What Matters to You Most? Career Discernment for YOUR Career Path

Welcome to this page of handouts and resources for the workshop, “What Matters to You Most? Career Discernment for YOUR Career Path,” facilitated by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. (consultant and founder of Heart-Head-Hands.com).

This workshop is sponsored by the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota and offers graduate students tools for ongoing career discernment.

Workshop Information

Tuesday, March 17, 2020
3:00 PM – 4:30 PM CDT
Meeting via Zoom (Link Shared with Registered Participants)

This workshop offers graduate students tools for ongoing career discernment—in the reflective processes of asking what, where, when, with whom, and why you’re called to the work that only you can do. Together, we’ll explore questions that are key to making meaningful, commitment-driven career choices. We’ll share strategies for aligning your career with the purpose, priorities, or motivations that brought you to graduate education and that you’d like to take beyond your current studies.

Resources

What Is Career Discernment?
This blog post gives a definition and context for the workshop.

Resources for Academic Career Discernment:
This PDF document shares links to organizations, podcasts, readings, and other resources.

Beth’s Writing in Inside Higher Ed:
These articles share Beth’s career discernment process, addressing the following topics:

• Making decisions intuitively to follow your “strong yes”
• Saying no in order to say yes to what aligns with your commitments
• Identifying narratives and influences that have shaped your work journey
• Discerning what’s next for your career—both in the near and the far future
• Planning when and how to announce career changes
• Sifting through others’ responses to your career decisions
• Transitioning from faculty positions to alt-ac, non-ac, and post-ac careers
• Working with burnout and seasonal rhythms in higher education
• Recognizing and allowing for professional identify shifts over time.

Handouts

Download these handouts (four career discernment exercises) to use during the interactive online workshop.

1. Handout — Writing a Commitment Statement

2. Handout — Strong Yes and Hell No

3. Handout — 10 Writing Prompts for Career Discernment

4. Handout — Mapping K-W-L

Recording

The video recording may be downloaded and played from this link.

Thanks to participants who joined via Zoom, and thanks to the Graduate School for sponsoring this workshop.

Connect Beyond This Workshop

I’d love to stay connected beyond this workshop! Here are some ways:

1. Join my mailing list to receive regular updates.

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4. If you’d like to connect with others and process all the uncertainty, change, and crisis of this time, consider joining one or both of these hour-long, lunchtime webinars: “Processing the Pandemic with Heart-Head-Hands.”

5. Reach out with feedback, questions, or inquiries about this or future workshops.

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This post is written by Beth Godbee, Ph.D. for Heart-Head-Hands.com. If you’d like additional support for career discernment, check out the e-course, “Career Discernment for Academics: Aligning Career with Commitments.”