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The importance of doing your career research

      

Trevor Doré

inions editor

0, you’ve selected your courses for the
semester and you are ready to put your

pen to paper and get things done. Now that
the semester has started you can put worries of
prerequisites and program requirements behind
you and concentrate on your daily studies. This is
a great thing and important to be able to do. There
is no better feeling than having your next two years
or four years of education planned out and knowing
exactly what classes to take to get to your end goal.
This works great especially for those who know
exactly what they want to be “when they get older.”
These people know what they want out of their post
secondary education and they know what the have
to do to attain it.

Unfortunately, it seems for every person that
knows exactly what they want out of their post
secondary studies, there are at least two people
who have no idea. These are the people enrolled in
general studies or taking a course here and there to
see what piques their interest. Now, there is nothing
wrong with this; it is crucially important to find
out what you are really interested in. While you

are often caught up in your studies, it is important
to take some time and research what it is that

you want to do. Are the courses you are taking
going to lead to a career that will truly fulfill your
aspirations?

The task of figuring out an end goal and what
needs to be done can be daunting. So often the
end goal changes before you even reach it. Just
when you thought you were on track in your arts
degree, you find out that what you really want to
do is science degree based—back to square one.
Change is often inevitable and while it may seem
daunting, it is important to continually gauge your
end goal and the tasks required to reach it. Whether
or not you know what it is that you want to do, it is
important to research your career options. After all,
what would be worse than spending years at school
only to find out that the industry has gone through
some major changes and no one is hiring.

There are many resources to do career research
and like anything else, the best ones are right under
your nose. Many career resources can found right
here at Douglas College in the Career Resource
Centre. There are counsellors there who are great
to bounce ideas of off and can help get you headed
in the right direction. They have resources on
thousands of different career options— you name
it they probably have information on it. You might
even discover.a career you didn’t even know
existed. They have information on employment

Qivaro

projections—will there be a demand for people
in your field in the next five to ten years? They
can help you get a summer job and have great
information about creating effective cover letters
and resumes.

Whether you are in your first year or final
year of studies, I highly recommend you check it
out. Perhaps it will open your eyes to something
you have never thought of. The Centre yields
an abundance of information that you will find
more useful than those career tests we all took in
high school. Check it out. If you are in your final
semester and already know where you’re headed,
they have tips that will help polish your resume so
that you can get a job as soon as possible.

The Career Resource Centre is located in room
4600 in New West and in room A1050 at David
Lam.

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Winning the lottery maybe not all it’s cracked up to be

And the winning numbers are..
By Trevor Doré, Opinions Editor

his is it, after years of shelling out money

week after week; it’s all going to pay off.

The winning lotto numbers have been
announced and your lucky numbers have just made
you the winner of the million-dollar jackpot. For
countless people winning the lottery would be a far-
fetched dream come true. After all, the chances are
slim to none.

What would you do if you won the lottery?
How would you spend the millions of dollars? I
am sure that at some point in time, all of us have
considered what we would do if we won the big
one. Think of all of the choices you would have, all
of the stuff you could buy, the places you could go
and how much happier you would be. The lottery
corporations lead us to believe that our lives would
be much better if we just won the lottery. They
imply this with slogans like “imagine” and “turning
dreams into reality.” Many people honestly believe
that their lives would be much better if they won
the lottery. They trudge through their mundane
daily routine dreaming of “what if.” However, it is
not just the lottery we do this with.

 

How often have you found yourself saying,
“T’'ll be happier once I get that new cell phone,”
or, “What I really need is an new big screen T.V.”
While this is something that so many of us do, it
can be problematic. Economist Richard Easterlin
believes part of the problem is the “hedonic
treadmill.” The concept of the treadmill is that once
we reach a certain wealth, we continually strive for
more and end up in a constant pursuit for bigger
and better. We postpone happiness to some point
in the future, when we have obtained some level
of desired wealth. We often think that money will
make us happy but the fact is that we seriously over
rate the importance of money in making us happy.

An interesting study was done a while back —
by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert. The study
analyzed data, specifically regarding happiness
levels between two groups of people: multimillion-

dollar jackpot winners and paraplegics.
Immediately you probably draw the conclusions
that the lottery winners will no doubt be happier
than the paraplegics. The fact of the matter is
however, that a year after having won the lottery
and a year after having lost function of their legs,
both lottery winners and paraplegics are equally
happy. The reason you drew the conclusion is
because humans have a tendency to overestimate
the pleasure of future events, something Gilbert
has labelled the “impact bias” —“the things that we
think will make us happy usually don’t make us as
happy as we think they will.”

Don’t get me wrong; a little extra seven
cash would be nice. However, it is worth taking
into consideration what you already have. We
have the capacity to synthesize happiness, which
is to find happiness in our present state. Perhaps
true wealth is not about money but more so about __
having quality relationships and good health.
Postponing happiness into the future blinds us from
seeing what we currently have. As Gilbert says:

~ “True happiness comes when we learn to be content

with. what we have.”

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