In-Class Writing

You majored in What? By Katharine Brooks is one of the books that try to help lost and low-confident students in their search for a career plan and career realization. Its major difference between others may be that it focuses on chaos! As contradictory this may sound, it is actually about a chaos in a sense that you don’t have every detail planned but is more about keeping opportunities open. The book provides some good examples and activities in order to find out what are your strength and passions. A good book if you don’t know what introspection and Google is for.

The first chapter was explaining how majors and careers are no linear anymore. And therefore we can rely on chaos theory to rescue us. Chaos theory – which should be better called Chaos-approach to Personal Development- focuses on the ability of knowing our self to try to control part of our future. The future is impossible to predict, as a single event may change it. However, we can influence it to some degree. To do so we have to know where we don’t want to go, and try to be flexible to all other desired outcomes. At the same time, it tries to tell us that as chaotic events may seem, there are actually some sort of pattern on it. Finally it talks about attractors –that seems to be a bend of motivation, conflict and misbehaviors – but it really don’t explore more throughout the book.

Following chapters prepare oneself to introspection, by helping students try to focus on what they like, what skills they have, what experience they have gone through. Chapter number 3 provides some interesting mindset for student to identify themselves to it, yet literature that supports it has proved inexistent through Google. These chapters however, prepare very well the student to be more confident of the way to see their personality and how they interact with their behaviors. Besides, it gives a more light on how different “mindsets” may interact in a company. Because of the importance of this chapter, it should have highlighted more the Myers-Briggs test and should have stressed the importance of seeking feedback with a career advisor. One point in favor is that we are seeing companies trying to bring new perspective (looking for creativity for productivity improvement, marketing mix or management operations) by looking for a more diverse workforce. This chapter should have been explored with more details, in order to give students more possibilities how they can perform in an ever-changed job market. If the mindset has been used, it should have focus on frameworks and how they can make money. If instead the title approach was used, a list of skills will be useful.

Probably the most useful activities have been again the one for the mindset. It helped me to know which mindset I posses, on what degree I posses it and therefore what to work on, and what mindset I am weak on and need to focus on it as a priority. For example, a creative mindset is crucial for providing innovation and coming up with new solutions. It is useful on management, marketing, economics topics and so on. There are many incentives as well as rewards for a creative person. Despite of the big demand, yet I haven’t explored or train myself. I think I posses some creativity, by for example, analyzing a problem on not-traditional variables that may give more insightful answers. Yet, problem-solving should now be my priority when I begin to approach creativity.

The book is a soft book because it targets students in college. What is disappointing though is that it is intended to be used at the end of one career. This should not have been the case. An early identification of one “mindset” can better help on looking and developing skills for a career. It can give focus on what classes to take and what experience to look for. Instead, the student reaches the end of college and realizes he or she does not like his or her major at all, or a lack of certain skills may not make her have a comparative advantage.