Purpose in Life and Professional Life Project in College Students

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the relation between the level of purpose in life and the level of dominion obtained by the students in the construction of a professional life project; after the implementation of a course based on the Logotherapy approach, which lasted a total of 64 hours. The areas worked were self-discovery, unicity, freedom, responsibility and self-transcendence. Logotherapeutic techniques of Socratic dialogue, role playing and cinema-logotherapy were used. The objective was to redirect the work carried out with students of the Bachelor Degree in Education at a Public University in the State of Yucatan, so that they could be aware of themselves, discover their potential and find their mission in life to give meaning to their chosen profession. The design of the study was pre-experimental, pretest-post-test, without control group; and the meaning of life test was administered to identify the level of Purpose in Life of the students. A rubric was used to evaluate the professional life projects that were developed by the students. The results showed that there is no relation between the level of Purpose in Life and the development of the professional life project, since the strengthening of the Purpose in Life did not necessarily imply the development of a professional life project in accordance with the potentials of the students, neither they managed to establish clear goals and specific commitments to achieve their goals.