Career Exploration Assignment

Currently, I’m likely in an intermediate stage between “self-assessment” and “career-exploration” in terms of my exploration process. I know the region in which I’m interested–biological/life sciences, but, that being a very large umbrella of opportunity, my specialization within that umbrella is where I’m unsure. Not to sound overly critical, but this workshop taught me essentially nothing regarding my personal interests–possibly because of my unique circumstance, or maybe because I’ve taken more extensive ‘personality’ tests before, so anything this test could tell me is the personal equivalent of reading my astrology sign. Not entirely dismissing the test, however, and while it’s true I do not and will not give it much credence regardless, the results do coincide with my interests.

The results of my test were some assortment of I, S and A when taken during class, with investigative being placed first and S or A taking second. Out of curiosity, and hopes to remove personal bias, I took the test administered by the website, which placed me as a dual IRA/IRS set–the third value changing the results minutely. Included in my results were primarily job zone ‘5,’ which, while education-intensive, are careers that lie greater with my interests. Some of which were various degrees of physicians, specialist physicians, and researchers in various fields, including physics, chemistry, environmental, and nuclear. Spread out in the mix were jobs that piqued my interest, namely the biological researching careers, and since I’m unsure of where I want to go in in that same umbrella, the wide breadth of opportunities are a comforting sight. All of the ‘good’ ones, the juicy, challenging, research careers that I would like to stem toward are all level ‘5’ however, which means no less than a master’s degree, and likely a PhD or similar doctoral distinction. While expensive and beyond time intensive, I doubt I could find lasting satisfaction in any one field with any significant period of longevity without constant intellectual challenge being present. Trying to avoid pretention in my personal analysis, but I am very unsatisfied with mundane tasks, I could not be truly happy with life unless I felt my career led to the betterment of life, whether that be the Earth, people, or even merely paving the way for somebody else to make a difference. As far as what to do now, not failing is certainly a high priority for the academic pursuits, as well as finding some level of undergraduate distinction via research or some similar output.

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.   For more information, go to: http://honors-scholars.osu.edu/e-portfolio. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]