Creative Expressions for Your Career Journey

I breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as I viewed the 2011 National Career Development Poetry and Poster winners on the NCDA website. This ends my two years of being national chairperson for the contest. I have enjoyed being a part of promoting the contest here in Texas and these past two years on the National front. The NCDA has a volunteer chairperson every two years so new people can add input into improving the contest.


The purpose of the contest is to allow all ages to dream of their career ideas using the creative mediums of poetry and posters. Creativity can touch all areas of our lives even our work life. We spend over 100,000 hours of our lifetime is the work area of our lives. So the contest concept is to encourage people to look at their vocational life so as to move towards something they will enjoy doing in that significant time frame.


As I look over my vocational side of my life, I have had all types of occupations, library and janitorial work through my high school and college years. There have been various companies I have worked for in shipping/receiving, warehouse work and customer service during college and after college. More recently I enjoyed working with students at a South Texas college and university. I am thankful as I have enjoyed my various jobs for the most part. I believe it is helpful to take time to savor our more enjoyable times in our work life. Poetry and posters are one way to do this.


By creatively savoring our career journey we can gain insight on improving our present work situation. It gives a new angle to looking at the routines of our work and see how we are making a difference for other people and the world through the work we do. Writing a short poem about your passion for your work can be a motivator as you keep the poem nearby at your work station. We can also possible open our minds to new career shifts as well.
We can also learn from seeing how others view their careers. That is one reason I enjoy the NCDA career contest. By looking over the poems and the artwork I can learn how others appreciate their work dreams. I encourage you to take a few minutes and look at some of the winners’ poems and posters by clicking here on NCDA Career Contest.



Read over some of the poems and view some of the posters. Take some quiet time to think over what you felt or learned from the poems or posters you looked at? Reflect over some of your favorite moments in your various work situations. Maybe it was a special impact you had on a co-worker or customer. Maybe is was a project you had a passion for and you saw it come to fruition. Work can be a constant drudgery if we have a negative attitude. Work does not have to be that way. I believe work is not meant to be that way. We can keep an attitude of creative expression to keep spiraling up to better service and positive relations with those we serve with and the customers we serve. That is what I saw exuded in the students career dreams and the dreams of the adult winners. So as you start your work day go into it with a positive attitude of creative joy.


Reflection: If you enjoy poetry writing write a poem about your philosophy of work and enjoying your career. If you are not a poet try drawing a picture of the same concept. Or you can make a collage of pictures and positive words about enjoying your career in a poster format. Creatively express yourself. Also check out the NCDA website www.ncda.org in September to see the theme for next year’s contest and join in on the career creativity.