PSU Magazine Winter 1988

Career Is there a satisfying, challenging, rewarding job with your name on it? by John R. Kirkland ' 'D oonesbury's" Mark Slackmeyer raps with Dad on a weekend home from coLiege. Dad: Mark, son, have you given any thought to the sort of job you want when you graduate? Mark: Oh sure... I don't know what field it'll be in, but I know that it will have to be creative - a position of responsibility, but not one that restricts personal freedom . It must pay fairly well ; the atmosphere, relaxed , informal ; my col– leagues, interesting, mellow, and not too concerned with a structured working situation. Dad : In short , you have no intention of getting a job. Mark: I didn't say that. Pinning down a career these days can be a puzzling, sometimes agonizing career in itself. With a thousand job titles that didn't exist a generation ago and a world offering educated adults the unrealistic promise that they can succeed in whatever they set their minds to, setting one's mind can be a real mystery. Add to this mystery the pressure to make money and the expectation that, for the late-20th Century college graduate, personal and professional "fulfillment" is an attainable commodity, and you have the dilemma facing not just recent college graduates, but a good portion of the work– ing population - even those who have been in the job market 20 or 30 years: "What do I want to do when I grow up?" That is the big question facing the peo– ple who visit Portland State University 's two career counseling centers: Counseling and Testing Services and Career and Placement Services. The job of the profes– sionals working there is not necessarily to answer that question , but to help clients answer it for themselves. The question they should be asking, counselors say, is "Who am I?" Only through making an honest assess– ment of one's self - by looking at one's values, likes and dislikes, personality and style - can one hope to make a suc– cessful marriage out of a job. Know thyself If we don't know ourselves as well as we should, it's probably because we haven't taken the time to get acquainted. We're too busy juggling work, home and family, or perhaps we're chasing after a profession that society has somehow con– vinced us we need in order to get ahead. In other words, we're doing the whole process backwards. One of the reasons for job dissatisfac– tion after college, the counselors say, is a single-minded focus on jobs while in school. Responding to pressure by parents or peers, many clients decide before freshmen year what they want to be, and place themselves on an academic track from which they have no freedom to stray, even for one term, for fear they won't finish their requirements in four years. Their downfall comes when they discover, after years of gruelling hard work that they hate medicine or the law. They don't know what it is they do want to do, because they never thought about doing anything else. Dr. Eugene Hakanson, director of Counseling and Testing Services, said, "In some ways what professional schools are doing is creating pressure that students aren't really able to take in terms of establishing a sense of identity." PSU 11