Career Counseling

Today in my career counseling class I have learnt two approaches; Trait and Factor Theory as well as Ann Roe Theory. From my understanding, Trait and Factor Theory highlights two terms trait—a characteristic of an individual that can be measured through testing, it’s an internal element within oneself, and factor—a characteristic required for successful job performances where it’s an external element like environment for instance. This theory says that genetic factors are far more important than environmental factors to shape one’s personality with about three quarter of their variance being accounted for by heredity and the rest by the environment. The significant? It’s when you know what you are, what traits you inherit from your family, it will later determine your career path. I don’t know how far this theory works but maybe it can be interpreted this way. When both father and mother of Albert are teachers, Albert will have the tendency to become a teacher when he grows up since he inherits the genetic of teacher, the characteristics of a teacher to be precise. I don’t know. I was a bit lost of this theory actually.

Another theory that we discussed was Ann Roe Theory. This theory gives emphasis on how parenting styles as in early relation with family could affect the career direction of oneself. The two parenting styles are accepting parents where good rapport exists between parents and the children and this will result in the choice of career of the children in the future where that person is said to have the tendency to opt for person oriented occupation while the rejecting parents will result in the child to go for a non-person oriented occupation; that person would prefer to work with machines for example, rather than human being.

Learning both theories makes me wonder which theory suits me most. I have gotten enough care and attention from my parent, and yet I am still not into teaching (though I’m doing B.ed TESL. I have completed a year of foundation and I am now in my final semester of the second year, I have about four semesters to go and having that B.ed is actually a license to teach, just like what my Dean of the faculty told us during the “Majlis Amanat Dekan”. We even sang “Guru Malaysia” song to get that spirit of becoming a teacher but still I don’t have much enthusiasm towards teaching. I would say I have developed only about 30% of my interest towards teaching along the way and it’s really something to me to gain that much interest since I am not into teaching at all when I first step in the institution for the last two and a half years. I bet that’s the highest percentage I could achieve and it will remain that way. I enjoy myself being with people, human being I would say, but to engage myself in a career which requires me to deal with people, to teach to be precise is quite a No-No to me, and should I highlight that dealing with people will never be an easy task.) FYI, teaching can be considered as one of the person oriented occupation. To look at my family from both my father and mother side, they are from various career fields; they involve in business, they involve in art things, they are teachers, engineers, lawyers, doctors to name a few. So I don’t know which theory I belong to actually. I reckon human being as unique and yet complicated. And I believe that none of the theory could fit each and every one of us precisely because we human being are unique in our own ways. But I don’t know. It’s just my opinion.