Bloch article

So, one thing that I learned last week is that I cannot draw pie graphs very well and that I like things to be balanced, nothing getting more attention than any other aspect of my life. Right now, it is not like that. I'm in the same boat as other grad students in that school is my main focus and is suffocating all of the other areas of my life. This is, however, worth it in the end.

Bloch's article was very hard for me to understand. I read it and thought "I have nothing to say about this article." Philosophy is not my forte and I had a hard time getting through this one. So I guess I'll just have to go on the parts that I did understand.

I guess the first thing to address is the sense of fulfillment that people should ideally feel with their jobs. I am putting great effort into making sure I don't end up in a career that I will not feel is as amazing at 70 as I do at 30. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not feel this way about their jobs. My mother, for example, is counting down 'til retirement because she is burnt out from being a pawn in the corporate world. I think that if we could prevent this burnout, by either getting people into great careers in the first place, or helping them address issues in the workplace that are preventing them from being happy at work.

I never thought about the fact that everyone has a story as to how they came to their career decisions. I love learning about people's life stories in general, but it never occurred to me that, say, my room mate went into meteorology and climate control for a reason and that her life experiences led her there in some way. We were not assigned these paths in life. Every decision is influenced by past experience and personality traits.

I may be beating a dead horse here, but I do not like the inclusion of spirituality in the article. You can feel a connectedness with other people while not being spiritual. I feel a deep connectedness with everyone and I am not spiritual at all. I feel like I still have a purpose in life, even if it may not be to serve a higher being. I do, however, feel as though people get lost in the complexity of religion and lose focus on the aspect that we are connected and should therefore respect each other, as mentioned in the article. Do not think that I am saying this happens to all people who consider themselves to be religious. Please don't take this statement that way. I have many friends who are great people and happen to be religious as well, and I support them in their spiritual development. I just feel as though many of the articles we've read for this class make it sound like un-spiritual people are missing out and are underdeveloped.

It makes me wonder why Dr. Baker chose these articles -whether it's because he agrees with them or because he just wants to make us think. And we will probably never know :)

Bloch, D. P. (2005). Complexity, chaos, and nonlinear dynamics: A new perspective on career development theory. The Career Development Quarterly, 53, 194-207.