If all the roads turned into rivers, what would you do? That doesn’t seem like a typical career-related question. Still, students answered it and many other career assessment questions last week during Jackson Academy’s new life skills classes.
Senior Molly McClure said students found the battery of 10 different timed assessments valuable. However, some of the evaluations made their “brains hurt.” Despite the challenge, she said: “Overall, we are enjoying the experience and are all eager to find out what the results are.”
Thirty students chose JA’s new life skills electives this semester. Fifteen boys take the Back to Basics elective, and 12 girls are enrolled in The Curated Life elective. The electives are designed to smooth the transition from high school to young adult life, answering many of the “I wish I had known” questions that pop up when students enter college, career, and general adult life. Subjects include resume and interview skills, personal finance, career assessment, caring for home and property, and family life skills – to name a few. Parents will be glad to know learning how to do laundry is included.
“The syllabus is so much fun,” said Director of Counseling Paula Pratt. “It poses those questions that all of us wish we had learned in high school.”
In fact, Molly said one of the assignments in the life skills elective asked that specifically. “We were told to interview JA faculty and ask them what they wished someone had told them before college, what they had wanted to be growing up, and what they ended up doing,” Molly said. Among the answers was the advice to be open to your career aspirations changing while in college. Although some students know their career choice, many decide while exploring options they discover through the college experience.
Discovering what really makes you tick is what alumnus Trey Carroll ’09 is helping the 30 JA students accomplish with the 10 career assessments. Carroll admits he changed his college major five times while at the University of Mississippi. “I had a lot of different passions, and I didn’t know what to do with them.”
After earning a degree in English, he worked in ministry, non-profits, and education. Still unsure, he sought out career assessments and landed on one called the Birkman Method.
“It changed my life,” Carroll said. The Birkman Method measures characteristics that affect behaviors, motivations, and perceptions, helping predict behavior and why it occurs.
Carroll continued working, but after a health setback, he revisited his Birkman results. “If I cannot work my regular job, what will I do?” he asked. He then got certified in the Birkman Method. He began helping college and high school students, like those in JA’s life skills electives, pinpoint their own majors and careers.
Under Carroll’s guidance, Molly said she and her classmates completed assessments that evaluated job interests, what students think of themselves, and how students believe others perceive them. Timed brain teasers helped students see how their brains work best. The ten assessments included the puzzling one about what to do if all roads turned to rivers. In her river scenario, Molly imagined using a boat for transportation, going to the grocery store and stocking up on supplies, having the advantage of a speed boat, having fun with friends jet skiing or tubing, and getting a yacht and living “in the road.” Well, what was once a road.
This week, when career consultant Trey Carroll gives them their individual assessment results, students will understand better what that river question reveals about themselves.
