Hoideology

Statement of Purpose: “Who Am I? and Where Did My Career Interests Begin?” — for applying to the doctor of education program in career-educational psychology in 2007

(This was the Statement of Purpose which I wrote for applying to the EdD program specializing in career-educational psychology at the Department of Educational Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong — April 12, 2007)

I remember my first career aspiration came about at the age of 6. In an Art class of the spring of my first grade when I began to learn to use pastels and paint brushes, when I deliberately challenged myself by drawing a scene from a swimming competition (inspired by the Olympic Games), when I realized I was pretty good at it (having the ability to turn images into aesthetic and decorative representations, receiving praises from my teachers, and possessing an innate artistic sense and talent in my use of colors and brush strokes, I thought to myself: I wanted to be a painter-artist as my future career. Nobody had ever prompted this question on me; from within myself I just felt that if I could make my favorite hobby into something that I could do for life, it would be the most satisfying thing.  

As a first grader I did begin to worry about my future. My exploration of career choices persisted when I entered second grade. My best friend and I both liked to watch an evening TV series on woman cops and we began to role-play the characters of the show during break times. We designed our own police ID cards and whenever I stepped on my tricycle, I maneuvered it as if it were a police motorbike. Then, I told my family members and my classmates that I wanted to become a policewoman when I grew up, they all thought that I was too short to become a policewoman—I was the second shortest in my class. So, I put this aspiration aside. But the spirit of this aspiration remained: The reason I aspired to becoming a policewoman was that I wanted to be able to help others who were in need. The scope of my exposure to the world of work had been largely delimited by the subject matters of television programs that I watched. The older I grew, the more I have learned that interest was not the top criterion for considering a particular future career, but the amount of pay that a career could bring was. Therefore, neither artist nor policewoman could satisfy the pay and prestige criteria that most of my peers would consider acceptable given our average middle-class backgrounds.  

Afterwards, I never come up with a third future career aspiration in the subsequent years; however, I continued to draw well, earn good grades in all of my art and music classes (excelling in piano and ballet, in which I began to take lessons at the age of 5, picking up the violin since Grade 3, playing in the school orchestra since Grade 5), and be active in social services such as becoming a Brownie from Grade 2 to 6 and then a Girl Scout (becoming a patrol leader in Form 4) and a member of the Community Youth Club earning the purple badge in Form 3—throughout my secondary school years. I had deluged myself with a lot of musical activities and social services during my adolescence. I sang in various choirs in secondary school, in churches in Hong Kong and California, and as a student at the Los Angeles Valley College and the University of California, Berkeley; I played the violin (and trumpet for two years) in my secondary school orchestra and in the chamber music group at LAVC. As a CYC member I volunteered in tutoring programs for kids and socializing programs for the elderly and the disabled. I have kept my interests in both the artistic and social fields active.  

As I turned 19 after transferring from LAVC to UC Berkeley, I asked myself again what I had wanted to do for my future: Is it art or music? Or, is it social? My strong sense of urge to learn something that I could do to help others prevailed and won over my mind. I picked psychology as my major upon my arrival at Berkeley, because I was intrigued by how scientifically psychologists could undertake research studies to unearth the underlying mechanisms governing the development of a child, to investigate the effects of external stimuli and environment, and to examine intervening methods that could alleviate abnormal psychological symptoms and some that could optimize one’s potentials.  

I continued my exploration by participating in the research programs of my professors at UC Berkeley. First, I explored the area of learning behavior at Dr Seth Robert’s behavioral laboratory on associative learning research (in rats). Second, I explored my potentiality in doing an honors thesis in an applied area of psychology—consumer psychology—and began my two-and-a-half-year exposure to the field of judgment and decision making at Dr Barbara Mellers’s decision making laboratory. (Later on, I took Dr Daniel Kahneman’s course on judgment and decision making and a Business Administration course on marketing to learn how psychological theories could be used to understand people’s economic behavior.)  

My exploration was unfortunately disrupted by the death of my father on May 7, 1992. Because of his sudden death which untimely crashed with the final examination period, I had  no other choice but to request for Incomplete statuses for the courses that I took that spring of 1992 in order to attend his funeral in Hong Kong. In late June 1992, I returned to Berkeley to finish my courses, continue to work as Dr Mellers’ research assistant, take a 5^th year of additional courses, and wrap up my honors thesis. But unanticipatedly, my sense of future direction was thwarted by the guilt, shame, and grief that I felt of my father’s death; his absence and premature departure (from my life) had undermined my joy and hopefulness toward a celebrated bright future of mine as a 21-year-old girl graduating with honors and distinction in general scholarship from UC Berkeley. Suddenly, I had lost my role model, my emotional supporter, my inspiration for life, and my reason for striving for success.  

Since my father’s death, I began to search for meanings in life. I became a born-again Christian in March 1993 and continued to ponder upon what I wanted to do as my career. Then, I had this vision of teaching psychology to university students in Hong Kong. At the same time, I understood that the journey toward graduate study in psychology was a serious decision (that involved another 5 to 6 years of study in a very specific field) and a long path. As I needed time to recover from my family’s tragedy and to prepare myself emotionally and academically, I took a year of extension courses and continued to work at Dr Mellers’ lab. Additionally, I volunteered to help out in Dr James Lea’s study on affirmative action and the perception of justice.  

In order to continue my exploration of the field of psychology and the possibility to make it my career, I ventured into a third area of my exploration—the area of human motivation and organizational psychology. Toward the end of my first semester at the Master’s program at Boston University in Massachusetts, I was eager to continue to explore my research interest. I was lucky to have the opportunity to meet with the late Dr David McClelland, the emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard University and a distinguished research professor at Boston University at the age of 80, he responded promptly to my cover letter and resume and referred me to an interview at McBer & Company (which had become Hay/McBer after merging with the Hay Group, a world-wide human resource management consulting firm) for a subcontractor research associate position. Having learned the factor analysis procedures from an advanced statistic course taken at BU and had previous experience as a research assistant, I was hired by Dr Christine Rivers at Hay/McBer. There at Hay/McBer, I learned the first hand story of the prominent David McClelland, who was one of the first psychologists thinking out of the box to apply academic research methods in the industry, creating personality tests that were customized to help organizations evaluate a vast number of employees based on scores on competencies, motivation, and personality. He discovered through research that achievement motivation could be taught and trained. For example, he had successfully trained underachieving (low in the need for achievement) Indian managers to become achievement-oriented and their learned achievement-oriented skills and mentality had subsequently increased sales and productivity.  

Despite my new venture into the world of Industrial/Organizational psychology via my one-and-a-half-year work experience at Hay/McBer and the encouragement of my boss Christine Rivers that I should pursue my doctoral study in I/O Psychology such as the program offered at Boston College (she was a graduate of Boston College’s I/O psychology PhD program)—and thus could continue to work for her after the end of my practical training—I was as stubborn as I was, in my pursuit of meanings in life. I was still haunted by the guilt and shame that I felt from my father’s death. Since my father did not become a Christian before he died, I bore the guilt of neglecting to share the Gospel with him such that he would be saved eternally. Then I thought about my duty to share the Gospel to the needy and the sick. At the West Coast Chinese Christian Conference in California in December 1995 (I often flew back to California for my winter breaks since moving to Boston), I decided to devote my life to God in ministry to do whatever God wanted me to do.  

Active in both college ministry (as chairperson of the college fellowship at the Greater Boston Chinese Alliance Church in 1995-96 and the Hong Kong Students Christian Fellowship at Boston University in 1994-95) and my church’s music ministry and elderly Sunday school teaching in 1996, I recalled my commitment to serving God (vowed at the 1995 winter conference) as I searched for meanings in life. After discussing my calling with several senior pastors from the Chinese church community in Boston, I had their support and endorsement to apply to the Master of Divinity program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, located 30 miles north of Boston city. In fall 1996, I began my endeavor to study Greek and Hebrew, theologies and biblical studies, and learn how to preach and do ministry. My services at my church ranged from teaching weekly elderly Sunday school and a weekly Thursday evening Bible study for elderly to leading a young adult Bible study program, from coordinating music ministry to formulating an English youth worship service for teenagers.  

While active in ministry and seminary study, I did not forgo my original interest in psychology and my belief in research by applying to the research scholar position for the New England Research Project advertised in January 1997 by the Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell. I was awarded this research scholarship of US$1,000 to work for this one-year project, which was supervised by Rev Dr Don Gill. I helped collected evidence from the GSS (General Social Survey) data pool and conducted library search for previous studies on the New England culture from the sociological and psychological literature databases. As a result of my work on this project, I landed another freelance research associate position with Vision New England in 1998 to help analyze the 1997 and 1998 data sets of the Church Attitude Survey.  

At the same time, to follow up on my effort in researching on and thinking about the existence of a New England culture by organizing the gathered sociological and social-anthropological literature on regional culture and subcultures, and to satisfy my desire to conduct my own study in an applied subject matter, I proposed to conduct a study as my Masters thesis to investigate the origin of the New England culture under the supervision of Dr Garth Rosell, professor of church history and director of the Ockenga Institute, and Dr Raymond Pendleton, professor of pastoral psychology. Even though writing a thesis was not part of the requirements for an M.Div. degree (the required number of M.Div. courses was 32), I took up this challenge to conduct this study, wrote up an 80-page thesis (entitled “Why Is There  New-England Culture? A Look at the Value Systems and Cultural Origins of New Englanders from the Histo-Analytical, Socio-Anthropological, and Socio-Cognitive Psychological Perspectives,” 2000), while stretching my study into a 5th year as I also could take a few advanced courses—beyond the program requirements—such as intermediate Greek, intermediate Hebrew, and intermediate preaching. I wanted to have a deeper learning on those subjects, because studying in such a prestigious seminary was a once-in-a-life-time opportunity and experience. I should get as much as I could out of this opportunity.  

Having been away from Hong Kong for 13 years, I felt that after graduating with my M.Div. degree, it was time for me to return home to visit my relatives (my mother, grandmothers, and aunts). If I would secure a job in the States, I would not be able to fly back to Hong Kong for another two years because of my work visa. Because some of my father’s bequeath had remained untouched for years since his death, I felt that it was time for me to return home to take care of the family and find out more about Hong Kong, a place where I grew up.  

Working as a youth minister at the age of 27-30 between 1998 and 2001 in Boston, I worked with and spent a lot of time with teenagers (from Hong Kong and Mainland China) regularly on weekends. (For two years, I tutored an 8-year-old boy and also a group of 3 teenage cousins every Saturday. And, between 1998 and 1999, I started a non-profit “West-Boston Chinese American Tutoring Program” at my church with the generous help of two other seminary students and several other young adults from my church—we offered to teach SAT class as well to interested high school juniors). Later, the tutoring program was evolved into the “Youth English Worship Service” (decided by my church). Since then in 1999, I directed this small youth ministry at my church (the size of the group grew from 5 to over 15 teenagers—compared with the total number of about 60 adult members) and preached twice a month to this group of Chinese-American teenagers during the Sunday services.) I also hung around college students from Hong Kong and Mainland China at weekly meetings of the Hong Kong Students Christian Fellowship at BU between 1996 and 2001 serving as alumni advisor to the group.  

Because of my passion in bringing up young people, challenging them intellectually and spiritually, my hope was to land a teaching position in Hong Kong (after my M.Div. graduation in May 2001 and deciding to return home). In fall 2001, I began to teach as demonstrator of psychology for the Department of Applied Social Studies at City University of Hong Kong. (In fall 2004, I assumed the Instructor I position.) My exposure teaching undergraduates and postgraduate students at CityU was tremendous. Not only was I able to challenge my students intellectually, I could also touch them with spiritual inspiration and meanings in life.  

Toward the end of August 2005, I contemplated on my need to continue my study in the field and develop my expertise in research. Even though I read a variety of journal articles and books to prepare for teaching the various psychology courses that I was assigned to teach or tutor, I needed time to think upon what area of research that really interested me to conduct a prospective doctoral study. Thinking pragmatically toward a focus on applied social issues and problems, particularly the ones related to educating young people, career choice and development caught my attention. Since I have a background in organizational behavior (HR management) and have taught a course on human relations and group work at CityU, and since I have been approached by students asking me about career choice issues, I could see that the Hong Kong educational system has not given enough guidance to high school graduates and undergraduates in terms of their choosing a career that matches with their work personality. Talking with postgraduate students at CityU (who are undertaking the postgraduate diploma program in psychology), I realized their reason studying in the program was to seek for an opportunity to switch their career from, for example, an IT or business position to a counseling or clinical psychology position.  

What happen if people feel that they are not interested in their field of work anymore, because they had only chosen their degree program or field of work based on financial return, current societal trends, and suggestions of their parents? Would ignorance about their abilities and strengths and their lack of information about the world of work at the time of choosing between the science and the arts tracks at the age of 16 foreclose prematurely their chance to actualize their potentials, leading to their compliance to stick with an incongruent educational choice (against their personality)?  

I am also eager to understand the genetic and environmental determinants of Multiple Intelligences. How much of the artistic (musical and spatial) intelligence or the artistic vocational personality based on John Holland’s theory of vocational typology can be explained by genetics and how much of it can be explained by environmental influences? What would happen to individuals who were forced by environmental concerns to choose to study and work in a field that is inconsistent with his genetic tendency? Would his genetic tendency prevail that he would eventually switch toward a more congruent career choice? Or would her career interests be malleable that she could continue to work in an incongruent field and still feel satisfied?  

Between the fall of 2005 and now, quitting my full-time position at CityU to focus on brushing up my knowledge of the field of vocational psychology, research methods (I audited Dr Mike Cheung’s Research Methods courses in fall 2005 and spring 2006 at the University of Hong Kong), and an academic career (I read Dr Robert Sternberg’s The Psychologist’s Companion: A Guide to Scientific Writing for Students and Researchers [2003] and Drs J. M. Darley, M. P. Zanna, and H. L. Roedinger’s The Compleat Academic: A Career Guide [2004]), I set out to explore the field of career choice and development and vocational psychology to find answers to these questions from the literature (illustrated in my Annotated Bibliography). I hope that I can be admitted to a doctoral program here in Hong Kong and particularly at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Educational Psychology department, so that I can continue to work on my research ideas in vocational psychology. I hope that my future research findings may help young people make sound choices for their career.