My name is Jaden and I\u2019m a third-year student at UMass\nLowell. I\u2019m majoring in English with a concentration in Journalism and\nProfessional Writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Currently, I\u2019m an intern for the University\u2019s Career & Co-op Center. The center has tons of great career, internship, and co-op resources for students so I will be blogging about my own experiences using those resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know exactly what I want to do yet after college and I decided to explore FOCUS2. It\u2019s a career assessment program you can use to learn about different career paths and find ones that fit your personality. As an intern, there are still so many career paths I could take. I want to know more about different careers before I decide on a job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within FOCUS2 I decided to take the \u201cWork Interest\u201d assessment. It asked me a lot of questions about my interest in certain activities and to rank my interest based on a five-star scale. One star means no interest and five means strong interest. The test itself is quite short. Honestly, some of the questions can feel unusual to answer if you have no experience doing that activity. For example, one of the questions asked me, \u201cTo what degree would you enjoy working in a national park to preserve its forests, wildlife, and natural features?\u201d I have no experience doing any environmental work and it wasn\u2019t a job I ever considered before so I had to really imagine what those responsibilities would be like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After I finished the questionnaire, it told me my top work interest\nareas. There are five areas in total: enterprising, conventional, artistic,\ninvestigative, social, and realistic. My top three areas were enterprising,\nconventional, and artistic. \u201cConventional\u201d work is predictable, detailed, and\norganized. I was surprised that conventional ranked higher than artistic\nbecause I am in a creative major, but I guess it has to do with my preference\nfor orderly, systematic work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also got matched with different careers. When I clicked on\na job title, it showed me a more detailed description of what that job entailed.\nI really liked reading the descriptions because they gave me an idea of the day\nto day responsibilities. Three career areas that came up for me were Management,\nSales & Related, and Arts, Entertainment, Sports, & Media. I was not\nsurprised that artistic jobs were mentioned because of my English major, but I\nwas more surprised at how many of the jobs in management and sales related to\narts and entertainment. One of my top careers was \u201cAdministrative Service\nManager.\u201d Even though most of this job was about managing company operations,\nstaff, and products, it also included writing professional documents and\nletters. I was very surprised about this because I did not realize how much\nwriting impacts the daily operations of a business. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Jaden and I\u2019m a third-year student at UMass Lowell. I\u2019m majoring in English with a concentration in Journalism and Professional Writing. Currently, I\u2019m an intern for the University\u2019s Career & Co-op Center. The center has tons of … Continue reading