Self-Discovery Through Critical Thinking

After joining college, I wanted to encounter a positive experience that would change my life and offer me an opportunity to discover who I am. I was first introduced to self-discovery during my college admission when I encountered tough questions during the interview about me that required thinking and giving conclusive answers. The answers to the questions were supposed to reflect where I wanted to be in the next five years, what I intend to gain from a college education as a marketer and according to me what was the biggest problem that was currently facing the corporate world. These questions were my eye-opener, and they made me start thinking widely with the focus on myself to understand who I am now and who I want to become shortly after completion of my college studies. Although the interview appeared awkward and tricky, I came to realize later that it did play a vital role in my self-discovery as well as self-development  

In the interview, I was supposed to explain why I had chosen to study marketing, what made me think I would be an effective marketer in the future after my college education and what had given me the motivation to pursue a course in marketing and not any other field. These questions required critical thinking because you don’t learn anywhere how to answer such questions concerning yourself nor does any textbook offer a perfect answer to such questions. These questions touch on the personal life of an individual and people are different and therefore bound to respond to them differently. One will realize that these questions require critical thinking and doing so could make an individual more confident and hence strengthening his or her belief that the choice made was the best or discover that his or her decision were not right as the choice made might not lead him or her towards the right path. By gaining more confidence or having to change mind as a result of discovering that the choice made was either appropriate or not as a result of critical thinking, one is on the right path towards realizing who he or she is and what he or she wants to become in future.

Though at the time I was making the decision that I wanted to go and study a course in marketing I was not sure whether it was the right thing for me. Also, I doubted if I was best suited to be a marketer, but when I finally met this admission exam and interviewed my mind was opened and made to reason critically. I realized that the qualities that one posses dictates who he or she will become or the job that will best fit that individual in future. Through my self-evaluation, I realized that I have always been creative ever since I was in my junior school a trait that I maintained until I finished my senior high school. Similarly, I have a good interpersonal relationship with people, and I am also a good communicator as well as good at presentation. These three character traits are my biggest strength and make me one of the people best suited for the marketing course. These traits are the ones that marketers need to have because their work involves dealing with the buyers directly and therefore they need to be effective communicators who can use their creativity to convince their clients and make them accept their products in the end.

In the process of my self-exploration and discovery, I came to discover that my interests are in traveling around the world which I gained as a result of traveling a lot alongside my father who has invested in properties in different countries across the globe including France, Portugal, Morocco, Spain, and America. Marketing requires traveling around in search of new business, and since I was exposed to marketing as a child by my father while marketing his furnished houses, I developed an interest in this field. After the self-evaluation and critical thinking of who I was and what I wanted to be in the future, I was able to discover my passion, and as a result, I felt more confident that I was on the right track and this made me stop my previous self-doubt. Indeed I realized after my self-discovery that I could make a good marketer because I had all it takes to become one.