Thinking About Jumping to Another College Major?
By: Rodger Bailey
It is almost normal for college students to realize they do not like the major in which they are registered at school. The best way to choose a new major is to realize more about yourself and choose a major that matches your personal characteristics. One of the most common difficulties in choosing a major is not knowing about the lifecycles of the major you chose and not knowing about your own lifecycle.
Lifecycles
For example, the task of teaching algebra has a long lifecycle. Nothing changes much in the field of algebra over the decades. Teachers who make a career of teaching algebra tend to have an individual lifecycle of 15 to 25 years. They want things that remain the same. They are most happy in contexts where there is little or no change. So, they are attracted to a task where the task and the content of that task does not change for many decades.
On the other hand, the task of application software development has a very short lifecycle. Most software development projects are only 10 to 18 months. So, those who will thrive in the application software development task must have a very short lifecycle. This task needs people who want to start something, finish it, and then move on to the next task.
In between these two extremes are those whose lifecycle is 5 to 7 years. The majority of individuals are in this category. These are the individuals who are the backbone of manpower in the USA. These are the individuals who sell, produce, keep up, deliver, and provide customer service for most of the goods & services in our economy.
Recognizing your own lifecycle can be simple. If you have a long work history, you look back on your history of projects and find the pattern that you have lived in your projects. Have you had a progression of projects which are in the 5 to 7 years time-frame? Is your work experience organized around situations where you are attracted to projects where you build or maintain? If so, you may fit in the 5 to 7 year lifecycle group.
Have all of your projects 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 projects and content of your work, you probably fit in the 15 to 25 year lifecycle group.
If your work history is a long list of short duration projects which you start, complete, and then move on, you probably fit in the very short 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 groups fit better for certain professions or for certain projects.
If you are a student in college, you don’t have a history to look back on to realize your patterns. You need another way of understanding your patterns and making effective elections about your career. Before that, you should know a little bit more about these lifecycle groups.
The Alarm Clock
Without respect to which of these groups you are in, everyone carries an alarm clock in their head which lets them know that their cycle is finishing. They might really like their work situation and the people they work with, but they find themselves 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 decide it is time to change their place of employment. They start finding themselves wanting to move on to the next work situation.
This is the regular signal we use to know that our work situation lifecycle is finishing, 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 ring, you can make comparatively small switches and re-start your lifecycle.
For instance, when you get a promotion on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle begins again. When you get new kinds of tasks on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle begins again. When you move to a different project in your company, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle begins again.
But if you do not make the transformation 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 transformation needs to be to re-start your lifecycle. If you need to make the transformation and you do not make it, you get depressed. The longer you wait before you make the transformation, the deeper the depression.
When you first notice the alerts that you need the transformation, the transformation does not need to be very large. Promotions or changing your work hours 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 a process which helps you know many of your characteristics including your lifecycle. With this kind of assessment, you can make reasoned choices about your major, your career, and your life.
Article Source: http://www.ezarticles.info
|
ArticleWarehouse.com |
