Asmita Saini, Intern Psychologist at SELBIC
Try to reminisce your school days. You will usher in all sorts of sweet and sour memories, beginning with your first day as a tiny 3 or 4 year old, anxiously tugging to your guardian’s suit and not wanting to be left alone even in a kindergarten full of rambunctious yet anxious children. But as you grew up into a confident and intelligent person, you began loving your experiences at school and started enjoying them all the more. Just kidding. This journey is pretty unique and subjective and you are the only person with the sole access to its specificities.
In this post we will enumerate the concept of individual growth and transition from school to work life using some metrics or indicative terms that measure a select few psychological parameters in a metaphorical yet real sense. In a way this is going to be a guided tour into the nature of growth and development that occurs through middle school up until one joins the professional workforce or the oh-so-different world of Work Life as an adult. We will do so with the help of two simple cases used solely here as examples for our tour.
Anindita Sharma, CA
This case is the story of a girl who related that when in middle school, she had a high need for achievement and drew inspiration from mainly art. She was extremely good with the colour palette and applied it to every area in her school- participated in creative competitions, participated enthusiastically in conversations around everything that can be culled out as artistic of the Bollywood genre- from dumb charades to filmy dialogues like ‘Pyaar dosti hai’ and ‘anything for the sake of friendship’ to low voltage drama in fights with friends.
Competition is a drive? Debatable. But in this case, she was somewhat competitive but it was only to prove herself and her merits to her ‘virtuous’ friends. A little of guiding you here, Positive psychology suggests that there is a distinction between achievement that is focused on quantitative scores and accomplishment that is focused on qualitative results.
Achievement typically measures an externally imposed standard. Accomplishment typically describes an internally motivated goal. So when it comes to accomplishment, for middle school children, it is related to what do they want to accomplish in their life? As in what are their dreams and aspirations and what do they want to become when they grow up. So this girl wanted to crunch numbers and give financial advice to firms and individuals, so she dreamt of being a Chartered Accountant.
When it comes to motivation, as per the American Psychological Association (APA), motivation is a science and it matters. So this girl was high on motivation and set small realistic goals for herself like definitely striving to get good grades on weekly assessment tests and also pursued life goals like friends, weekend shopping and cooking at home. So this is how all these factors were responsible for charting the course of her school years and what she went on to become- a successful Chartered Accountant in Delhi-NCR.
Avinash Chaudhary, Civil Service Aspirant
This is the childhood story of a boy whose journey from middle school onwards, when asked what one word summed it up, he said sports. This is the backdrop of his case story here. So when it comes to his need for achievement - it varied on and off the football ground. A complete sports aficionado, he wanted to give more time to sports and wanted to achieve greatness on the football field. So with his high need for achievement he mastered skills at football through long hours of practice and challenging other schools to matches during school hours and in the evening, he achieved this ‘Goal’ as well as scored and saved many goals in soccer games. ;)
When it comes to competition, football is a team sport and competitive in nature. So this guy reported that he was very competitive at school. He won many medals in football and swimming and was also good at some selected subjects that don’t need studies- like English and pure logic oriented subjects (like maths). In terms of accomplishment he stated that he was an idealist and a dreamer and wanted to accomplish mastery in anything and everything that he did. He dreamt of an easy going stress free life in his own words, so he went on to study English Hons. And later Law.
Motivation is an important trait and he was moderately motivated to study at school but like all ‘sports worms’ (like book worms :p), he was highly motivated to excel at sports and socializing with scores of friends took centre stage in his life.
Today, he aspires to join the ranks of civil services, in his own words.
Now that we have gone through these stories of growth and development from middle school to higher education life, let us quickly come to adulthood. What about adulthood? What are the factors signifying growth and development? Here we can study and name a select few important factors, for indicative purposes. The three decisive factors that we have also covered in a holistic way in three of our previous blog posts are: Work-Life Balance, Finding Meaning in Work and Leadership styles (In Gurgaon).
So connecting the links given in the two beautiful childhood and adolescent days case stories given above with the 3 significators or metrics applicable to charting growth and development during adult professional life, we can clearly see how the person A, Anindita Sharma is a successful CA today and is a good leader who has nurturant values. Being a motivated goal oriented thinker, who was not very competitive in school she initially had some difficulties in finding her zone of work life balance but through her goal oriented realistic stand, she gradually became good at finding a proper work life balance in her new role as a CA to a reputed firm in Gurgaon. And it goes without saying, she is finding great meaning and joy in her work since it was guided by her interests and talents. Similarly, connecting the links in the case of person B, Avinash, he is a great leader with authoritative values, still plays a lot of games at different levels for achieving work life balance, is a creative thinker who does ‘now’ (given his sports keeda and class absentee background) find a lot of meaning in studies (his current work) since he is preparing for the Civil Services Exams which are all about serious ‘student hood’ for visionaries.
Now concluding our guided tour, we would like to say that SELBIC is all about problem solving and growth and development. So regardless of the fact whether you are an individual, school or a business organization, we have just the perfect solutions to all your needs. For more details do refer to the services page of our website.
Think Growth and Development, think SELBIC.