30 5 Drawbacks to Following Your Passion
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the reading process to “5 Drawbacks to Following Your Passion.”
- Summarize the article.
- Respond to the article.
- Interview people to conduct research about how they make career decisions.
Preview the Article
Follow the steps below to preview the article “5 Drawbacks to Following Your Passion.” Ideally, you should print the article and write your responses in the margins of the printed copy. To read more about previewing, visit the chapter on previewing a reading.
- Read the title. What does it make you think about? What do you think the article is about? What questions do you have? Record your predictions and questions on the printed copy of the article next to the title.
- Visit Erin A. Cech’s website to learn more about her interests, research, and publication. Based on the content of her website, make some predictions about “5 Drawbacks to Following Your Passion.” Record them on the printed copy.
- Read the first three paragraphs. What additional predictions do you now have about the article? What additional questions do you have? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the article and notice the headings (e.g. The passion principle) within the article. What additional thoughts or questions do these raise? Record them on the printed copy of the article.
- Scan the bolded and underlined vocabulary in the article. If there are any words that you do not know well, look them up in a print or online dictionary and write some notes about their meanings on the printed copy of the article. Keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings. For example, the phrase social networks is used in paragraph 10; however, it does not refer to networks on social media. You may need to read the sentence containing the word to understand the word’s usage.
- Based on your preview of the article, what do you think is the central point of the article? (Don’t worry if you are not sure. This is a prediction or guess – you do not have to be correct as long as you are engaging your brain.) Record your prediction on the printed copy of the article.
- Based on your preview, do you predict that the article is narrative, expository, or argumentative?
Read Interactively
Now, read the article using the guidelines from the chapter on reading interactively. As you read, follow these steps to engage with the text.
- Pause to confirm or revise your predictions and to answer the questions you posed while previewing the article. Write down those revised predictions and responses to the questions as you read. If you cannot find the answers to your questions, save them for further research and discussion.
- Pause at other points to check for understanding of what you just read. Can you explain key ideas in your own words yet? If not, reread to clarify. Ideas that come later in a text build on the previous ones. Therefore, it makes no sense to keep reading if you did not understand something or if y