Do these jeans make me look fat? (Evaluate Fit)

Remember those times where you would walk into a store with the sole purpose of buying a pair of jeans? But instead of a simple pair of jeans, you are accosted with different styles. Straight leg, flare, or jegging?  Light blue, dark, blue, stonewashed?  Are you built like a tube, apple, pear, or hourglass? You take the time to try on the styles and find one that feels comfortable and looks amazing!  You leave the store very happy with a little less in the bank account.  But it was all worth the effort and investment since you now have something that will make you look and feel good.

How do jeans apply to major and career exploration?  Simple.  The next step in your journey is to EVALUATE FIT.  You've assessed yourself and narrowed down your ideas.  You've explored options by using the internet to research careers as well as set up (or gone to) an informational interview, job shadowing, and/or volunteer opportunity.  What have you found out about the careers and majors you've researched?  Have you found some new ideas in the process?  Have you crossed some off of your list?  Which careers fit you better and are more comfortable?  Like a good pair of jeans, you're discovering what you like in the fit and in most cases, you'll want to stick to that pair of jeans and brand for many years to come.

So ask yourself a few basic questions when trying on majors and careers:

• Can I see myself working at this company?
• Are there opportunities for me to learn and grow?
• What is it about this company that makes me want to work here?  
• Is it the people?
• Is it the atmosphere?
• Is it the work involved?
• Can I see myself working here for a long period of time?

Major and career exploration, just like shopping for the perfect pair of jeans, can take some time and effort but in the end, you leave satisfied with your decision.  Take the time to find out what major and career fits you!

As you continue your journey through major and career exploration, think back to your junior high and high school days...

• What classes did you enjoy?
• What made them enjoyable?
• In what subjects did you get the best grades?
• What subjects took the least effort?
• What courses did you dislike?
• What did you dislike about the subject?
• What subjects took the most effort?
• What were your career aspirations in high school?

25 Day Benchmark TODAY!!!

100 Days of Career Exploration

#100daysSLCC

25 Day Benchmark

(Deadlines to submit entries for each benchmark will be one week after the benchmark date.)

25 Day Benchmark (Friday, September 25, 2015)

(Total possible entries:  2)

à Instagram picture (with #100daysSLCC)

à MCDS Sign Up

à Comment on Blog

à Likes on Facebook (with #100daysSLCC)

à In person attendance to a Peep the Sheep event

(Check off items you have completed.  Verification will be made before name is submitted for drawing.  Your name can be submitted up to 2 times for our grand prize drawing of an SLCC Tuition Waiver OR $300 SLCC Bookstore gift card.  Submit at any Salt Lake Community College Academic & Career Advising Office.)

Please print:

Name: ____________________________________________

SLCC Student #:__________________________________

Bruinmail:________________________________________

Social Media Handle:______________________________

Phone:____________________________________________

  

What to do? What to do? (Explore Options)

We are constantly bombarded with choices in life.  Should I eat a salad or a cheeseburger?  Would a diet soda or water be better for me?  Do I feel like exercising for 10 or 30 minutes?  What flavor yogurt or ice cream do I feel like eating?  What NFL or NBA team should I root for?  What channel should I watch?  No matter how many choices we have, we are always pressured to pick one thing. Well, in the case of ice cream, maybe two or three.  But we have to narrow down our choices significantly before making that final decision.  When it comes to major and career exploration, it's time to start EXPLORING OPTIONS.  You've assessed yourself, now it's time to reduce your choices and pick the top few options.  How do you start exploring?

Once you have your top 3-5 choices for a major and career, begin by using the internet.  Career Coach (https://slcc.emsicareercoach.com/) is a great resource that is specific to Utah, in fact, within a 50-mile radius of Salt Lake Community College.  After you search careers and find the one that is closest to your listed choices, you'll be able to see career information, pay scale, growth, retirement, employers, and education.  You'll be able to answer most of your basic major and career exploration questions with this one website!

Searching outside of Utah?  ONET (www.onetonline.org) is a great resource if you want to do a nationwide search.  ONET offers the same information as Career Coach but it also expands the information by giving you a detailed breakdown of what types of skills are needed for the occupation, links you to degrees, credentials, certifications, and gives you related occupations.  There have been many instances where I've met with students who say they want to go into Nursing but are unsure if that's the exact occupation they have in mind.  When delving deeper into their thoughts about an occupation in the health care field, most often than not students are unaware of the diverse areas of health care and when discussing further into occupational fields, students are surprised to discover many other opportunities that were not on their radar.

Start a journal (or even a blog!).  When you begin to write down your choices and options along with a list of ideas and thoughts, you are actively working towards major and career exploration.  This is a great way to begin asking those tough questions and adding or subtracting items off of your list.  Start with simple questions.  This week, ask yourself two questions:

• What were your childhood dreams?  
• What did you want to be when you grew up?  

When you assessed yourself, you thought about being the ruler of the world and if you could choose a major and career that you loved and were good at, that would be your pathway.  Continue that thought process when exploring options.  Enjoy the journey and aim high!

A few other ideas for exploring options...

• Informational Interview (Interview someone who works in the careers of your choice)
• Volunteer in your area of interest
• Job Shadow

If I Ruled the World (Assess Myself)

What makes you happy in life?  Do you love being outdoors?  Do you love to photograph nature? Are you happy in a laboratory mixing chemicals and figuring out formulas?  Do you enjoy working with people and listening to their problems?  Are you fascinated with animals and are frequently called the "animal whisperer"?  When we think about majors and careers, we often feel pressure from family or society about what we "should" do.
*You're good at biology so you should be a doctor.
*You're a great artist but that doesn't make money.  You should be an architect.
*You're a math genius, you should go into engineering.
*You're a great listener, you should be a counselor.

Have you felt like you're settling for a major and career path because of what people say you "should" do?  What if you're a great artist but don't really want to do that as a living?  What if you also love English and want to be a writer instead?  Or a mathematician?  Or a coal miner?  Elle Luna writes in her book "The Crossroads of Should and Must" that "all too often, we feel that we are not living the fullness of our lives because we are not expressing the fullness of our gifts".  We need to think about what we love to do as well as things we are good at doing.  The combination of those thoughts will create a major and career path that you can get excited about and you can be one of those people who LOVE their jobs! 

"Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life."  Confucius

So how do you get to that dream major and career?  The first step is to ASSESS YOURSELF.  There are many different career assessments on the market, many of which are free, that give you some great information about your personality and careers that match with said personality.  As a student at Salt Lake Community College, you have access to a couple of free career assessments that can guide you in the right direction.  TypeFocus is available through your mypage (Student Tab, Academic/Career Advising, TypeFocus New User) and the college has invested money to offer this resource to students whether they are undecided on a major or want to make sure they are headed in the right direction.  TypeFocus uses some of the personality assessments that are offered through the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and gives you a four letter type.  That four letter type matches you with careers based on your personality, interests, or values depending on which assessment you decide to take.  You can take all three (it takes about five minutes per assessment) and at the end of the assessment, you receive a list of careers that match.  Going along with our theme of "100 days, 10 minutes per day" to explore majors and careers, TypeFocus offers opportunities for students to explore without taking too much time out of the day.

Another free assessment that is given, along with a one hour workshop to discuss results, is StrengthsQuest.  I highly recommend taking StrengthsQuest along with or after you've taken TypeFocus so you can match the two ideas together.  StrengthsQuest is offered through Student Life & Leadership (http://www.slcc.edu/sll/strengthsquest.aspx) and again, it's FREE!

If you've exhausted the free resources available and you're still confused about a major and career path, then it's time to make a small investment and take some paid assessments.  The Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory are offered at SLCC at a very low cost.  In fact, it's the lowest in the state!  Each assessment costs $25 each but taken together, the cost is reduced to $40. This is where you'll ask yourself the all important question, "If I ruled the world, what would I be?" When taking the paid assessments, go with your gut feeling.  Answer questions based on what you would do if you had no restrictions, no holds barred, no barriers.  What do you prefer?  Some questions may be a little harder to answer as you are only given two choices per question but always go with what makes you the most comfortable and lean towards your natural tendencies.  This will give you what's called a "True Type".  The paid assessment comes with a one-hour session with a certified advisor who interprets your results.  The ability to have follow up sessions is also available and part of the $40.  If the cost is what's holding you back, think of it this way...

$40 can buy you:

*The entire set of Harry Potter books, used, through amazon.com

*At least one of your college textbooks

*Dinner at McDonalds for a family of 6

*Movie with popcorn and snacks for 2

*A full tank of gas

*40 things at the Dollar Store

*40 items on the dollar menu

The list could go on forever but when it boils down to paying for a lot of classes to discover your major and career versus spending $40 to help narrow down some ideas, which would you pick? Choosing your major and career takes time and money, why not invest in your future today?

http://www.slcc.edu/academicadvising/careeradvising/assessments.aspx

Other resources for major and career exploration:

• Major and Career Discovery Series (FREE online Canvas Course-email michelle.tuitupou@slcc.edu through your Bruinmail account with the subject line "I Want My MCDS")
• LE 1200 Major and Career Exploration (1 credit class-elective)
• LE 1220 Human Relations-Career Development (3 credit class-SS, HR designation)

What the bleep? Who's that sheep?

One hundred days seems like a long time.  If you really think about it, one hundred days doesn't equate to a full, regular Fall or Spring semester.  And what about ten minutes?  If you were in class for ten minutes it would be a blink of an eye and you would be finished. What if we put those two ideas together?  In the art world, artists will take ten minutes a day for one hundred days to accomplish a goal.  For example, an artist will take ten minutes each day to draw a self-portrait and they will do this for one hundred days.  In those one hundred days, artists will share their work with the art world and others who are working on the same project.  This idea has expanded to other "100 day" projects so we thought, why not?  When it comes to major and career exploration, people need to take the time and discover a lot about themselves.  There is no lightning bolt that says, "Hey, THAT'S what I want to do."  It takes time, patience, effort, and research.  The "100 Days of Career Exploration" project will create a yearlong framework that will assist YOU in the self-discovery process and hopefully, by the end of the one hundred days, you will have discovered a major and career path.  

"Even though it's the year of the sheep, don't be afraid to break away from the flock and choose a major!"

Meet Peep.  Peep the Sheep.  

As we're heading into our last few months in the Chinese zodiac "year of the sheep/goat" we are reminded about the personalities of the people who fall into that year.  Using the Chinese zodiac as a guideline, we are using each animal to be our mascot for the year.  As you follow the adventures of Peep and her counterparts, you will learn more about what Salt Lake Community College has to offer with programs of study and resources to help you be successful in college.  Most importantly, the adventure you take will help with major and career exploration.

*People born in the Year of Sheep are tender, polite, filial, clever, and kind-hearted.  They have special sensitivity to art and beauty and a special fondness for quiet living.  They are wise, gentle and compassionate and can cope with business cautiously and circumspectly.  In their daily life, they try to be economical.  They are willing to take good care of others, but they should avoid pessimism and hesitation.

·        Strengths:  gentle, softhearted, considerate, attractive, hardworking, persistent, thrift

·        Weaknesses:  indecisive, timid, vain, pessimistic, moody, weak-willed

(http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/social_customs/zodiac/sheep.htm)

Makes you wonder about the personalities of the other eleven animals...

When it comes to major and career decisions, our personalities have a lot to do with the choices we make about where we enjoy working, what work activities we enjoy, with whom or what we enjoy working, and how we enjoy doing our work.  Lucky for us, there is a proven method of major and career exploration in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  The MBTI assessment has been around for over 60 years and was developed by a mother-daughter team, Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Briggs, based on Carl Jung's theory of psychological types.  There are many resources around to help with major and career exploration and the MBTI assessment is one of the best!  For just $25, the cost of dinner and a movie, you can take the MBTI assessment and receive a one on one interpretation from a certified academic and career advisor.  Those one on one interpretations can also lead into follow up visits as you research majors and careers. Make an investment in your future! 
(http://www.slcc.edu/academicadvising/careeradvising/assessments.aspx)

As we kick-off our #100daysSLCC, we encourage you to follow Peep the Sheep as she takes you through the world of major and career exploration at Salt Lake Community College.  Enjoy the journey and we'll see you at the finish line!

Instagram:     100daysslcc
Twitter:         @slccadvising
Facebook:      Salt Lake Community College
Blogspot:       100daysslcc.blogspot.com