Certified social worker and educator LaShawn Williams-Schultz recently spoke as part of Salt Lake Community College’s Career Advancement Program (CAP).
Williams-Schultz’s lecture topic was “Love What You Do and Do What You Love: Connecting Yourself, Your Values and Your Career.” She provided students with strategies on how to connect personal values to a job or career.
“Our values are our hearts deepest desires. How we want to be, not who we want to be,” Williams-Schultz says.
She adds that when students know who they are and what their values are, it makes turning a job into a career not so complicated.
The first step is to make connections with people that are supportive, encouraging and honest. Williams-Schultz made those connections with her mother and mentors in high school.
Step two is to know yourself, who you are. Williams-Schultz knew she wanted to help people and thought the best way to do that was to become a doctor; however, a career as a doctor was not in her future.
She had to reevaluate how she could help people and that is when she realized she really enjoyed talking to people and listening to people. That realization is what led her to social work. She learned who she was and what made her happy.
Williams-Schultz says that once our values line up with our goals, it makes the process of work easier. Determining what our values are is an ongoing process, a process that never ends.
CAP asks a member of the community who has made strides in their profession to speak to students about their educational, career and life experiences.
For more information regarding future CAP speakers contact Will Unga at 801-957-4807 in Career Advising at the Taylorsville Redwood Campus.
