A career workshop held Thursday kept Northwestern students on their toes — literally.
“Stand up,” instructed Kris Ihle, NU’s associate director for career development, who presented the workshop. “I’m going to list characteristics of a particular job. Sit down when it doesn’t sound good.”
Of the four students at the workshop, two sat down when Ihle said, “You must wear a uniform.” The others surrendered once the job dealt with large sums of money and was “possibly considered immoral.”
The interactive fireside, held at and sponsored by the Multicultural Center and co-sponsored by University Career Services, engaged the four students in a discussion about how familial, cultural and societal values influence career choice.
The exercise was characteristic of the workshop, which was intended to get students thinking about factors that can affect career choice.
“We’re trying to make this interactive,” said Tedd Vanadilok, graduate assistant at the Multicultural Center and organizer of the workshop. “We don’t want to lecture (students). They get enough of that in class.”
Despite the out-of-the-classroom intentions, Ihle distributed an outline of the workshop and other handouts. Students went around the room answering a questionnaire.
In an effort to emphasize familial impact on career choice, she asked students if they would have voted for their parents’ favorite presidential candidate when they were in junior high school. The entire group said they would.
Ihle pointed out that students’ values are heavily affected after they leave their families for college, where they are exposed to peers with varying perspectives.
“I love it when we get perspectives that challenge our views,” Ihle said. “People are forced to think, ‘Boy, we actually have to consider a variety of world views to work with other folks.'”
She went on to discuss how the contexts of students’ lives shape their values.
“We might have a kaleidoscope of contexts, or we might have one,” Ihle said. “I know that my first lens is as a woman.”
Cultural contexts affect career choice to a great extent, Ihle said. While African culture emphasizes the importance of “being,” European culture emphasizes the importance of “doing,” she said. The attitudes result in different opinions about materialism, spirituality and competition.
Chris Stahl, a McCormick junior who attended the workshop, confessed that he initially went because his friend bribed him with free food, but he walked out with much more than a full stomach.
Stahl said he “gained confidence.”
