1. Erin Bosman
The Vocational Process
The process of an individual’s career or vocational choice typically begins around the
time that they are considered a teenager. At that age range, 13-19, people generally are capable
of analyzing their own strengths, interests, and overall skills. This helps to form goals and an
ideal basis for a career choice. The individual generally goes through a fantasy, tentative, and
realistic period. The fantasy period occurs during childhood and is generally associated with
excitement, familiarity, and uncertainty. The tentative period is typically a development of the
person’s skills and interests. Finally, exploration, certainty, and an end career choice represent
the realistic period. Once a vocational choice is made, the individual is able to have a stronger
understanding of their interests and skills in relation to an end career.
I hypothesize that a final vocational choice of an individual will show an expansion of
their interests, skills, and high school job choices. In order to test my hypothesis I will be
interviewing my mother, Barbara Ann Bosman- Meehan. In relation to demographics, Barb is a
47 year old Caucasian female. She grew up in Hudson, WI as the youngest of six siblings, five
brothers and one sister. She was raised in a catholic household that could be quite chaotic with
eight children running around. She now works as a risk management leader at Wells Fargo
Financial Services in Minneapolis, MN and lives in Woodbury, MN. Barbara is in her second
marriage and is successfully raising and encouraging three daughters. This also caused her to
experience a variety of interests and skills to continue to broaden and emphasize over time.
When Barb was between the ages of five through eight she was not too focused on
developing her vocational career or even aware that she was developing skill sets that could
potentially be used later in her lifetime. She mainly focused on playing with Barbie’s or Dolls.
Although these forms of play do not seem significant on the surface, in my opinion it could show

2. Erin Bosman
her hopes to eventually have a family and successful home to run on her own. As she got older
Barbara’s motivation become more present and she switched from playing with dolls throughout
the fantasy period to taking care of actual children during the tentative period. At age 12 she
began babysitting several children for approximately four years until she began work as a
waitress at a local A&W restaurant at age 15. She worked as waitress for two years gaining
experience in the work field and strengthening her communication skills. Eventually around age
17, Barb acquired a job as a bank teller for Wells Fargo. She continued to work there during the
course of high school.
Barbara intended to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a homemaker and this caused her
to avoid not make plans for college. After graduating high school she sought out a full time,
higher paying job at a bank in the Twin Cities area. She ended up discovering another position
with Wells Fargo and continued to exert her way up the corporate ladder. During the realistic
period, Barbara soon discovered in addition to wanting to have a family and home of her own to
take care of she also enjoyed completing tasks and working as a leader. She let the various
managers she worked for be an inspiration toward her own objectives as well as the development
and discovery of the various roles that she could see herself fulfilling effectively. In the end, her
final vocational choice was to work as a risk management leader at Wells Fargo Financial
Services where she has stayed loyally for the last 30 years in addition to successfully raising her
own family.
I hypothesized that a final vocational choice of an individual would show an expansion of
their interests, skills, and high school job choices. Although I do feel like it appeared to be
supported through the case of my own mother, I also now think that other factors can also play a
role in your vocational choice such as the way an individual has grown up and the role models

3. Erin Bosman
around them as well. I feel like Barbara’s path effectively followed the fantasy, tentative, and
realistic period. In the fantasy period, she was unsure of what she desired her impending
occupation to be but was full of excitement and the familiarity of how her mother and siblings
behaved. In this period, she simply had been fantasizing about potentially having a family of her
own to dress up and maintain. In the tentative period we saw her interests and skills broaden as
well as deepen. She explored her caregiver interests through babysitting and then moved
elsewhere for the expansion of other skills and values. Finally, in the realistic period Barbara
began to discover that she could successfully work as well as have a family and she continued to
explore and confirm her newly developing goals. Overall the fantasy, tentative, and realistic
periods did fit into Barbara’s vocational choice and the development of her interests.