06/01/2005

What Do I Like to Do?

Book Review by Thomas F. Harrington

What Do I Like to Do?: 101 Activities to Identify Interests and Plan Careers by Janet E. Wall (2005) 200 pages

The Content of What Do I LIKE to Do?

The book's focus is on interests and the impact they have on our lives, positive and negative. The book prepares counselors and workforce development professionals to know how their clients can take charge of their life decisions. The uniqueness of this book is its comprehensiveness. Typical textbook chapters on this subject range from 35 to 40 pages. What Do I LIKE to Do? contains 193 pages, resulting in a more thorough coverage. My experience has been that students (i.e. counselors in training) would relish the specific materials and would gladly pay $28 to know what to do when they first encounter their clients. Many textbooks only provide a brief survey of the topic. Dr. Wall's book has been designed to develop skills and competencies in ten specific content areas which, without question, would help clients.

The Book's Key Points:

Strengths and Weaknesses

Judging from the varied strategies noted in the Strengths above, you can see how clients can better understand their interests in a fun way. What Do I LIKE to Do? demonstrates methodology to show how interests permeate our lives. Many activities clearly illustrate how to learn about more occupations and information about them. Helpers using the skills described in this book will facilitate their clients to make more informed life decisions.


Thomas F. Harrington holds a Ph.D. in counseling from Purdue University and teaches vocational psychology and career counseling courses in the Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology at Northeastern University in Boston. In 2004 he received the National Career Development Association's highest honor, The Eminent Career Award. He is the co-author of the award winning Harrington-O'Shea Career Decision-Making System; the Ability Explorer; The College Majors Handbook: The Actual Jobs, Earnings, and Trends for Graduates of 60 College Majors (2nd ed); Career Planning; and the Handbook of Career Planning for Special Needs Students (3rd ed.). He can reached atEmail: harington@comcast.net

Wall's book is available in NCDA's online Career Resource Store .

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