Tuesday, April 9, 2013

IB and Career Orientation



Although career orientation classes have not revealed anything new about my interests, they have shown me much more about myself than I could possibly know. I am a person of numbers and logic, and having my personality determined by a test was especially interesting. My IB program guiding, however, has been up to this point mostly irrelevant. Take the opinion survey we recently took in class, for instance. It included all the courses that the school could possibly consider offering if we demonstrated interest. Honestly, I would like all those courses to be offered, which resulted in me writing too many neutral scores for them and not actually choosing my favorites, apart from Physics HL and Chemistry HL, the latter of which is extremely unlikely to become part of the ISC curriculum considering the lack of interest from my peers and the widespread fear of failure in my class. Hopefully the school will get back to us soon with more concise choices and actual guidance. I do not feel particularly ready for the IB, but I believe it cannot be much harder than Sophomore year. All I have to do is work hard.

 While the results of my Holland codes and Meyer-Briggs indicators did not surprise me at all, as the exact sciences have been my area of interest ever since I can remember; the results showed me a great number of majors not closely related to this field but that should still satisfy my personality, giving me a wider range of ideas to choose from. However, I am very unlikely to choose another area, as not only do I prefer Mathematics and Science; I am actually better in these areas. Meyer-Briggs, by the way, was a method initially developed by Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung, considered the founder of analytical psychology.
I am a little worried by the fact my personality tests seem to indicate my best occupation would be working as some sort of computer programmer or physicist/mathematician for a big company or a university. Although I can imagine myself being really happy as a scientist of some kind, I would prefer a career that has some real power. From politics to education, I witness incompetence on a daily basis in Brazil. It is my belief that I should actually try to improve my country and, if possible; the world in some way; not simply spend my life working in some lab or office, even if the work results in a Nobel Prize. Still, I am excited by the fact the surveys have confirmed my preference for the exact sciences. Math and science might not be the areas most global leaders come from, but they are my favorites and I am quite sure I will be happy if I choose a career in this area.

In order to actually put what I have learned this semester in practice, I believe I will actually have to dedicate some of my time towards developing an effective online image and associating it with my areas of interest now, not after I finish high school. Honestly, I find it hard to connect myself to the scientific community before actually joining it, especially considering I am not some kind of computer genius who has been developing apps since he was 12. However, I believe I will be able to achieve my current goals because sooner or later, an opportunity to develop something meaningful will show up. All I need to do is prepare for it. Moreover, if others have become student-scientists during high school before, I can certainly do the same. Dedication is key.

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