| That's an interesting thought I've asked myself a lot. I once thought that a career did define a person when I was younger, but with time, I've realized that personality variances really affect a person's take on a given profession as well. With increasingly stable personhood that comes with knowing oneself better and in various ways, a career seems like only but one piece of the puzzle of oneself.
While it is true that some people do have a very demanding careers (CEO, law, medicine, business owner, artist, and plenty others), if one is committed also to other roles in life in family, extracurricular activities, and hobbies, it's very possible even for these very career-driven people to have a well-balanced life, although not entirely as balanced as others with less demanding careers.
Others with part-time jobs/careers or leisurely jobs may not feel as identified with the career. Some careers are by nature diverse in job function (writer, consultants, lecturers). These careers allow one to spend a lot of time learning different things, traveling, and meeting a lot of different people. If such a career is this holistic in fulfilling a person's needs, then it might very well turn out that the career defines the person. There's nothing too restrictive and there's tons of freedom, so the person may very well embrace such a career as defining identity.
Here is a case of crossing the boundaries of a career into a role. One can take on a 'role' besides what a librarian is by job description. For example, a librarian may identify him/herself as a 'scholar' because he/she is very well read and familiar with almost every written book out there. Oddly enough, if you ask the layperson or a researcher who is a scholar in a field if the librarian is considered a scholar, they'd say, "No" because it isn't an expected characteristic of that job/profession. However, the fact that a very scholarly person became a librarian for the purpose of being around books---is completely unknown to others. Thus, a person's personality/traits can really determine---beyond the expectations of others---how one takes on a profession/job.
On the other hand, profession that require a very narrow range of traits in order to be successful, such as intelligence, practicality, logic, critical thinking, etc is only available for those with these refined traits to accomplish, thus such a profession can in fact define a person. I believe those professions include scientist, researcher, and medicine, to name a few. These candidates are selectively picked based on their given traits (accomplishments), so these professions can be a very good predictor of that person having a specific pool of traits and when extrapolated, these traits can give an outsider a good sense of that person's mainstay identity. In essence, these people are the ideal fit for such professions. Given that we are all unique, however, we have varied interests and hobbies, but that doesn't detract at all from the given characteristics necessary to be successful in such fields.
We all know that career doesn't entirely define a person. However, it depends on the person's goals, personality/traits, and how seriously one takes the career/profession. A young person who is building the career may spend days and nights being absorbed in his/her career. A well-established person who has been in the career for 15 years may have more head-space to spend a leisure afternoon working on his house. The younger you are, the more industrious in one's career. It's very logical and it is reflective of one's stage in life (Erikson's stages).  | 
03-02-2008, 05:53 PM
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