Again – this is a discussion response in a Career Foundations Course I’m taking through the UofC.
Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) has self-efficacy at the heart of the model and I believe that one’s successful pursuit of careers or interests is always best served by the concept of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy begins the journey up the mountain by establishing a “can do” attitude in establishing a growth-minded pursuit, while achievement in that climb creates a feeling of great success and well-being. Ah – the sweetness of success, or is it? How many times and how many ways do we acquiesce to something different or less than what we can be because our self-efficacy really just led to our bar being lowered in order to appear successful in our limited achievement. Sure, “I can” if the hill is relatively small.
I would offer that in my life experiences I had many a great carrots dangled as opportunities while other doors outrightly slammed shut – while my lack of self-efficacy and/or interests with the timing did not align; hence, I foreclosed many opportunities or they were foreclosed on me.
My greatest dreams as a child was either architecture, interior design or geography (I’m the kid who would buy home design and National Geographic magazines with my chore money) – all of which came crashing down when a counselor said that none were possible due to my poor math grades – but “hey, not to worry because you are at least good in English, theatre, and history!” So I pursued Theatre and English. Ah Gottfredson – how right thou art. I compromised, but luckily I have great passion for Theatre and English – and shifted my paradigms
As a 20 year old, I had worked for 4 summers as a summer student with the local police force in Community Relations and Forensics data entry, and was coaxed and encouraged from brass and bosses to apply to be a police officer – a shoe-in they’d say with my four years experience, my university education, and my grace of being female in a quota-equality-hiring-mandated land of opportunity. But, I had known too much, at that point, of the tough realities on the streets as a cop, not the cushions of the office as I had been enjoying on the force. So, I foreclosed that option – it was a job, not a vocation for me.
Again, I foreclosed, on the dream of Public Relations and International Diplomacy because I just didn’t understand where the train was, how to get it on the track, nor how to enjoy the ride. Always the career I dumped because I didn’t have any sense of direction or self-efficacy for the pursuit. An occasional whiff of “what if” crops up every now and then.
I foreclosed on my first degree in professional theatre due to not being able to subscribe to a life of poverty and chronic uncertainty, nor having any conviction in self-efficacy.
I foreclosed on a writing career due to fears of inadequacy, uncertainty, and again – a lack of self-efficacy. Completing an English degree on a part-time, evenings and summers, did not give me the networking tools nor confidence I needed to pursue writing nor higher education in English.
Work in Loblaws from years of part-time cashiering to full-time photolab managing led to offers – as a university-educated-female – to a funded Business Masters for store management, yet – again – I foreclosed. Not interested, although here I believed I did have the self-efficacy to have been successful.
Finally, I felt the twinges of a calling – one where I felt self-efficacy abounded in me – education. And I was right. I was driven to pursue my B.Ed and did so at the top of my class, and for 21 years I’ve always been employed, and highly successful, as a teacher. A teacher who gets to do theatre and writing every day. In so many ways I hit the jackpot, succeeding and soaring. Self-efficacy is indeed at the heart of my success and I endeavor to cultivate in teens every day. And yet …
That Super theory from last week whereby I want to be “stabilizing, consolidating, and advancing” – but I continue to feel an imbalance in my world. As much as I’m a master teacher – an expert – I never feel the comfort of being stabilized, consolidated, and certainly never advancing. I tried seeking a role in administration – but I didn’t make it after a few attempts. This is a position I feel great self-efficacy for, but that opportunity is closed by a ceiling I cannot shatter. I work in a school division that I have a great pioneering passion for and have wanted to continue my journey with, but opportunity does not abound, and I have continued to feel unsettled. Do I see myself at the front of a classroom in 13 years from now (my projected retirement age) – no, I don’t. Why? Because Richardson’s theory of “work and relationships” beckons to me to find the buried living that’s lacking in my piles of working (namely in the form of marking – the English teacher’s ball and chain) and it requires my “on” from the minute I arrive to the minute I leave (after 10+ hours most days) – performing as an extrovert when I am an introvert by nature. I love my job in a million ways for a million reasons – but “stabilization” and “advancement” is necessary as I’m stagnating. Of course, I complicate it all further in that I contest with Blustein’s insistence on “work” over “career” – I firmly believe in the semantics that the work I do cannot qualify as work – it’s a calling, a vocation. And the most recent “calling” is a deep-seated desire to continue to work with and love teens – ideally, our teens, in our school system – on a one-to-one basis as a career and academic advisor, even with coaching our staff in their Professional Growth Plans (PGP).
This goal has driven me to begin this quest by following (unknowingly) Savickas’ Career Construction Theory/Life Design whereby I seek to “construct myself], impose direction on [my] vocational behaviour, and make meaning of [my] career” – as I have done this journey in finding success as a teacher. I seek to adapt via the “four C’s”:
- Career Concern – I seek a plan for tomorrow to maintain optimism (to avoid falling into indifference and pessimism)
- Career Control – I seek to have control over my choices (something I have constantly felt was tenuous and uncertain year-by-year with course assignments and class sizes)
- Career Curiosity – I have been inquisitive about my realistic options and interests – leading me to this program to learn, to grow, to create my opportunities and to seek my alternatives
- Career Confidence – I believe in myself for this change – I have great self-efficacy for this re-designed career – to help mold the dreams of kids and staff alike.
So, in the end, my midlife professional crisis leads me to fulfill my desire to find a work-life balance in counseling; to find stability, consolidation, and advancement – even if it were to take me beyond the comforts of the work environment I have become accustomed to. The paradigms are flexing and shifting. This work I can do, I know I can.
References:
Swanson, J. L., & Fouad, N. A. (2015). Career theory and practice: Learning through case studies. NC: Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications.
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