Super's Theory and My Career Development
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Transcript of Super's Theory and My Career Development
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Super’s Theory and My Career Development
There are several elements of Super’s Development theory that shed light on my personal career development. For one thing, Super emphasizes the importance of self-‐concept, i.e. “the picture we have of who we are,” and how that picture influences our career choices over the lifespan. Ideally, we are able to implement our self-‐concept in our career roles. In my case, my self-‐concept was first formulated while growing up as an only child and flourished once I moved away from home and began my adult life. All throughout childhood and adolescence, I viewed myself as an intelligent, outgoing individual – I did well in school, and my parents encouraged me to devote time to studying. I continue to view myself that way today. I was in numerous gifted programs as a student, did well in most academic subjects, and participated in activities outside of school – dance, softball, and choir to name a few.
I did not initially see myself as a creative person until I received the award for “Most Creative” in my second grade class because I had always associated creativity with being artistic – i.e. being good at arts and crafts or drawing (which I was not very good at). Winning that award really helped me to embrace my natural creativity – since that point I have also considered creativity as a key part of my self-‐concept.
While I had a very positive childhood, two things were missing which prevented me from developing my self-‐concept further until I went to college and started spending more time away from my parents. As mentioned in the review of Super’s theory for this course, “the formation of self-‐concept begins when children distinguish that they are separate from their parents and other people/objectives in their lives.” In my case, I didn’t really see myself as separate from my parents until there were literally several hours driving distance between us.
Growing up in a fairly sheltered existence with no younger siblings, I didn’t have the opportunity to serve as a leader or role model until college. Living as a senior member of my sorority in the chapter house, I was able to mentor some younger members and motivate the chapter to have better wellness habits as our Personal Development Coordinator. In doing so, I began to realize my potential to motivate and inspire others – an element of my self-‐concept that is now central to my career goals. Later on, after I initially “failed” at my first job out of college as a market researcher, I realized the potential and importance of those collegiate experiences more consciously and decided to attend graduate school to become a Higher Education and Student Affairs professional.
Since that point, my key purpose in life has been to motivate and inspire people to self-‐actualize (i.e. fully realize their self-‐concept), discover their calling(s), and share their unique gifts with the world. According to Super’s theory, the extent to which I am able to realize these various aspects of my self-‐concept in my career roles, the more satisfaction I will gain in life. In other words, if I can help people self-‐actualize in a creative way using my intelligent and social qualities; there is a good chance that I will be pleased with my career life.
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In the four years since I graduated from my master’s program and started working full-‐time as a Retention and Matriculation Advisor, my self-‐concept has solidified and become more stable. I still see myself as outgoing and intelligent, and I continue to see my creativity and motivational/inspirational qualities as key elements of my personality. For the most part, I have achieved much of the satisfaction and realization of my self-‐concept in career that Super refers to.
Still, recently I’ve observed my self-‐concept starting to grow and evolve further now that I’ve broken up with my boyfriend and started to examine who I am as a single woman on my own. Going to college helped me to separate from my parents, but I quickly got into a long-‐term romantic relationship and haven’t really been out of one for long since that time. Now that I am taking the time to truly be alone, I’m noticing other elements of my self-‐concept emerging. For one thing, I’ve started to witness a more introspective, reflective part of me that I’d like to incorporate more consciously in the next phase of my life – perhaps by writing professionally or cultivating a serious meditation practice.
Another way that Super’s developmental theory has affected my view of my career development is via his discussion of the various life roles that people play in a lifetime and how our emphasis on those various roles at any given time make up our career and influence the choices that we make.
While I was most recently spending a lot of time dividing my energy between Worker, Partner to my ex-‐boyfriend, (Doctoral) Student, and Homemaker / Caretaker to his cat, I am now focused most intensely on being a Worker and a Leisurite – to the extent that I am started to downshift my role as (Doctoral) Student and am seriously considering giving up that role for this life phase.
I’m on not crazy about the word “Leisurite,” but basically I am focused on activities outside of work such as yoga, Biodanza, dance class, choir(s), and meditation that bring me joy, wellbeing, and personal growth. In doing so, I’m hoping to clarify my values and my self-‐concept further so that I can choose a mate and career pursuits that fit better together with the things that I like to do.
In addition to my present life roles, I am also incorporating future visioning of life roles into my career planning. I enjoy much of my work as a Retention and Matriculation Advisor at USF and my life feels pretty balanced right now – yet I find myself exploring how I might continue to achieve my life purpose of helping people self-‐actualize when I attempt to add partner and parent into my life roles in the future. Ideally, I would like to take on a part-‐time role as life coach or writer so that I can quit the full-‐time work that I do now as an advisor for the time being and focus on my partner and parenting roles more intensely.
Overall, Super’s developmental theory has provided a wealth of resources for me to use in exploring and analyzing my personal career development. His theory has helped me assess how my self-‐concept and life roles got me to where I am now and also how they should continue to guide my growth and choices in the future.