MY PERSONAL CAREER DEVELOPMENT PATH

My Personal Career Development Path

I grew up in a family where no one ever worked. My dad never worked a day in his entire life. He owns properties that he rents to people. I am from Turkey, where non working women are really common. So it never created awkwardness, or an issue to say that my mom is a housewife. Growing up, I never understood why I was supposed to go to school. Both my mom and my dad were graduates from universities but they weren't doing anything. At that time, my only source of knowledge was the media. Here I would refer the Super's theory that explains that self-concept changes over time, and develops as a result of experience. So the concept created in my mind related to the career was regarding media because it was in my family. Therefore, according to the Holland's theory, it was a kind of artistic personality type and for a really long time, I wanted to become a singer/dancer. (Heinz, 2000)

My parents were both supportive of that decision, even though I was in no shape to make sound decisions, and my mom enrolled me in singing and acting lessons after school. It was fun in the beginning, but I remember thinking that it would consist of singing the songs I wanted to sing, however it was consisted more of vocal training in which we had to make weird sounds and speak shaping our lips in a weird way. So I decided to quit.

Up until high school I was just living the day and not thinking about the future and what I wanted to be. Beginning of high school, in turkey, you start this preparatory after school courses in which they prepare you for the higher education exam, something like the SAT but much more in depth, because everything you will be learning throughout high school will be on the test which lasts for 3 hours. So in other words, you start preparing for a test that is going to shape how your life will be in three hours. Besides that test nothing matters, not even the GPA in high school or the extracurricular activities. And on top of that, you have to select a concentration in high school based on your choice of career. For example, if you want to become a doctor or an engineer, in other words something that would involve science, you have to choose the Science & math concentration. (Fouad & Byars-Winston, 2005)

Since I didn't have a clue on what career I would want to pursue yet alone choosing a concentration, my mom decided that I should seek therapy, because the time had come and I had to make a decision which would shape my life for the rest of my life. I told my therapist that I found this education system ridiculous, that how in world I was supposed to know what I wanted to become when I was just fifteen, that ...