In our last blog we spoke about taking risks. We will continue on this theme as we expand on the processes at work in the occupational decision-making of adolescents and young adults.\u00a0 In our last entry we differentiated between indecision and indecisiveness.\u00a0 One of the consequences of indecision can be the delaying or postponement of a decision until the decision has to be considered in earnest.\u00a0 This is readily evident in the resistance some students express towards efforts to facilitate self and occupational awareness. The fear of committing to a course of action that may later turn out to be incorrect can paralyze a student, causing him or her to avoid the decision altogether.\u00a0 This paralysis became quite evident to me as I moderated a focus group with first year university students last week.<\/p>\n
The students I met with, all in their first year of university and all living away from home for the first time, spoke at length about the processes involved in making the decision to attend the university at which I work.\u00a0 For me, the most telling aspects of their stories were their almost universal admittance that they made the decision when the application deadline was almost upon them, that they were concerned about the possibility of making the \u201cwrong\u201d decision, and that many used intuition and experience in making the decision, even after employing very rational approaches to narrow the possibilities.<\/p>\n
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Let us first address the issue of decision avoidance.\u00a0 The belief that there are incorrect or wrong decisions when it comes to making life choices has the tendency to create anxiety in the decision maker, stemming from the possibility that they might make a wrong decision.\u00a0 When pressure from significant others, in most cases parents, is directed at students to make a correct or permanent decision, the resulting anxiety is heightened.\u00a0 As a result many students put off making the decision in a misguided hope that the need for a decision will go away or else will be made easier at a future time.<\/p>\n
The second significant characteristic of the decision-making processes described by these eleven students was their tendency to employ intuitive and experiential approaches to making the decision.\u00a0 The students who recalled feeling most confident in their decision to attend this university were the ones who had visited the university and were able to, through some form of experiential knowledge of the campus or another, picture themselves studying and living here.\u00a0 Even the students who described using elaborate tables and spreadsheets to compare options admitted that when it came down to making a decision \u2013 when the deadline was approaching \u2013 they abandoned all the rational comparisons and went with the more felt influence of their intuition, often without being able to rationally justify the choice.<\/p>\n
What the observed results of the focus group suggest to us is that it is important for students to be provided with the following as they prepare for and make occupational decisions:<\/p>\n
BY: Jeff Landine and John Stewart<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In our last blog we spoke about taking risks. We will continue on this theme as we expand on the processes at work in the occupational decision-making of adolescents and young adults.\u00a0 In our last entry we differentiated between indecision and indecisiveness.\u00a0 One of the consequences of indecision can be the delaying or postponement of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001010,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[248],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-careercounselling","tag-john-stewart"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n