Week 4 Module Report

Week 4 Module Report

The Week 4 Module Report differs in content from the other course Module Reports. The Week 4 report is a composite report based of career interest self-assessment, researching what one can do with an undergraduate degree in psychology and what education levels are necessary for practicing psychology and pursuing other work within the field. Your submission should be a minimum of 4 pages not counting title and reference pages.

 

This Module Report will include the following and should use the headings below to make the report contents easy to follow:

 

1. Career and Interest Self-assessment Results

 

As part of the Week 4 Module, you will engage in a self-assessment of personal interests and relate your assessment results to a list of occupations using the above resources. The order of accessing these materials for the completion of your self-assessment assignment is: User’s Guide, Interest Inventory, and the Master List with interests matched to occupations. You may be tempted to just jump to the master list but it will be of little use in completing the assignment if you haven’t made use of the User’s Guide and completed the Interest Inventory so you can use the score results.

 

Once you have completed the interest self-assessment and used the user’s guide and compared your interests with occupations on the master list, write for inclusion in your Week 4 Module Report a summary of your where your strongest inventory identified interests fall on the RIASEC spectrum, some of the occupations the O-net materials suggest might be a good match with your interests and what you learned from self-assessing your interests. Keep in mind as you complete this part of the Week 4 Module that, a) inventories only tell you what you tell them, are useful in organizing your self-perception and have no magical mind-reading or fate determining powers, b) inventories are but one piece in a complex whole-person puzzle and other factors such as abilities and values play an important role in self-assessment, c) no inventory results can guarantee ability to be successful in an occupation but rather it offers information that can be used in continued exploration of occupations, and d) after completing an interest inventory one may be surprised by which occupations are related to self-identified interests. For example, funeral home director often shows up as related to self-assessment results produced by those who want to be psychologists or work in other “helping professions”. When one thinks of the bereaved state surviving loved ones are in when needing to use a funeral home service, it’s not surprising that the occupation of funeral home director might match to one’s self-described interest in helping others. It’s important not to reject an opportunity to self-explore because of how a job feels when hearing it as a possible match but rather to look for other jobs that appeal to one’s interests, research them further and to consider what about the job one has the urge to reject without much thought might represent a match between one’s interests and a broader range of jobs in which one might have interest.

 

1. What Can I Do with A Degree in Psychology?

 

The above section heading question will be answered based on the document What Can I Do with a Degree in Psychology? any relevant assigned textbook readings and one additional external professional, scholarly web source.

 

III. Do I Have to Go to Grad School and What Should My Undergraduate Degree Plan Be?

 

The above questions require a comparison of the education requirements for various types of work in the field of psychology before reaching a conclusion. For this portion of the assignment use The American Psychological Association website at http://www.APA.org, the online Occupational Outlook Handbook at http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Life-Physical-and-Social-Science/Psychologists.htm, and the course textbook are good resources. Additional online resources may be used as long as they are professional and scholarly in nature. Your task is to determine which educational level is right for three specialty areas of psychology in which you have interest at the time of completing the Week 4 Module, and answer the following in this section: What aspects of working in those three specialty areas of psychology matches your career interests as assessed in Step I of this assignment, what is the degree level (bachelors, masters or doctoral) and the educational requirements for each of the three specialty areas, and, based on research of the APUS undergraduate catalog, which undergraduate courses in the APUS BA in Psychology best match the three areas you selected?

 

1. I Need to Know More

 

In two substantive paragraphs at the end of the report summarize the most interesting information you located while completing it and describe at least one element of the report you learned about in the completion of the assignment about which you can see benefit in knowing more.

 

 

PERSONAL INFO ABOUT ME FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN WRITING THE PAPER:

All of the above resources are needed to complete the assignment. I am unsure of how this will work since this is more of a personal assessment. I am extremely sick and I am unable to sit and do all of the required work for this assignment. Here are a few things about me that may help:

 

I enjoy working with children. I am a more reserved person but I extremely interested in psychology, especially school psychology, marriage and family therapy, mental health issues, ADHD, etc. I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 38 (this year). I am almost divorced with two children of my own and am searching/working on a new career to help my family and my future.

 

I do not like selling things or having to convince people to do things. I do not like public speaking. I was once a police officer for 7 years and was proud of that but I decided to leave the job for the sake of my children and be a stay at home mom. I am pursuing my BA in Psychology and plan to further it with my Master’s in School Psychology.  I also will be doing a part time job in real estate once I finish my certificate.

 

I am not very handy with tools or building things but I can use a hammer and a wrench, etc. I am not great at organizing but I do enjoy research to get things done. I often do not finish projects

 

Please feel free to guess on other things according to what you think I have a feeling this will also be used in the final report at week 7 so I will most likely be utilizing your services again to assist in that.

Thank you!

 

The below info are checklists and tables from the textbook that the instructor had us review:

Textbook (Careers in Psychology:  Opportunities in a changing world) checklists and tables to review:

 

Checklist 1.2 “Is Psychology Right For you?” p. 17

I checked 13 out of 16 boxes which indicates psychology may be right for me.

 

Table 12.1 “Skills Employers Value in New Hires” p. 157-158

Reading and writing skills

Problem-solving skills

Career-related work experience

Data analysis skills

Computer skills

Communication and interpersonal skills

Psychological knowledge

Self management

Information acquisition and use

Adaptability

Not sure what to do with this but maybe it was just a review for personal help.

 

Table 12.4 Resume Checklist p. 163

(not sure what this is for either)

 

Checklist 13.1 “Is an Advanced Career in Psychology for You?” p. 183

I checked 9/13 boxes which indicates an advanced career i psychology may be for me.

 

Checklist 14.1 “Is Graduate School for You?” p. 197

I checked 2/9 even (NO) boxes and 5/10 odd (YES) boxes totaling 7/19 boxes. A higher percentage indicates a greater potential for graduate study.

 

Textbook Reference:

Kuther, T. L. and Morgan, R. D. (2012). Careers in Psychology:  Opportunities in a changing world (4^rd Ed.).  Cengage Publishing.