have to do with the influences of family and culture. Although K
stated that his parents are leaving his occupational choice “strictly
up to him,” there is some indication of their influence on his
choices, as indicated by their interest in K attending college. It may
be important to explore how the work histories of his parents have
influenced his career thinking to this point. Eva may also want to
discuss with K any cultural traditions in his family that may have
affected his thinking about career choices.
K’s father works in what can be considered a high-prestige,
high-achievement occupation. As the firstborn male child in a
Japanese-Chinese-American family, K may feel some pressure to
follow in this tradition, especially given his strong math skills. K’s
“free spirit” lifestyle seems somewhat contradictory to his high val-
ues of financial prosperity and achievement. K stated that he values
the fact that his parents have not put a lot of pressure on him and
have let him “do his own thing” but feels some desire to have them
be proud about what he ends up doing. He noted that he doesn’t get
much encouragement from them when he jokes about becoming a
professional skateboarder!
In examining K’s SDS results, Eva began by asking him to fur-
ther discuss each of his daydreams, including how each option listed
fit with his skills, interests, and values. With respect to the self-
knowledge area of the pyramid, Eva wanted to see how K views each
of these options in relation to his self-concept. Eva explored his ideas
about working with computers and his interest in learning more
about this field. K stated that he really had not looked very closely
at the SDS Occupations Finder. Eva noted the closeness of K’s sum-
mary scores and pointed out that there are several code combina-
tions he could use in looking at options. Eva helped K further define
his daydreams using the SDS Occupations Finder and the Dictionary
of Holland Occupational Codes(DHOC; Gottfredson & Holland,
1996) and showed him how the daydream codes could be used to
generate a Daydreams Summary Code (Reardon & Lenz, 1998).
In both the SDS daydreams and the VI, K seemed to place a
great deal of emphasis on making money. Eva discussed with him
346 CAREER CHOICE AND DEVELOPMENT