Our guest blog post today is by Susan Posluszny, the founder of OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning, specializing in unique programs and services to support students with college major and career planning. Susan is a Master Career Counselor with over 25 years of career counseling experience including 18 years as a college career center director. She is the author of In Search of a College Major & Career Direction, an interactive program designed to support teens and young adults with choosing a college major and career path.Her career counseling and coaching practice is located in New Boston, NH. Subscribe to Susan’s e-newsletter, Career Options, at www.collegesandmajors.com

While attending one of my son’s hockey games last weekend, I was approached by a fellow hockey parent who knew of my career counseling work with college bound teens.  She gave me that “you will not believe this one” look and told me about her teenage daughter’s most recent career interest, cryptozoology.  As I learned, cryptozoology deals with the study of creatures whose existence has not been substantiated (think Big Foot and Loch Ness Monster).  It also focuses on known animals that exist in places where they were not expected to occur as well as the persistence of animals presumed to be extinct.  This parent envisioned, with great angst, paying large sums of money for her daughter to go to college and pursue a career field that offered no job security and little if any income.

Now with 25 years of work in career counseling (including 18 years as a college career center director), you can bet that I’ve listened to students speak about all kinds of career dreams and aspirations.  Some might immediately dismiss more ‘non-traditional’ or less popular career interests referring to them as unrealistic and impractical.  I never dismiss a client’s career interests.  From my perspective, enthusiasm for a career interest is a great thing since it serves as a motivator to get a student into the career exploration process (which is most challenging if not impossible when motivation is lacking!).  So I can work with a client around an interest and help them gain increased career exploration skills in the process.  In addition, I like to play detective around the interests expressed by my teen (and adult) clients…you can learn quite a bit through this type of probing.  For example, is this student attracted to cryptozoology due to an interest in science and biology or is antropology an underlying passion.  Then again, maybe it’s the adventure and mystery that gets her pumped up without any interest whatsoever in the science element.  I’d also want to know more about this student’s other career interests.  In my work with teen clients, I give them multiple assessments to help them build a broad list of interests that they then prioritize.  There are usually themes or patterns that keep popping up over and over again when we look at their most favorite top 10 or 20 career interests.  These themes can offer a sense of career direction that goes beyond one interest (after all, career exploration is a process of experimentation and reality testing so it’s likely that this student will realize that this career area is not what she had envisioned it to be).

So…if your student expresses an interest in a career area, try saying, ‘Tell me more about this interest of yours and let’s see if we can work together to help you understand what it involves”.  My hockey friend’s daughter may end up ruling out cryptozoology as a career interest once she learns about the realities associated with this work or she might decide to go off on a related and yet different tangent…like marine biology.  Then again she might realize she’s still pumped up about this interest but that it won’t support her preferred lifestyle…so it will just serve as a fun hobby.

Want to learn more about cryptozoology from someone who works full-time as a cryptozoologist (Yes, he’s a full-time cryptozoologist…I wonder what his parents thought of his interest before this career took off!)?  I did some research and found a website that was quite fascinating…but then I love learning about careers!

If you would like to contact Susan or find out more information about the services she provides, you can contact her at:

Her websites: www.careeroptions4me.com and www.collegesandmajors.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanposluszny

Email:  susan@careeroptions4me.com