Whether students are choosing majors or choosing a career direction, we work with them through a model we call the Three Step Process. This process is useful in all kinds of decision-making, and we encourage students to learn and use the model for whatever decisions they will face in the future.
Step One is to know yourself. Understand what motivates you, your strengths and weaknesses, your skills, your interests, your values, your personal style, and your life goals. Our counselors are skilled at helping students think this through, and we have a variety of self-assessment tools we use to assist students in finding these answers for themselves.
Step Two involves information gathering about the options available in the external environment. Often, there are whole career fields of which students have only a vague awareness. Our job is to help them become aware of new possibilities, and give them the tools and resources to learn more.
Step Three is putting it all together – taking what you’ve
learned about yourself, what you know about the options available,
and then choosing a direction and making a plan that fits. We help
students implement their plans by working with them on resume writing,
job searching, and interviewing skills, and helping them think about
the basic decisions they have facing them.
It is important to know that this process is iterative; it applies when students are first choosing a major, again if they decide to change their major, again whenever they are looking for internships, again when they are job-hunting, and perhaps again when they are evaluating a career direction years down the road. Just because a student is at Step Three today having found a summer internship, doesn’t mean they can’t be back to Step One at the end of the summer, having decided that a particular career field isn’t for them, after all.
If your student is having difficulty in making any of these decisions, please encourage them to call or visit our office to meet with a counselor.
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