Community of Care Due

Community of Care Assignment

Introduction

There are many career assessments, “personality tests”, and even online Buzzfeed quizzes that can help answer the big question, “What Should I Be When I Grow Up”. Career assessments can provide a language that give insight into who you are as an individual, your values, strengths, and ultimately what work environment would be a good fit. 

Before we get into some of those assessments, I want to start us out with an assignment that looks a little more into your own personal narrative. 

One of the most meaningful projects I did in graduate school was in my History of Higher Education course where I interviewed both my grandparents about their college/ career journey. I learned things about them I wouldn’t have otherwise known and it supports me even in my job today. Around the time I was transitioning from maternity leave and back to work I was learning what it meant to juggle family and work. I reflected on conversations I had with my grandma and why she made education a priority for herself even as the primary homemaker. I make it a goal to introduce my daughter from a young age to my work and include her when possible. I often feel my grandma’s influence especially when I feel guilty for staying late in meetings or choose to leave my family for a weekend to attend a professional development conference. Her words and life remind me of the privilege of being able to walk on a college campus every day and be part of Higher Education. 

Assignment

In this assignment you will reflect on your community of care up until this point and what were the messages and influences you had surrounding career. I created two examples through Canva. One is structured in a circular format where I placed, people of influence, as well as my family name that I all gave equal weight to. In this structure you may want to include guardians, spiritual leaders, siblings/ cousins, parents, other relatives as well as cultural sayings, formative verses from religious texts, a family name, places, a family business, or other mentors who taught you about career. The second structure is formatted as a “tree” with branches. It may look similar to a genealogy assignment in a science course. This places siblings and parents closest to you and branches off to aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.

Choose the format that you feel will tell your story best. Please include at least 8 influences.

I have provided examples through Canva for a visual below. Feel free to format as you wish. Pictures and Canva are not required.

Provide your formatted 8 influences and a summary of themes you’ve learned from this exercise. Examples of themes include: “A lot of my family members went into the helping professions and committed their career to service” or “majority of the women in my family went into careers focused on aesthetics and this explains why I’m drawn to developing my artistic skill set through graphic design courses”. The conclusion you come to may be you didn’t have many influences around work and how to choose a career path growing up. If this assignment is particularly difficult please write about that as well.

Deliverable

8 influences and a written summary 3-5 sentences of what you’ve learned from this exercise.

Dig Deeper

Interview someone in your community of care about their career journey. How did they get to the place they’re at today? What mistakes did they make along the way? What helped them choose their education path? What regrets do they have?