Minds On

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.


- Aristotle

Welcome to Career Studies, a course literally about you! As you work through the course activities, you will learn about who you are now and who you want to become, including the decisions you will have to make along the way.

What does “knowing yourself” have to do with high school, job searching, or finding a career? A lot actually. Understanding who you are allows you to narrow down your wants and needs in order to find a path in life that is both challenging and rewarding.

A woman starting a new job, introducing herself

Trying to answer big questions like “who are you?”, or “what are you best at?”, or “what do you truly want in life?” can be challenging. Sometimes it makes more sense to start with an end goal in mind.


The future you

Take a few moments now to focus on your future path. You have accomplished a great deal already. But where do you see yourself in 5, 10, or 20 years? 

In order to set goals for yourself, you need to dream about where you might like to be. It’s ok if you don’t have all the answers. Many people don’t. But, imagining your possible futures helps you to embrace all of life’s opportunities.

Businesswoman running towards several diverging paths

Consider

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine where you would like to be in 5, 10 or 20 years.

  • Where, geographically, will you be living?
  • What type of housing will you be living in?
  • Who will be living with you?
  • What type of job will you have?
  • How much money will you have?
  • What age will you be when you can retire?
  • What would you like to be the most proud of?

Write your thoughts in the space provided.

If you don’t know the answer, just put in a rough guess. You may want to provide more than one answer to some of these questions.

Acknowledgements (Opens in new window)

Action

Now that you have some ideas about your possible future, you can start to explore how you might get there.

In this activity, you will learn about how the course is organized and some of the strategies that you can use right away to be successful.

How this course is organized

Part of making sure your future goals are achievable means working through a process of career and life planning. This course is structured around four areas of learning outlined in the Education and Career/Life Planning Framework diagram.

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This is the Education and Career/Life Planning Framework: A Four-Step Inquiry Process. Which areas of learning are you most comfortable with? Which do you think will be most challenging for you?

Press here for long description(Open in new window)

In this course, you will track your learning in two ways: in a notebook and in an Individual Pathways Plan. Select the icons to learn more

  • Culminating Activity: Individual Pathways Plan

Notebook

As you go through this course, you will be prompted to record your thinking and answer questions in a notebook. You need to consider whether you wish to use a physical notebook or an electronic one – perhaps even both. The notebook is useful to capture thoughts and reflect on your learning, including how you learn, and your motivation, perseverance, goal setting, and more. It is your space to explore and experiment.

You will not be submitting this notebook for a grade, but you will find it very useful as you prepare for the final test at the end of the course. The more detailed and complete your notes are, the more prepared you will be.

Culminating Activity: Individual Pathways Plan (IPP)

Throughout the course, you will be prompted to put some of your work from the various learning activities into your Individual Pathways Plan or IPP. This is a kind of ‘career portfolio’. You will create a folder on your computer and title it "GLC2O Individual Pathways Plan”. This is where you will save your IPP files.

Your Individual Pathways Plan should be divided into the four sections reflected in the Education and Career/Life Planning Framework diagram.

  • Knowing yourself: Who am I?
  • Exploring opportunities: What are my opportunities?
  • Making Decisions and Setting Goals: Who do I want to become?
  • Achieving Goals and Making Transitions: What is my plan for achieving my goals?

At the end of the course, you will select specific items from your Individual Pathways Plan as your culminating project for feedback and a grade. Your IPP is worth 20% of your course mark.

Your teacher will assess your work based on this rubric. You can review the rubric (Opens in new window) at any time to ensure that you are meeting the success criteria to the best of your ability.

Success Criteria

Focus on Know Myself section

  • Awareness of strengths and next steps as they relate to career goals

Focus on Exploring Opportunities section

  • Research reflects understanding of the different career opportunities
Level 4
80-100%		 Level 3
70-79%		 Level 2
60-69%		 Level 1
50-59%
With a high degree of effectiveness With considerable effectiveness With some effectiveness With limited effectiveness

Success Criteria

  • Individual Pathway Plan is complete with all required entries (4 sections with at least two entries per section as per assignment instructions)
Level 4
80-100%		 Level 3
70-79%		 Level 2
60-69%		 Level 1
50-59%
With a high degree of effectiveness With considerable effectiveness With some effectiveness With limited effectiveness

Success Criteria

  • Demonstrates accurate use writing conventions, including spelling and grammar appropriate for the audience and purpose
Level 4
80-100%		 Level 3
70-79%		 Level 2
60-69%		 Level 1
50-59%
With a high degree of effectiveness With considerable effectiveness With some effectiveness With limited effectiveness

Success Criteria

Focus on Setting Goals and Making Decisions section

  • demonstrate awareness of values and motivations as factors that determine career/life choices, explaining which factors are influencing their decisions

Focus on Achieving Goals and Making Transitions

  • Revised resume and cover letter reflect growth in achieving goals and making transitions
Level 4
80-100%		 Level 3
70-79%		 Level 2
60-69%		 Level 1
50-59%
With a high degree of effectiveness With considerable effectiveness With some effectiveness With limited effectiveness

More about the Individual Pathways Plan – Managing your workload

It is important that you properly manage your work throughout the course and complete the IPP tasks when you encounter them.

Here are some steps that can help make file management easier:

  • Create a folder on your computer called GLC2O Individual Pathways Plan;
  • Create subfolders for each of the 4 inquiry questions;
  • Save any assignments or assessments from this course into the appropriate folder;
  • Be sure to give accurate titles to any files you create, so that they can be quickly located for submission later in the course; and
  • When required, collect all of the necessary files for submission as part of your Individual Pathway Plan.
Illustration of computer file folder system with top folder labelled GLC2O Individual Pathway Plan. There are 4 subfolders named Knowing yourself: Who am I?, Exploring opportunities: What are my opportunities?, Making Decisions and Setting Goals: Who do I want to become?, and Achieving Goals and Making Transitions: What is my plan for achieving my goals?

Press here for long description(Open in new window)

Note: You will not be submitting your whole IPP but completing a set of tasks based on the items you have in your IPP. At the end of the course, you will be selecting 8 items from your IPP, and reflecting on your progress and learning. For now, familiarize yourself with the expectations in each section. Each portfolio item is identified by the learning activity where it first appears.

Review the requirements by selecting the four links.

Adapted from Ontario. Ministry of Education. (2013). Creating Pathways to Success. Toronto: Author. Available at www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/policy/cps/CreatingPathwaysSuccess.pdf (Opens in new window).

Who am I?

To help answer the question “Who am I?”, you will:

  • identify the characteristics that describe who you are (e.g., interests, strengths, intelligences, accomplishments, values, and skills, including essential and transferable skills;
  • identify factors that have shaped who you are and that are likely to shape who you become over time;
  • reflect on how these characteristics influence your thoughts and actions, and how those thoughts and actions may in turn affect you as a learner and you education and career/life choices.

Possible IPP Tasks:

Self assessment tools - results and reflections

  •  Interests, aptitudes and skills (1.2)
    •  Interest quiz
    •  Multiple Intelligence quiz
    •  How do you think quiz
    •  Career quiz
    •  Evaluating Essential Skills quiz
    •  Transferable skills quiz
  • Personal Management Skills -reflections (1.3)
    •  Work habits
    •  Organization
    •  Time Management
    •  Adaptability and flexibility
    •  Stress management
  •  Values and motivations reflections (1.4)
  •  Decision making
    •  Values
    •  Strategies to build resilience
  •  Personal Profile (1.4)

What are my opportunities?

To help answer the question “What are my opportunities?”, you will:

  • explore the concept of “opportunity” and how the choices you make can open pathways;
  • expand awareness of school- and community-based opportunities (e.g., recreational, social, leadership, volunteer, part-time employment) and how these programs/activities help develop skills and relationships;
  • explore a variety of fields of work, occupations, and careers, and develop awareness of the impact of local and global trends (e.g., demographic, technological, economic, social) on the opportunities available to them.

Possible IPP Tasks:

  •  NOC job classification search and reflection (2.1)
  •  Researching my online presence (2.2)
  •  Building my professional network (2.2)
  •  Demographic reflection (2.3)
  •  Workplace trends infographic (2.3)
  •  Researching my community (2.3)

Who do I want to become?

To help answer the question “Who do I want to become?”, you will:

  • identify the demands, rewards, and other features of the various opportunities you have explored, and reflect on the fit between those features and your personal characteristics;
  • based on the connections you identify, use a decision-making process to determine education and career/life goals;
  • review and revise your goals in light of changes that changes you recognize in yourself and in the opportunities that are available to you.

Possible IPP Tasks:

  •  Life stages reflection (2.4)
  •  Goal setting (2.4)
  •  Career goals research project (2.4)

What is my plan for achieving my goals?

To help answer the question “What is my plan for achieving my goals?”, you will:

  • create a plan that identifies in detail the steps required to achieve the goals you have set for your first post-secondary year;
  • identify the resources (financial, educational, personal) required to implement your plan;
  • identify potential obstacles and challenges you may encounter in implementing your plan and devise possible solutions.

Possible IPP Tasks:

  •  High school credit checklist (3.1)
  •  OSSD completion plan (3.1)
  •  Postsecondary path (3.1)
  •  Financial options comparison chart (3.2)
  •  Personal budget (3.2)
  •  Job posting Information (3.3)
  •  Sample Job Application (3.3)
  •  Resume (3.3)
  •  Cover letter (3.3)

Consolidation

At the end of each learning activity, you will find a Consolidation section. In this section you will be asked to reflect on both what you are learning and how you are developing as a self-directed learner. In some cases, these reflections will be added to your Individual Pathways Plan. In other cases, you will add your thoughts to your notebook.

This first task is for your notebook. This will be your first entry. Remember to add a date and title for easy reference.

Notebook

The Future Me

At the beginning of the course, you started thinking about the future you 5, 10, or 20 years from now.

For this task, think about the future you at the end of the course.

Write a letter to yourself. Include some of the following details in your letter:

  • Why you are taking this course at this time in your life? (or why are you taking this course online?)
  • What do you plan on achieving by the end of this course?
  • What you are most excited about learning in this course?
  • What might you be most proud of at the end of this course?

Give your letter a date and title. It will be interesting to review this letter at the beginning of Unit 3 and see whether your thinking has changed. In the next learning activity you will begin to work on developing your personal profile.