º¬Ðß²ÝÑо¿ÊÒ Career Planning is offering a pilot program on campus during the January break for an inaugural group of twenty sophomores.
For three days, from January 16-18, the students are participating in full-day workshops on how to find meaningful work, write résumés and cover letters, and network with alumni and others in fields they're interested in.
"We wanted to use this time when students aren’t busy with a thousand other things to help them reflect thoughtfully on what they want to focus on," Assistant Director of Career Planning Bethany Walsh said.
Targeting sophomores made the most sense because juniors are often in between study-abroad trips, and many seniors by this time have already made strides toward a career path.
Walsh is organizing and running the program with Executive Director Kristin Brennan and Associate Director Nancy Gibson of Career Planning.
"It's a soup-to-nuts Career Boot Camp," Walsh said.
Mid-afternoon on the first day found the three advisors in Main Lounge of Moulton Union guiding students through an exercise called Odyssey Planning. “It’s based on a model from Stanford’s design school called ‘design your life,’” said Brennan, “and it enables you to unhook from the idea that there’s one right thing for you to do with you life.”
Students were given a pencil and paper and told to consider three scenarios or “life designs.” The first life is called “That thing you do” and it’s the main career track that you’re considering. The second option forces students to think what they would do if “life number one” was suddenly gone. The third option, “life number three,” is described as “the thing you’d do or the life you’d live if money or image were no object.”
Addie Gonzalez chose three quite different lives. Her first choice is to be an oceanographer, involving years of grad school and further academic study. Life number two would be to work in publishing as a writer and editor, while her third scenario sees her running a farm, keeping horses, and maybe playing the banjo! “It’s really easy to get to the point where you’re exploring life to the extent where you kind of forget that there could be other versions of you,” she said. “So it was really interesting to consider the possibility that oceanography ‘doesn’t exist.’“
Vincent Dong is a computer science and math double major, and his first two choices have him following those two paths, working either with a tech startup or as a statistician. His third choice is teaching, either at high school or college level. “I’ve worked as a tutor already, both with people my own age and younger kids, and I really enjoyed it,” he said. “But I had never really regarded it as a career option until now.”
Walsh said one of her objectives was to "break down assumptions young people have about careers.”
Day two of the program sees the students learning how to put together effective résumés and cover letters. By the end of the day, they are expected to have a polished, complete job application, Walsh said. In addition, the team will help students set up LinkedIn profiles and have a photographer take quality headshots of them.
Day three is devoted to networking. Twenty alumni, along with some staff members, have volunteered to help students practice making introductory phone calls to chat about the best ways to gain access to industries and companies.
Since the program had more students sign up than it could accommodate, participants were selected by lottery. Next year, assuming Career Boot Camp is successful and well received, Walsh said she'd like to open it up to a larger group.
