Career Paper

When I am asked to reflect on my current career goals I sometimes fall down a rabbit

hole. The reason for this is because I do not have a specific career path that I have picked for

myself and this can sometimes leave me feeling like I don’t have one at all . However I have

recently started looking at the situation in a more positive light with a mindset looking more

into how having these multiple interests can help with whatever path I do choose .

One of the paths, and the one I have been looking into the longest, would be to go into

school counseling. This would mean that my career path would be leading me towards

graduate school. Of course if I were to go down that path I would not start graduate school

next year but would take a year off to work and save up money. Completing graduate school

would then hopefully help me get a job in a school which would help fulfill the part of me that

wants to work with children.

The other path I have been looking into for myself has been getting into more of the

business world. For me a way to tie psychology into it was with an HR position. This path could

still have me going to graduate school or have me start at a lower position without graduate

school. I personally think in this situation going straight to work instead of graduate school

would be more likely. Following this career path would be closer to my newer interests I have

developed as well as giving me a chance to still, in a way, work with children if I go to the right

company.
 Overall when I reflect on either of these goals I still see a lot of uncertainty . Even

though I am well aware of this I think I just need to go at one with a positive attitude . In the

end if that particular career doesn’t work out then I can try and switch to the other and have

another go at it. I think society puts too much pressure on children from as soon as they are in

high school to know what they want to do and for me I have always just made something up to

give them an answer. So to now have two actual answers for people that I am truly serious

about it is a nice change of pace for me.

When I look into how concepts learned in psychology will relate to either of these

professions I can see ways that it could help. HR was the less easy of the two so I am going to

start with it. In HR you can be put in multiple different situations that psychology can be

related too. One specific example would be if there was some sort of sexual harassment going

on you may be one of the first people in line for the victim to contact for help about the

situation. Psychology ties into this because could potentially cause trauma for someone

involved and we learned about cognitive therapy can be helpful and just knowing when to

speak and when to listen which we also talked about in Industrial and Organizational

Psychology. PSY 242 was very much involved with HR functions within a work place and put me

on the path to possibly pursue working in HR. Another way HR and psychology meet is through

a job onboarding. During this process you walk your new hire through their new job. Within

the process there are little bits of knowledge we had learned from other classes like how

people may associate the company as a whole from certain words or actions you take during

the process. As for counseling this one had lots of connections to psychology so I just chose
one that I was most compelled by. My connection is from the developmental psychology part

of the job. If you were working at a school with young children all in important parts of their

development being able to spot different behaviors that may indicate further problems or

troubles later on is very important.

Now looking into how ethical principles would tie into my profession I am going to look

at the same ethical problems that would be part of both. The two I see the most clearly are

confidentiality and respect for peoples dignity. First looking at confidentiality, within both

professions I see a huge importance of the people you are working with knowing you are

respecting their privacy. For those students you may be working with they might not share as

much with you if they don’t trust you. Same goes for the HR position you have to have they

employees respect otherwise no one will feel comfortable coming to you with workplace

issues. As for respecting people dignity you also have to be open minded and respectful with

your authority to be good at either job. With HR if you are not respectful when you have to fire

or hire someone it can lead to a less respectful and happy workplace . Within the school you

would have to be respectful of the different situations the kids may be going through and

always be there for them in a respectful way.

Finally looking into how I have developed my knowledge and skills to work with a

diverse population. Within the school as a whole the constantly seem to be teaching us about

diversity and inclusion in new and interesting ways. This alone has helped my personal

knowledge on this area grow. Then with psychology we learned about stereotyping and how
our brain does different things cognitively depending on our point of view . This has helped me

gain more knowledge on how to step back from situations and get a better read on what may

be going on and how to approach it. I think having to write about how I have developed these

skills does show a sad reality however that it does not seem expected for people to just be able

to work well with other cultures and all the knowledge gained over my years at Loras have

given me insight into how messed up that really is for our world. That being said my career goal

might not be set in any stone yet but I feel comfortable going down whichever path I get placed

on.