Identity and Career: An Analysis of Emerging Meteorologists’ Narratives

Abstract

Abstract The narratives of emerging adults, such as university students, can reveal aspects of their professional and academic identities that explain their career paths. While narrative has been studied as a tool in the meteorological classroom, narrative has not been used to study why students choose to become meteorologists. This study aims to identify the narrative features about what draws students to pursue meteorology as a career and reflect upon how the telling of these narratives can help career counselors and other stakeholders, like universities, to understand this discipline of students. This study is a qualitative textual analysis of N = 34 video clips of meteorology students from around the United States submitted for the 2020 AMS Student Conference welcome video, #MyFieldMyStory campaign. The findings show that formative experiences like early childhood memories, mediated experiences with the weather, and family interactions were major life themes in the students’ stories. Other reasons students chose this career path were concerns over local climatic effects, a desire to control their course of study, curiosity stemming from internships and research opportunities, confidence from their personal math/science propensity in school, and a commitment to do work that can mitigate the effects of severe weather or inform people of impending threats. The students’ narratives also showed optimism around future jobs and graduate school, as well as an exploration of their identity through finding their passion in this career path. This study is an interesting initial delve into narratively analyzing stories from emerging meteorologists.