Tag Archives: tips for students

Avoiding Burnout in the Job Hunt: Stop, Drop, and Roll

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a hand circling classified ads

So you’re finally up to graduation! You’re so excited. Finally you can enter the work force as a proud, educated, eligible employee. You’re on top of the world, no one can ruin your joy. Until you remember, wait, now you need to find that job…

Reality starts to set in. The job market is not that great right now. Maybe you need another certification, maybe even a more advanced degree. You start to search the job boards. Everyone wants experienced employees. Your internship site has a hiring freeze with an indefinite end-date. Maybe this is the wrong field for you. Maybe this was all a waste.

STOP!

Remember, your a highly qualified applicant. That job that you didn’t get, it wasn’t meant to be. A place that doesn’t want to hire a new graduate probably isn’t where you want to work. There are so many potential employers, and it’s possible that your “ideal” is not actually that.

DROP!

Forget the ego. You might need to take a less coveted job to work up to the level of your dream. Drop the frown. It’s time to remember why you wanted to do this career. Remember how idealistic you were when you started college, when you took the first class in your major? Get that dream back. Think about the positive side. Once you have a job, you’ll need to work everyday, all day. Take advantage of your time off to develop some hobbies, take a class, and become a super networker.

ROLL!

Sometimes the job offers come when you least expect them. Roll with the punches. If you get a temporary position, take it. It may lead to a permanent job, looks great for experience, and fills up your resume so that you don’t have too many gaps to explain. Remember that even a day at the movies can turn into an amazing networking experience. Talk to people about their lives, it looks good, and you can find job hunting ideas along the way.

If a job opportunity comes up that is indirectly related to your field, look in to it. You may find a new dream job!

Good luck on your next step!

Lose the Weight

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I know what you think. Even though many of us students have gained weight over the past few semesters, I won’t be preaching about the importance of losing that extra bulge I have enough that I need to lose myself. (Also, in most cases those who need to lose weight wouldn’t realize that I was talking to them, and those girls whose BMIs are close to a scary 15 will think that I am telling them to lose even more.) I’m talking about the weight outside yourbody that you carry with you all the time. And while many don’t know this, that heavy load in your back is apt to hurt you just as much, although in different ways, as the extra layer of blubber that you carry around your waist.

My first semester of college, I bought myself a nice suede bag. I felt that since I am an adult I shouldn’t be using a backpack. Of course, I made sure that the bag was roomy enough for at least two textbooks, a laptop, a looseleaf, notebooks, my planner, lunch. Basically it was a suitcase that I could carry on my one shoulder. However this is even worse because at the rate of what I was putting in to it, I would probably have to pay an overweight fee. I’m sure that at least the ladies reading this know that there is a law regarding handbags. The size of the handbag you carry, is always directly proportional to the things that you will NEED to carry.

By the end of that semester, I realized that something had to be done. The first thing that I did was purchase a more reasonably sized bag. However, there were still some things that I had to bring. I’m one of those students who comes to class prepared. I cannot quite understand those students who show up to class with one piece of paper and not even a pen. How do they plan on writing on that paper? However, by the end of that semester, I also realized that most classes won’t use the textbooks in class. I finally got packing my bag down pat.

The next semester I was thrown a wrench. Not only did my professor want us to bring our books, it was the heaviest book of the program that she wanted us to bring. All of the sudden, I started seeing the tablets, Nooks, Kindles, iPads… in class. Right away that jumped to the top of my school supplies “wishlist”.

I just got a Nook after all this time. It is a miracle. Finally I don’t feel like I’m falling over from the weight. I can actually exercise on my way to school.

If you’d like your schoolbag to join mine on its diet, let me know. I’m sure my bag would love to give your’s some support!

Using General Education Requirements to Further Your Career

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a cartoon strip about statistics

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. As many of my readers know, I am graduating from my nursing program this semester. Of course, like all of the other majors in the school, in addition to Nursing and health related classes, I am required to take co-requisites. Some of them, like Anatomy and Physiology, biology, Microbiology, Psychology, and even English, are easily correlated to my career goals. The information covered in these classes are obviously required for successful integration into this field. But what about some of the other classes? When am I ever going to need to understand theories in Sociology, issues in history or economics, or even figure out a trigonometric equation?

Some of these, I honestly can’t tell you, except that one day I may have a patient who is a mathematician, and I may need to understand some basic equations to get something across to him. But, since they are required, and I will be sitting through those classes anyway, doesn’t it make sense for me to derive some benefit from these classes?

I recently discovered that most subjects can be correlated to any curriculum. For example, I took Effective Speaking last semester. Each speech that I gave was somehow connected to the material I was covering anyway. In this way, the hours spent studying, researching, and writing will hopefully be put to good use in my career.

I’d love to hear about your ways of connecting seemingly unconnected topics to benefit your total education.