2. Your life so far
You bring a lot of life experience with you to this course. Often, we take this for granted. Or perhaps we don’t really think about how it affects the decisions we make. So, it is helpful to bring this experience to the surface.
To do this, we are going to introduce you to the process of drawing a rich picture of your life so far.
Producing a rich life picture helps to record the important parts of your past and to make sense of them. This is a useful next step in moving forward in your career because your experiences influence the career you have or the career you want, things that you look for in a job and what is important to you in your working life.
While you watch the video below, think about the life events that appear in the rich pictures, how these have shaped these women’s careers and whether these events might apply to you as well. You can take notes if you like.
Your rich life picture
Now draw your own rich life picture. It should cover key events in your life. Only include events that you feel comfortable thinking about.
Depending on your age, you may have a lot of or not very much life experience to draw on.
Draw the events that seem important to you regarding your working life in particular. For instance, if you have recently left full-time education or training and don’t have much or any work experience, you could think about which subjects you enjoyed or the teachers or tutors you admired.
After you’ve drawn your picture, look at it as a whole. Use the questions at the end of the video to help you understand what it might be showing you.
Your picture and your answers to these questions will be very personal to you. They will be different from other people’s.
Also, you might think of something after you have finished, so you can go back and add to the picture or your answers at any point.
The activity sheet tells you more about how you draw and learn from your own rich life picture.
'My rich life picture' activity sheet [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
In Section 3, we look at the balance between your life and your work.
1. What is a career?