I remember the first day of the capstone course of my master’s program. Our professor asked us to line up according to stress level in relation to how we felt about finding a job after graduation. As my classmates slowly made their way to varying places along the wall of stress, I made a B-line straight to the “can’t even articulate how anxious” end of the line.
We all struggled with getting started. Some of us felt limited by geography because of a significant other; others had no restrictions and had a hard time finding a place to start. Some of us were so concerned about landing something, anything, we were ready to take the first job no matter what it was. Others had such high expectations that they could have been offered the university president’s job and they would have turned it down because the benefits weren’t exactly what they wanted. None of us knew how salaries worked or who to address cover letters to or how to sell our experiences without overstating our abilities.
Although this stage was initially very overwhelming, once I got past the fear, this was actually the easiest part for me because it had the most pieces that I could control. I also realized that the best way to deal with all these questions was to ask. At the time I was enrolled in a Career Development class which was immensely helpful because it helped me develop not only the “props” of a job search but also forced me to do some really beneficial reflection as well. For me, the process went something like this: (to be continued tomorrow -- check back to see Rachel's process)
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