Nearing the end -- Career counseling

Two weeks to go until the end of class, but one week to complete this journal. The last week my group gives presentations. We're not very organized group and I'm still trying to work out what multicultural counseling means. We'll get through with it all but I'm not quite on track with interviews and comments.

This week the subject was career counseling. As an opening exercise we got into groups according descriptions (which we learned later were based on Holland's Vocational Interest Types) and were asked to plan a party. Then each group talked about our plans to the class -- and looked at the descriptions again.

I was piqued by Super's Career Development Theory when I was reading the textbook. Ivan and I got to talk about the Maintenance Stage. All Nystul has to say about this stage is: "Super's fourth stage is the maintenance stage, which spans from 44 to 64 years of age. This is a time for the individual to enjoy the security of seniority while attempting to maintain status as a current and productive professional. The major developmental task is preservation of achieved status. "

Super's theory may be the basis for career development through life stages, but it's outdated in this part of the world. Super's assumption seems to be that full-time, long-term careers are the norm. His ladder of growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance and decline (with a dip)needs to be replaced by a series of cycles, maybe incorporated into a spiral.

It's interesting that one of the trends is to incorporate career counseling into personal counseling, seeing career counseling as "interrelated with a person's overall psychosocial functioning" (Nystul p. 338)

The presentation didn't cover computer counseling software; it's interesting that such programs are now part of the database packages marketed to libraries. Career search and job skills have been emphasized in library programs in the past years. A former business librarian was told, when she publicized the library's programs at a job fair and attempted to form partnerships with community job search organizations that "we study for two years to be qualified as career counselors" This story may be exaggerated in the telling. I wonder if this person was a graduate of the Educational Counseling program -- or does it show that job counselors themselves feel insecure?