Local Author Advises Students on Potential Careers in New Book
High school focuses on choices and decisions about what your life will be like later on; it is important to know what direction you are headed in. People ought to be happy with their jobs, because it takes up the majority of their time, but only 32 percent of people under 25 are satisfied with how they make a living.
People often ask, “What are you going to do?” But the real question is, how to figure out what kind of job can make you happy? The new book, The Career Within You by local authors Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb, helps poeple find a job that fits their personality.
This book uses a unique theory, called the Enneagram, to determine what kinds of people fit with a certain job type. The Enneagram is an ancient system centered around nine different types of people: “The Peace Seeker,” “The Perfectionist,” “The Helper,” “The Achiever,” “The Romantic,” “The Observer,” “The Questioner,” “The Adventurer,” and “The Asserter.”
“These are people that we know,” explained Wagele, referring to these nine personalities. The Enneagram not only categorizes people, but delves into what motivates these traits. For example, “The Perfectionist” is inspired to make improvements, whereas “The Romantic” likes to express individuality. Truly understanding your personality, motivations, and strengths helps you to make choices for the future that you will be happy with.
Wagele has gone in many directions throughout her life. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Masters Degree in classical music. After college she taught piano lessons, and began drawing comics and writing greeting cards. After a while, a friend introduced Wagele to the Enneagram and she became intrigued. “The Enneagram gave legitimacy to my personality, an Observer, which is a type that is often overlooked in our society,” she recalled.
Various friends would ask Wagele to recommend books about the Enneagram for their high school students. Wagele soon realized that every book on the subject was long and dense. She used her skills from the greeting card business to write her first book, The Enneagram Made Easy. Since then, she has written five books based around the Enneagram, on topics from relationships to parenting.
Her latest book, The Career Within You, relates the Enneagram to career choice. Ingrid Stabb, the co–author, has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Yale University, and after hearing Wagele speak about the Enneagram on the radio, decided that she wanted to combine her knowledge of business with this ancient system. She asked Wagele to help her write a book. It required extensive interviews and a lot of work, but after three long years, they finally managed to create a book they were proud of. “We both had networks of people that we knew to interview … It was quite a research project,” Wagele remembered.
This book helps a person determine their career type through a series of questions and quizzes. “It was quite a challenge to decide how the book would be put together,” explained Wagele. “At first we went down the wrong street, but we eventually decided to focus on the most positive things first: strengths, needs, and your true self.” Through interviews, they determined what strengths the nine personalities held and what jobs required those strengths. This book aims to help you find out who you are, so that you can “match yourself to a career that is right for your particular combination of traits, gifts, and wishes,” writes Wagele. She hopes that readers will be able to “take seriously the idea that it’s important to get to know yourself and to find the work that expresses your true self.”
A unique part of this book is the way that comics are incorporated into the writing. Although the book focuses mainly on the strengths and needs of different types of people, it also concentrates on the faults and flaws of the different personalities. The comics give Wagele a way to express these darker aspects with humor. “I wouldn’t do a book without comics,” exclaimed Wagele.
After taking some of the quizzes in this book, I found that they were not only helpful, but also fun to do. The quizzes suggested a few possible careers, and offered food for thought when thinking about electives, summer jobs, and internships. This book is a useful tool to guide high school students in figuring out what they want to do after graduation.
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