Choosing the wrong career can be bad for your mental health. During your adult life, you will spend more hours per week at work than you will spend awake than at home. Work will be the dominant activity in your life. The nature of your work, your working environment, co-workers, and job satisfaction will be very important factors determining your feelings of happiness and well being. If you enjoy your job, get along with your co-workers, and feel valued, you will be happy at work. If you don’t enjoy your job, you are likely feel dissatisfied, unfulfilled, and generally unhappy. People who are unhappy at work often experience stress, headaches, body pain, insomnia, and depression. Selecting your major, which the first step in career choice, affects your mental health. Students in the right major take an interest in their studies. Students in the wrong major find it difficult to maintain interest in school and fall behind in their assignments, which leads to poor graduation outcome and feelings of disappointment and failure.
So you may ask, what is the right career? Each of us has a particular mix of interests, abilities, and values. We are in the right career when our work is consistent with those factors.
Career counseling can help you choose the right career. It is a process that first helps you understand your interests, abilities, and values profile. It proceeds by presenting jobs that are consistent with your profile, and by guiding you through an exploration of those jobs. You look at job duties, personal qualities needed for success in the job, preparation requirements, job outlook, and average salaries.
PVAMU has invested in an online resource that provides career counseling for students, it is called DISCOVER. It is an online, interactive developmental career guide and information system designed to help students make important career and educational decisions. It is available to all PV students. Visit the Health & Counseling Center to get a user name, or call 936-857-2511.
If you are having difficulty deciding on a major, or if you are uninterested in the classes associated with your major, you will benefit from career counseling. Career counseling can help you validate your selection of career, or get you started on selecting a career that will make you happy. Your career choice is one of the most important decisions you will make. You will spend a lot of time and money preparing for your career. Career counseling can help you make a wise and informed decision. If you get a job you love, you will never work another day in your life.