Personal and Career Exploration

Personal & Career Exploration, Sixth Edition, is a book about a process-a process of exploration, awareness and integration.  There is content, but the content is in the service of process.  That is, the content is used to assist you in learning and applying the process of self exploration and integration.  This is different from what you usually get from a textbook. 

As nice as it would be to say that we read a book or took a class and became integrated, it just doesn't happen.  At best, we begin.  Self awareness, exploration, and integration is a life-long endeavor.  We continually change, and as we change, we need to understand and integrate these new aspects of our selves.  It is a process of beginning.

Knowing the process not only allows us to continue the self exploration, understanding and integration, it almost compels it.  Once begun, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop.

The authors of Personal & Career Exploration give equal weight to three important parts of the  process;

     -the self in the larger society;

     -the self in the educational environment;

     -and the self in defining a career.

Personal & Career Exploration is designed to assist college students in discovering and understanding themselves and their potential career options.  The book is an holistic look at the self covering the personal, educational, and career parts of that self.  It accomplishes these tasks by presenting theoretical and practical information about each of the topics, followed by a series of assignments and integration papers.  The integration papers are designed to bring various aspects of the self into a new focus of understanding for the individual.

Personal & Career Exploration will help assist the many undeclared major students in understanding and beginning the personal and career exploration necessary for a complete and satisfying life.  It is unique among career books in that it allows the individual to look at his or her self in a methodical, holistic way.  It is based on the belief that in order to select a rewarding career, the individual must look at his or her self as an individual first, then as a student, and then as a searcher for a career.