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Occupational choices are also useful -- and interesting -- in bringing out clearly that values do not constitute the only component in goals and aspirations.

For there is also the `` face of reality '' in the form of the individual's perceptions of his own abilities and interests, of the objective possibilities open to him, of the familial and other social pressures to which he is exposed.

We find `` reluctant recruits '' whose values are not in line with their expected occupation's characteristics.

Students develop occupational images -- not always accurate or detailed -- and they try to fit their values to the presumed characteristics of the imagined occupation.

The purely cognitive or informational problems are often acute.

Furthermore, many reluctant recruits are yielding to social demands, or compromising in the face of their own limitations of opportunity, or of ability and performance.

Thus, many a creativity-oriented aspirant for a career in architecture, drama, or journalism, resigns himself to a real estate business ; ;

many a people-oriented student who dreams of the M.D. decides to enter his father's advertising agency ; ;

and many a hopeful incipient business executive decides it were better to teach the theory of business administration than to practice it.

The old ideal of the independent entrepreneur is extant -- but so is the recognition that the main chance may be in a corporate bureaucracy.