes like this are thrown in to give us a breather from other classes, like Lifespan Development, where I read over 100 pages every two days.

And here, ladies and gents, for your reading pleasure, is my road to career development (and the first two sentences were taken from a list; I was supposed to choose just one):

- ---- I considered a number of options seriously, explored each one, then picked one. Choosing my work involved a deliberate decision-making process.

- ---- It seems as though circumstances led me toward my career. I’m not sure I chose my career as much as it chose me.

I was at a crossroads between these two because I can see them both at work in my life. I am what most people refer to as Type A (although after watching Module 7, I think I’m probably Type E), and somewhere in high school I started frantically searching for my career path. I stress easily, so I need a concrete plan when it comes to anything serious in my life, and then of course I need Plans B, C, and D. From an early age, I wanted to be a doctor. In high school I made sure to knock out dual enrollment Biology and Calculus. I researched med schools from UAB to the University of Kentucky’s exchange student program with Auburn. I talked to local doctors and sought out advice at every chance available, even cornering doctors in my church after the Sunday sermon. At 18 years old, I was well on my way to being Dr. Lindsey Hays (but of course I was going to hyphenate my last name when I found Dr. Right at UAB). Somewhere along the road, though, circumstances started leading me elsewhere. I took a Pre-Medical Career Orientation class, in which the professor doomed us all to failure. I struck out in Chemistry, and I dreaded labs. So I started my search over, but this time I wasn’t looking for the quickest route to a chosen location. Instead, it was like spinning a globe and stopping it wherever my finger landed: Healthcare administration? Sure, why not?! Human Development and Family Studies? It’s worth a shot! During my time in HDFS I found myself leaning toward Marriage and Family Therapy. Several semesters as an undergraduate research assistant assured me that I did not, in fact, want to be a therapist, but I did still want to be in counseling. Then one summer working with high school girls in a camp setting did me in: I could tie counseling and high school students together in one perfect profession: school counseling.

So here I am. After meeting with the school counseling people and my advisor at Auburn and countless e-mails between Dr. Carmichael and myself, I have finally arrived at career identity achievement. And I think it is the result of both serious exploration and circumstantial persuasion.