Message from the Director
Spring 2008 Perhaps it’s my mindset as a career services Director, but I often seem to find information that is directly relevant to students and their career development in unlikely places. For instance, I recently read an interesting book that approaches the issue of what makes humans happy. In Stumbling on Happiness, the author Daniel Gilbert, after some enlightening and well-documented examples and studies, concludes that while we can often get an idea of what makes us happy based on our own experiences and our assumption of what happiness might look like using our imaginations, we tend to ignore one of the most accurate ways of finding happiness: Talking with other people who are doing what we are thinking about doing and asking how they feel, in the moment, about what they are doing. I have simplified and, in so doing, distorted the complexities of the book, but what I was surprised to see was how much of Gilbert’s findings relate to what career counselors and career centers do as we help students in their career development. We don’t tell students what careers or jobs they should take, based on our assumptions of which choices will make them happy and fulfilled. We don’t pretend to know what is best for them. What we do is to provide ways for students to learn more about themselves and present them with opportunities to explore their interests and to experience different career options. Perhaps most relevant from Gilbert’s perspective, we connect them with others who are in positions and careers of interest to the students. Some of the most effective ways we provide assistance to students regarding their future career options is to work with employers who can offer internships and jobs. For example, we regularly have over 100 companies and organizations that attend our career fairs, held every quarter. Google, Intel, Apple, Accenture, Hope Services, and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps are a few examples of organizations that recruit Santa Clara University students. We also help students connect with alumni and others through shadowing and mentoring. The inCircle alumni network can connect students to thousands of SCU alumni throughout the world. In addition, we support and provide the process for informational interviewing; connect employers with students through employer information sessions and on-campus interviewing; and serve, whenever possible, as links between students and people in the work world who can share stories and lessons learned about their vocational journeys. No one can walk in another person’s shoes, but if Gilbert is right—and I suspect he is more accurate than not—we are also not so unique as individuals that someone else’s current experience and how that person feels about that experience can’t be at least as good a predictor of happiness as a student’s own projection of what will make him/her happy at some future time. As counselors, parents, faculty, and staff involved in the development of our students, we should provide contacts and experiences that will help students make career choices that lead to fulfillment and, well, happiness.
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