Blog 7: Persons and Careers
So, every person has a path in life. There's the path you were on in the past, and now your new and current path. A person can choose to remain on the path in the beginning of his or her life, or choose to leave his or her initial path to switch over to another path. Life is both long and short, one has both limited and a long time to decide what he or she wants to do in his or her life. Of course, there may be paths closed off to you due to certain factors that thusly limits what one can choose and do. Let's talk about them, shall we? What is a career exactly? Well, it is a profession or job that a person may choose and settle in to, temporarily or for the rest of his or her life. The person's skills, personality, goals, and needs matched the job he or she found. A person can also just temporarily work in that profession because of his or her dire immediate needs. A person's career can also be a profession he or she did not want to get into but had no choice. A profession can either be a means to achieve a dream and acquire desires, or be means to earn a living. Moving on, we'll now talk about factors that affect and influence one's career choice. I shall be mostly speaking about Filipinos here however, these factors can also apply or be similar to others' situations or certain society's standards. These are also the external factors: 1. Financial Capabilities - Financial restraints 2. Family Influence - Parental pressure 3. Limited Selection for available College Courses - School Location 4. Bias or preference for White Collar Jobs vs Blue Collar Jobs - Job Market Supply and Demand
For Financial Capabilities and Family influence, capitalism reigns strongly. Unfortunately, not everyone shares the same privileges; financial situations and support. If the children in a family want to pursue art-related courses, most of the time, their parents and even relatives might not support them financially and emotionally. The parents would rather force their children to submit to their will: pursue careers that are known to pay well. Not to mention, depending on the children's academic performances and location and more, the courses the children want to take may not even be available to them due to wherever they may be living in and or because of their grades. So, if a family is tight on money, the parents would rather make their children pursue science or mathematical careers like medical careers, scientific careers, or engineering or architecture. This is also due to the bias for white collar jobs over blue collar jobs. This also means that there is a higher demand for white collared jobs than blue collared jobs. What exactly, is white collar and blue collar jobs? White-collar jobs refer to suit and tie careers. Careers that pay well specifically unlike blue-collar stereotyped jobs that refer to careers that require intensive manual labor like mining, construction working, and maintenance. Additionally, not every college shares the same courses, since there are colleges that specialize in certain areas or professions, so depending on the location, one may not be able to easily pursue his or her dream job. These are the well-known factors that influence a person's career choice, especially for Filipinos here in the Philippines. Next Up: Internal Factors 1. Self Concept 2. Personal Skills 3. Motivation 4. Personal Preferences 5. Personality Traits 6. Personal Health 7. Emotional Considerations 8. Self-sabotaging Thoughts What exactly do these factors mean? Let's jump into it. Self-concept is how you perceive your behavior, abilities, and unique characteristics. As time goes on, you learn who you are, what's important to you, until you really fully know your identity. This comes hand-in-hand with personal preferences, personality traits, and personal skills. You know what you like and dislike, what you want and don't want, what you dream of and what you aspire to be. Such factors influence your career choices. As much as possible, you pursue whatever you want to do. Second is motivation. What exactly motivates you to choose specific careers or jobs. Your dreams/desires, family, friends, needs, experiences, and more. What fuels you up and makes you determined to work hard and persist no matter what. Next, personal health. Naturally, you choose careers you know you can mentally and physically handle. Depending on, usually, your physical health, you know what you are capable of and what you are unable to do. Lastly, emotional considerations and self-sabotaging thoughts. For emotional considerations, as the name suggests, this has a lot to do with your mental state, emotional health/mental health. What tugs at your heart strings and what grips your heart using fear. This is similar to personal preferences, but has a deeper pull. Example is how you don't want to be a doctor because you fear blood. Lastly, self-sabotaging thoughts. You might believe that you're not good enough to pursue being an artist or singer or dancer or not smart enough to be a lawyer or doctor or engineer. You already declared and believed and thus claimed that no matter what, you can't and won't be capable of pursuing your dream job. These are the internal factors that influence and affect your career choice. I hope this blog entry educated you about personal development like my last blog entries :)
