Considering Jumping to Another University Major?

It is almost normal for college students to understand they do not like the career in which they are registered at school. The best way to choose a new career is to understand more about yourself and choose a career that matches your own characteristics. One of the most common problems in choosing a career is not knowing about the lifecycles of the career you chose and not knowing about your own lifecycle.

Lifecycles

For instance, the job of teaching algebra has a long lifecycle. Nothing changes much in the field of algebra over the years. Those who make a career of teaching algebra tend to have an individual lifecycle of 15 to 25 years. They like things that remain without change. They are most content in contexts where there is little or no change. So, they lean toward a job where the job and the content of that job does not change for many years.

At the other end of the scale, the job of application software development has a brief lifecycle. Most software development projects are only 8 to 15 months. So, the people who will prosper in the application software development job must have a brief lifecycle. This job needs people who want to start something, finish it, and then move on to the next job.

In between these 2 extremes are those whose lifecycle is 5 to 7 years. The majority of people fit into this category. These are the people who are the backbone of the workforce in the USA. These are the people who sell, assemble, sustain, replenish, and provide customer service for most of the goods and services in our economy.

Recognizing your own lifecycle can be simple. If you have a long work CV, you look back on your history of positions and find the pattern that you have lived in your positions. Have you had a progression of positions which are in the 5 to 7 years time-frame? Is your work experience composed of situations where you lean toward tasks where you build or maintain? If so, you may fit in the 5 to 7 year lifecycle group.

Have all of your positions been doing one thing? If you have spent more than 10 years doing the same work and you have maintained a level of comfort with the tasks and content of your work, you most likely fit in the 15 to 25 year lifecycle group.

If your work CV is a long list of short positions which you start, complete, and then move on, you probably fit in the brief lifecycle group.

Which is best?

There is no group that is better or worse than the others. Each group fills a need in our economy’s work cycles. Some of these lifecycle categories fit better for certain careers or for certain positions.

If you are a student in college, you don’t have a history to look back on to understand your patterns. You need another way of discovering your patterns and making appropriate elections about your career. Before that, you need to understand a little bit more about these lifecycle categories.

The Alarm Clock

Without knowing which of these categories you are in, everybody carries an alarm clock in their head which lets them know that their cycle is exhausting. They probably really like their task and the people they work with, but they discover they are reading the ‘Help Wanted’ section in the newspaper. They start looking for things to not like about their job, the people, the location, the weather, or anything else they can use to think it is time to change their place of employment. They start finding themselves needing to move on to the next task.

This is the standard signal we use to know that our task lifecycle is exhausting, and we need to start the next cycle. But, starting the next cycle does not have to be the next job or career. If you know this is your category, you can plan for the shifts you make from one cycle to the next. If you catch this ‘alarm’ when it first starts to go off, you can make comparatively small changes and reset your clock.

For instance, when you get a promotion on the job, your clock is reset, and your cycle starts over. When you get new kinds of tasks on the job, your clock is reset, and your cycle starts over. When you move to a different project in your company, your clock is reset, and your cycle starts over.

But if you do not make the break you need to make, when your lifecycle ends, you start to get depressed. And, the longer you wait to make the change, the more massive the break needs to be to reset your clock. If you need to make the break and you do not make it, you get depressed. The longer you wait before you make the break, the deeper the depression.

When you first notice the alarms that you need the break, the break does not need to be very large. Promotions or redecorating your workspace are usually enough. But if you wait, you may need to change the company you work for or you may need to change your career.

What Can You Do?

This could be a difficulty. Do you want to change your major because you really don’t like this career, or is it because you have finished your lifecycle?

You should obtain a career assessment using an instrument which helps you recognize many of your characteristics including your lifecycle. With this kind of assessment, you can make educated choices about your major, your career, and your life.

Rodger Bailey, MS, has degrees in Anthropology and Educational Counseling. He has created The LAB Profile: a career assessment instrument which provides interesting information about your characteristics on 40 scales, including your lifecycle. Also, read about his work with his Developmental Discovery System™.

Article Source: http://www.wellnessarticlelibrary.com

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