Work And Career Peer Response Assignment | Homework Help Websites

Please include references in each response. Respond to each response separately.   Write 2 paragraphs for each response

Peer Response one (T.A)

Adults seek out jobs, select them, and sometimes ascend to positions of responsibility in their fields of work (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). When we graduated high school, many of us make the choice to go off to college and get a degree in a particular career field of our interest. And some of us, don’t take that path and instead settle with an 8-5 job. For many adults, having the career they dream about is very important to them. When I think of the word work, I think of people going to their everyday place of employment, doing work that they don’t necessarily enjoy. At some point in our lives, we have heard “it pays the bills.” For example, a person who is a waitress at a local restaurant. In other words, individuals are settling with the type of work they are doing. However, work in modern organizations is described as increasingly complex, ambiguous, and uncertain (as cited in Kuchinke, Cornachione, Oh, & Kang, 2010). On the other hand, a career is an occupation in which the individual actually enjoys going to work because the type of occupation they are in, they went to school for it. These are the individuals that say “I love my job.” For example, those who have gone to school to become a doctor.

Theoretical Foundations

According to Holland, a job or career typically makes demands on an individual that are compatible with one or more of the six models of orientations (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). Those include, realistic, investigative, artistic, social enterprising, and conventional. These different orientations listed allows counselors to help their client with giving them an insight as to the different types of job that are out there. Based on a person’s personality, they will choose a job that is similar to their personality. For instance, those who are not afraid to speak against something that doesn’t seem right to them or who is a leader, they may choose a career in politics or become a lawyer. Or someone who seems to be supportive in listening to others problems or dilemmas may seek a career in counseling or nursing.

Super’s theorizing about career development focuses less on specifying the personal style or job types and more on describing the developmental processes that determine both emergence of one’s vocational concept and the multiple factors that influence job choices throughout the life span (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). The developmental process that is included in Super’s theory is the growth stage, the exploration stage, establishment stage, maintenance stage, and decline stage. We start out by exploring the different types of careers we want to have when we get older. For example, my six-year-old says he wants to be a firefighter when he grows up. He fantasizes about being a firefighter when he plays with his peers at school or when they had a career day at his school, he chose a firefighter. However, as he continues to grow, he may lose interest in becoming a firefighter so he looks at maybe becoming a police officer or join the military. Vocational self-concept is tentatively narrowed down, but often career choices are not finalized (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). When he reaches his mid-20’s he may find that being a police officer is not what he wants to do but instead he wants to be a dentist. And as he continues to grow into his 40’s he may want to seek another specialty in the dentist world so he will make that adjustment. And by his 60’s he will be ready for retirement.

Personal Reflections

I decided to pursue a career in Mental Health Counseling because for as long as I can remember, my uncle was the happiest person who would come to our family gatherings. He always told his nieces, when you go off into the real world, remember where you come from and help your people in any way you can with the career you choose. Five years later, he committed suicide because he was bottling up his feelings. From witnessing firsthand what military men and women go through while deployed overseas to my mother passing away and getting depressed to the devasting news that my uncle committed suicide, it struck a nerve. Something inside of me told me that I need to help individuals who are also bottling up their feelings about the things they are going through.  That I need to be the one to help them get back on their feet so that they can function again.

I believe the counseling profession will add meaning to my life by allowing me the chance to impact someone’s life and letting them know that although it may seem no one cares for them, there is someone rooting for their success. Erickson viewed women’s identities as necessarily provisional until they made an intimate life commitment; women were destined to be predominantly nurturing and accommodating (Newton & Stewart, 2010). Also, knowing that I may have the potential to save someone’s life. Having mental illnesses of some sort can be detrimental for some people, therefore, I think helping that individual get back on the right track would bring so much meaning to my life.

I also think that developmental changes in our lives have an impact on the type of career we pursue. For instance, I wanted to be a nurse but as I continued to develop, I realized that Nursing wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to stick people with a needle or do an EKG on them, instead, I wanted to have face to face conversations about what is going on with them. Women’s focus on it may remain relatively high in early middle age as women continue to develop their talents and careers; it may then remain stable or decline later in the period (Newton & Stewart, 2010). Also, the chances of having children may impact the type of careers we will have. For instance, my friend was going to school to become an interior decorator, however, since her second son was born with Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), which is lack of oxygen and restriction of blood flow affecting the brain. Her son needs her help both physically and emotionally because he is unable to do certain things. Therefore, she decided to pursue a career as a Certified Nursing Assistant so that she can assist children like hers.

Summary

In closing, we don’t always know what we want to do in life. Some of us may take a lot more time figuring out what exactly it is we want to do. We want to be satisfied with the career we chose because going to a job that makes us unhappy, to me, seems like a waste of time. We may see something that we may want to do as we get older but it doesn’t always work out the way we plan it. There may be times in which, the things that we actually want to do makes us change the direction we are headed and that is okay. We need to test the water before we decide to go swimming or not.