My Personal Story
In the previous blog post I stated that my Haldane-guided experience
with the Strong Interest Inventory changed my life in ways I never could have
imagined. This blog post will tell that
story.
The supportive role of the Strong Interest Inventory (SII)
in every person’s search for the right
career direction cannot be overstated.
And while the guidance and insights that the SII provide are beneficial to
every prospective employee, the potential
benefits to college and high school students
are even greater since they allow those insights and guidance to influence a
student’s choice of academic major.
In such a case, the student—and future employee—can help to
ensure greater career satisfaction later
in life by selecting a major up front that will best align with the ideal
career direction suggested by the Strong Interest Inventory. For that reason, the optimal way for an
individual to choose a rewarding career path is to use the SII results while
either in high school or very early in their college experience.
In my personal case, I didn’t become aware of the Haldane
Method or the Strong Interest Inventory until well after my formal
education—with a B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. in physics—had already been
completed. So although my SII results were
very helpful to me—by suggesting my ideal
career path—those results, coming one year after
my Ph.D., came too late to affect my choice of college or graduate-school major.
As a first generation college student—the first member of my
family to go to college—I had no idea what I wanted to study in college. I chose physics only because I had a great
teacher in high school that made me realize I could actually do mathematics and
science. And because of that incredibly gratifying
and liberating experience, I chose physics as my academic major—a decision that
I have never regretted.
Two Roads Diverged*
Toward the end of my summer-long, one-on-one Haldane career-counseling
course in 1971, I was given a paper copy of the Strong Interest Inventory. I answered all the questions with a #2 pencil
and, about two weeks later, received shocking results from my counselor. According to the SII, the two groups (i.e., professions)
I had the least in common with,
personality wise, were foot patrolmen and scientists—and
there I sat with three (3) degrees in physics—and the two groups I had the most in common with, were lawyers and public administrators.
The idea of becoming a lawyer or public administrator had
never once entered my brain before that day but, nevertheless, I welcomed those
startling results for giving me a new insight into myself that I had only barely
begun to surmise on my own in the years prior to that day. As I continued reflecting on the SII results,
I began to see that they confirmed something I was vaguely aware of in my
makeup, but which had never fully emerged into a well-formed idea until then,
namely, that through the years, I had always been much more outgoing than most
of my physics department colleagues.
More specifically, I recalled that during my seven years of graduate
school, I had somehow managed to organize all the physics department social
events, honor society dinners, annual picnics, etc. I also realized that, unlike some colleagues,
I had other interests and read extensively outside of physics, especially
history and literature—with William Faulkner being one of my favorite
authors.
Scholarly Credentials
I loved physics and enjoyed studying under Professor Peter
Havas, my Ph.D. dissertation advisor at Temple University, who had studied under Willis
Lamb, the 1955 Nobel Laureate, at Columbia University.
Thanks to the excellent education I received at Temple
University, I acquired the skills to do high level theoretical physics, but
didn’t always enjoy the long hours of solitude required to do that work.
Academic
Administration
The nature of my dilemma soon became clear to me: My scholarly
credentials were pointing me in one direction— and my interests and personality
were pointing me in another. With those two
conflicting alternatives swirling in my head, and with the help of my Haldane
counselor, we found a great career-path solution and an employment opportunity,
right within the framework of the American university - namely, academic administration.
It is a fact that most academic administrators in
universities—deans, provosts and presidents—have solid faculty credentials,
although the particular academic discipline area is normally immaterial. I can recall reading the definition of a “dean”
as a “professor among professors,” which I took to mean that academic
administrators must earn the respect of the highly credentialed faculty members
they lead.
*Two roads diverged in a
wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
(Robert
Frost)
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