People kept telling me with biochemistry it was a "sure thing" and if I just made it out I'd have a job, but like every other week there were "meet and greets" with profs and industry leaders at 8pm, and study groups at 10pm, and internships that required you to move away for the summer and I couldn't do those things.
I even kept having people tell me I have a husband, leave all the house and childcare to him, because that is what straight married dudes do to their wives. But if I don't think that's a fair thing they do to their wife, how can I do that to my husband?
The only opportunities that I really had for networking were with other adult students. Which is great in a way because empathetic support, but most of them were finishing degrees from ages ago and already had jobs, or were getting general studies degrees for the hell of it, or were, you know, just definitely not in my career field. So it wasn't super helpful for getting internships and jobs.
People. Are. Important. I know students who have graduated from community colleges with unsatisfactory levels of "challenge" and "formal education" who just go to know the entire career department and all their professors and all their professors' professional friends, and so landed themselves a passable career doing something they don't hate and making enough money to live and eat and go out on the weekends.
(I mean, hi, me, the first time I went to college: I got my internship because I knew the career counselor really well and she trusted me to go into a company they had never used before, same for my first "real" job. I got two more jobs because I kept in contact with people from my internship that really loved me, and got another job as a promotion because I hung out with the people I worked with. if someone expects to just show up to work and silently put in 40 hours and go home, they are sorely mistaken. I don't care how isolated you are, at some point you interact with people and they can make or break your career.)
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Date: 2013-11-21 05:08 pm (UTC)People kept telling me with biochemistry it was a "sure thing" and if I just made it out I'd have a job, but like every other week there were "meet and greets" with profs and industry leaders at 8pm, and study groups at 10pm, and internships that required you to move away for the summer and I couldn't do those things.
I even kept having people tell me I have a husband, leave all the house and childcare to him, because that is what straight married dudes do to their wives. But if I don't think that's a fair thing they do to their wife, how can I do that to my husband?
The only opportunities that I really had for networking were with other adult students. Which is great in a way because empathetic support, but most of them were finishing degrees from ages ago and already had jobs, or were getting general studies degrees for the hell of it, or were, you know, just definitely not in my career field. So it wasn't super helpful for getting internships and jobs.
People. Are. Important. I know students who have graduated from community colleges with unsatisfactory levels of "challenge" and "formal education" who just go to know the entire career department and all their professors and all their professors' professional friends, and so landed themselves a passable career doing something they don't hate and making enough money to live and eat and go out on the weekends.
(I mean, hi, me, the first time I went to college: I got my internship because I knew the career counselor really well and she trusted me to go into a company they had never used before, same for my first "real" job. I got two more jobs because I kept in contact with people from my internship that really loved me, and got another job as a promotion because I hung out with the people I worked with. if someone expects to just show up to work and silently put in 40 hours and go home, they are sorely mistaken. I don't care how isolated you are, at some point you interact with people and they can make or break your career.)