Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Second Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Morrison, Patricia

Keywords

career illusions, success beliefs, higher education, qualitative research, thematic analysis, student affairs, career development, identity, burnout

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Contemporary higher education culture transmits a set of deeply internalized beliefs about career success that shape students' decisions, constrain their identities, and fuel anxiety, burnout, and rigidity, often without their awareness. This qualitative study examines how undergraduate students at a small public liberal arts college experience and narrate these beliefs through the lens of the Career Illusions Framework (CIF), a seven-dimension conceptual model, built from the ground up for this study, comprising the Straight Path, Identity Lock-In, Status Script, Hustle Loop, Dream Job Illusion, Risk Ceiling, and Quitting Stigma. Using Braun and Clarke's (2006) reflexive thematic analysis alongside systematic spreadsheet-based pattern tracking, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 junior and senior undergraduate students to explore how career illusions manifest in student narratives, what psychological and developmental consequences emerge from them, whether new or modified dimensions appear beyond the original seven, and how these findings can support higher education student affairs counselors in broadening students' definitions of success. Findings reveal that all seven illusions appeared consistently across participant narratives and operate not independently but as a self-reinforcing system, a Career Illusion System in which each belief compensates for the anxiety the previous one generates. Straight Path emerged as the most frequently coded illusion (n = 166), with the strongest co-occurrence observed between Identity Lock-In and Dream Job Illusion (n = 50) and Hustle Loop appeared in 13 out of 15 participants. Analysis further identified psychological consequences including identity foreclosure, achievement anxiety, and burnout, as well as moments of illusion breakdown in which participants began to recognize and resist the system's logic. The study contributes empirical support for the CIF as an analytically useful model, extends career construction theory, and advances the literature on perfectionism and burnout by situating these outcomes within a specific, culturally produced belief architecture. Implications for higher education student affairs counselors are discussed, with attention to how naming and surfacing the Career Illusion System in advising contexts can support genuine belief revision among undergraduate students.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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