Understanding Your Self
"A person who is alive is constantly getting lost. The big thing...is to realize that this is [your] own adventure, and that all the field guides and oracles and shamans...holding up mirrors can only flash you...a glimpse of your own story. It's yours to savor. It belongs to no one else."
--Bonnie Friedman
Exploring what matters to you is your job in your partnership with your advisors and faculty. While the nuts and bolts of web search, resume-writing, and interviewing are essential in reaching your career goals, all of these tasks require your own self-knowledge. By exploring what matters to you, you have a conscious awareness of why you are making your choices, insuring that they are based on your own desires, interests, talents, and values and not someone else.
The goal of self-assessment work is to provide you with tools to process information about yourself so that you can more consciously discover, identify and prioritize what matters to you in the following areas:
1) Universally: what matters to you in the world? What do you value? What activities give you a sense of meaning or purpose? In what areas do you feel compelled to help out?
2) Personally: what are the talents and abilities that you do naturally and need to express? What are your passions?
Ideally, these two types of "things that matter" come together in your vocation or career; when you are doing your work in the world, you are hopefully using your natural gifts or talents.
By completing the following steps, you will begin to gather more information about yourself. As you progress through these steps, it would be useful to share your discoveries with your advisors.
What gives your life a sense of purpose or meaning?
What are your natural talents or strengths and how can you best express them?
How do your purpose and talents shape your vocation?