Students learn career exploration tools
Tuesday, March 25, 2008, 00:15 EST
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When Hinkle celebrated its 80th birthday on March 7, its fans were as true and diverse as ever. The crowds, the athletes and even famed speakers and royalty have spent many a game in the fieldhouse on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
In its entire splendor, though, the gray hairs are beginning to show. In the next year, Butler will spend approximately $750,000 on renovations. A controversial reaction is often the initial response to much of our history’s art that later becomes iconic, Michael Kammen said at the Leadership through the Arts Forum at Butler University’s Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall Thursday night. Easter cheer was spread around Butler’s campus last week as children from the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI) came for the classic “egg hunt.” The celebration was held on March 19 from 4 - 6 p.m. at the Delta Gamma house.
The women of Delta Gamma hunted eggs and worked on crafts with 30 of the children from the school and later dined on corn dogs, macaroni and cheese and cupcakes. The SGA assembly approved a $1,000 grant to the men’s a capella group Out Of The Dawg House on Wednesday. That money will go toward the production of their new CD, which will be available at their spring concert scheduled for April 26 in the Atherton Union Reilly Room. P.A.W.S. (Peers Advocating Wellness for Students) hosted “Everything you Didn’t Learn in High School” on March 18. About 30 students gathered together to ask and answer Butler students’ most frequently asked questions about sex education. “Who in this room thinks getting a job is about who you know?” asked Vernon Cheek, the assistant director of public relations for the Indianapolis Colts.
Naturally everyone in the room raised their hands, nodding in agreement. “You’re wrong,” Cheek said. Everyone looked around confused… “It’s about who knows you.”
Cheek, along with four other panelists, gave advice and answered questions for a room full of students at the Learning Resource Center’s “Careers in Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations” discussion.
Matthies suggested, “Career exploration is a process.” She began the workshop by saying that she would give attendees the tools to begin or continue this process.
Matthies explained that students have to research and talk to people before they can pick a career that is right for them. It won’t just appear while walking down the street.
“I changed my major from science to journalism and I am not 100 percent sure what I want to do with my major after college,” Butler freshman and integrated communications major Julie Woodward said.
Matthies was there to help. “This is very similar to when you chose Butler,” Matthies said. Just like picking out a college, careers require comparison and great thought as well.
According to Matthies, most students pick careers they are familiar with either from family or outlets like television.
“This is all ineffective decision making,” stated Matthies. She said television shows like "CSI" tend to glamorize the occupations they are portraying.
Matthies gave the group three steps to follow to correctly decide on a career. The three steps included understanding oneself, understanding the world of work and understanding occupations and their requirements.
To understand the world of work, students took a Career Exploration Quiz and dispelled myths about the importance of college majors and career paths. The quiz was a series of true and false questions including false statements such as “Your major will determine what type of career you’ll get 95 percent of the time” or “Today people in the workforce typically have one career during their lifetime.”
The quiz gave the group an open mind to start exploring and understanding themselves with a series of assessments. The assessments started with a game called “Your Luggage.” The game forced attendees to narrow down a list of 23 values they would like to have in their ideal careers to five of the most important to each person.
After outlining five essential values, they took into account their interests with the John Holland Hexagon. This hexagon lists six different types of people who each have unique interests including Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising and Conventional. Students ordered the different categories according to their own interests and compared them with sample careers or hobbies in each realm.
The last assessment Matthies had the group complete was the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test. This test is used to determine personality according to how one gets energy, how one takes in information, how one comes to conclusions and how one interacts or looks at the external world. The results of the test consist of a four letter personality type that corresponds to a series of careers.
Each student recorded the results from each assessment on a separate table and took into account classes that they did well in and skills required in these classes. The table was referred to at the end of the seminar to discover any possible trends or similarities with the results.
Matthies ended the workshop by giving out packets to help in understanding occupations and their requirements. The packets included career books at Irwin Library, a list of Web sites for everything from college major exploration to internships and jobs, and a list of steps to take to research a specific career.
Woodward commented, “I did take a class like this senior year of high school and the workshop reiterated and reaffirmed everything for me.”
For more information on career exploration, contact Kathy Matthies in the Learning Resource Center. There will also be another “What Should I Do with My Life” workshop on Thursday, April 3.