Considering Jumping to Another University Major?
It is not uncommon for university students to discover they do not like the field in which they are registered at school. The best way to choose a new field is to discover more about yourself and choose a field that matches your personal characteristics. One of the most common difficulties in choosing a field is not understanding the lifecycles of the field you chose and not understanding your own lifecycle.
Lifecycles
For instance, the field of teaching algebra has a lengthy lifecycle. There are few changes in the field of algebra over the years. Teachers who make a career of teaching algebra tend to have a personal lifecycle of 15 to 25 years. They like things that remain without change. They are most content in circumstances where there is little change. So, they gravitate to a field where the field and the content of that field does not change for many years.
As an alternative example, the field of application software development has a compressed lifecycle. Most software development projects are only 10 to 15 months. So, professionals who will thrive in the application software development field must have a compressed lifecycle. This field needs professionals who want to start something, finish it, and then move on to the next task.
In between these 2 ends of the scale are those whose lifecycle is 5 to 7 years. The majority of individuals fit into this category. These are the individuals who are the backbone of the labor pool in America. These are the individuals who sell, forge, uphold, deliver, and offer customer service for most of the goods and services in America's economy.
Understanding your own lifecycle can be simple. If you have a long work history, you explore your history of tasks and find the pattern that you have lived in your tasks. Have you had a progression of tasks which are in the 5 to 7 years time-frame? Is your work experience organized around situations where you gravitate to tasks where you build or maintain? If so, you may fit in the 5 to 7 year lifecycle group.
Have all of your tasks been doing one thing? If you have spent decades doing the same work and you have maintained a level of comfort with the tasks and content of your work, you most likely fit in the 15 to 25 year lifecycle group.
If your work history is a long list of short duration tasks which you start, complete, and then move on, you probably fit in the compressed lifecycle group.
Which is best?
There is no group that is better or worse than the others. Each group fills a need in our economy's work cycles. Some of these lifecycle categories fit better for certain professions or for certain tasks.
If you are a student in university, you don't have a history to look back on to discover your patterns. You need another way of finding out your patterns and making useful elections about your career. But first, you should know a little bit more about these lifecycle groups.
The Alarm Clock
Without knowing which of these groups you are in, everyone carries an alarm clock in their head which lets them know that their cycle is finishing. They probably really like their position and the people they work with, but they find themselves reading the ?Help Wanted' section in the newspaper. They begin looking for things to be dissatisfied with about their job, the people, the location, the weather, or anything else they can use to decide it is time to change their place of employment. They start finding themselves needing to move on to the next position.
This is the regular signal we use to know that our position lifecycle is finishing, and we need to begin the next cycle. But, starting the next cycle does not have to be the next job or career. If you know this is your pattern, you can plan for the shifts you make from one cycle to the next. If you catch this ?alarm' when it first starts to go off, you can make relatively small breaks and reset your clock.
For instance, when you get a promotion on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over. When you get new kinds of tasks on the job, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over. When you move to a different project in your company, your lifecycle is re-started, and your cycle starts over.
But if you do not make the shift you need to make, when your lifecycle ends, you start to get depressed. And, the longer you wait to make the change, the stronger the shift needs to be to reset your clock. If you need to make the shift and you do not make it, you get depressed. The longer you wait before you make the shift, the deeper the depression.
When you first notice the indications that you need the shift, the shift does not need to be very large. New task assignments or changing your work hours are usually enough. But if you wait, you may need to change the company you work for or you may need to change your career.
What Can You Do?
This could be a difficulty. Do you want to change your major because you really don't like this career, or is it because you have finished your lifecycle?
You should obtain a career assessment using an instrument which helps you know many of your characteristics including your lifecycle. With this kind of assessment, you can make appropriate decisions about your major, your career, and your life.
Rodger Bailey, MS, has degrees in Anthropology and Educational Counseling. He has developed The LAB Profile: a career assessment system which provides interesting information about your characteristics on 40 scales, including your lifecycle. Also, read about his work with his Developmental Discovery System?.
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