How to choose a career?
To be honest, there is hardly a more important challenge in life than making the right choice of a career particularly when a global pandemic such as COVID-19 shuts down your school, your academic life, and potentially your career options into the future.
The thought of choosing your ideal career has likely been in your mind since you were a child and will continue through your lifetime. You will know that small children delight in telling you what they want to be when they grow up – maybe to drive a fire-truck, or pilot an aeroplane, or work as a nurse or a doctor. Young adults speak endlessly about their new job. Middle-aged adults question whether they have made the right career choice during a period of life that is known as “mid-life crisis”. Even in old age, the elderly person reminisces about the way their career has shaped their life – positively or negatively.
How has Covid-19 impacted my future career?
The COVID-19 pandemic has caught us all by surprise, hasn’t it? I don’t think any of us, young and not-so-young, can yet grasp what a COVID-19 pandemic could do to all of our career aspirations for the future. Right now, you are probably asking, “What will the world of work look like into the future? Will I be able to finish school this year? If I do finish school will my matriculation results be poor because I’ve lost out on so much of my schooling this year? Will the universities be open? Will the job market have shrunk because so much business has been lost during lock-down? Will my family be able to afford for me to go to college?” The list goes on.
However, here’s the good news! Career choices that are not influenced only by your matriculation results. How well (or poorly) you do is not the starting point! Notice that I use the word “choices” as against “choice”. There’s an important reason for this. In this 21st-century, COVID-19 or otherwise, it is likely that you will make five (or more) major career shifts in a working lifetime. This has certainly been the case for me. Over my working life, I have worked as a Bank Clerk, School Teacher, Educational Psychologist, Pastor, Lecturer in Psychology, College Principal, and finally as an Academic Dean.
How do you go about choosing a career?
It has been rightly said, “Find what you love to do best, and you’ll never work another day in your life! Do what you hate and every day will be an enslavement.”
At the heart of any and all career choices is what we call “identity construction” – meaning how you view yourself, and also how others view you.
The career choices that you make should firstly be an expression of your personality, skills and abilities, not your matric results. For example, did you notice that there were some strong themes that emerged through my own choices of career? One theme is education. Another is training. Another is leadership. Over my working life, I have put it all together – education and training combined with leadership. Why? Because I’ve always been a leader, and love to be known as a leader. I also love to teach and to train others. I am also an extrovert and very social. You see, my work reflected my personal sense of identity.
So here are some questions for you. When you think about a career start here:
QUESTION 1: What skills, abilities come naturally to me?
QUESTION 2: How would I describe myself? How would others describe me?
QUESTION 3: What activities in my life bring me the greatest pleasure?
Written by Dr Ashley Smyth (Academic Dean at SACAP)
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Credit- SACAP. Published by- Dr. Sabiha : www.drsabiha.blogspot.com
