Life After... Social Studies

A Practical Guide to Life After Your Degree

Sally Longson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134126316
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Thousands of students graduate from university each year. The lucky few have the rest of their lives mapped out in perfect detail – but for most, things are not nearly so simple. Armed with your hard-earned degree the possibilities and career paths lying before you are limitless, and the number of choices you suddenly have to make can seem bewildering.

Life After... Social Studies has been written specifically to help students currently studying, or who have recently graduated, make informed choices about their future lives. It will be a source of invaluable advice and wisdom to business graduates (whether you wish to use your degree directly or not), covering such topics as:

• 
  
  

• Identifying a career path that interests you

• 
  
  

• Seeking out an opportunity that matches your skills and aspirations

• 
  
  

• Staying motivated and pursuing your goals

• 
  
  

• Networking and self-promotion

• 
  
  

• Making the transition from scholar to worker

• Putting the skills you have developed at university to good use in life.
  
  

The Life After... series of books are more than simple 'career guides'. They are unique in taking a holistic approach to career advice - recognising the increasing view that, although a successful working life is vitally important, other factors can be just as essential to happiness and fulfilment. They are the indispensable handbooks for students considering their future direction.

Chapter 1

Decisions, decisions …

What happens now? What happens next?

What happens from now in your life depends on how determined you are to turn your hopes, aspirations, dreams and ambitions into being and what sort of journeys, adventures, fun and experience you want to enjoy in it. Your future plans may already be known to you: you may be kicking lots of ideas about, or just not have a clue. What you do know is that there are lots of decisions to make, plans to be laid and things to do – but what, exactly? Where do you start?

Looking at the next few months

If you’ve already left university, you may happily spend the summer having a break at home before considering what happens next. The start of the academic year may feel strange as you realise that for the first time, perhaps in your life, you don’t have to go back to a new term. You can do as you like. This may also be strange to the people you live with, such as your parents. They may not be used to you being around and may start giving you odd jobs to do which interfere with your day and which you may resent. Meal times may be punctuated with discussions about your future and when you’re going to get a ‘real’ job; visitors to the house ask whether you’ve got a job yet. It may feel as if life is going backwards or standing still, instead of moving forward. Build a routine into your life, even if you have no work or study to go to. It will help you when you start work.

You may have studied part time for your degree while holding down a full-time job, working two or three hours a night and trying the patience of loved ones as you disappear to study yet again. You’ve probably pleaded with the boss for more time off, spent lunch times doing research on the internet and sneaked the odd sickie to get that assignment done. And now you’re faced with many free hours and you feel a bit lost. It’s nice to have a rest from all that study, but having risen to one challenge, you want another.

Whether you are an undergraduate or a postgraduate, if you’re still at university, create time now in your week to plan your career. Think ahead. Participate in activities such as constructive work experience, internships, develop your web of industry contacts, voluntary work, attend careers and trade events, research the job market, find out what resources are available if you want to become self-employed, consider further study, visit the careers service in person and online, and analyse your own strengths and capabilities. Fill any gaps in your skills base which may show up on your CV. Do something unusual which really will make you stand out from other candidates. Employers are often looking for that one line which makes them sit up and think, Wow, I’ve got to meet this person!

Start building bridges from where you are now and where you want to be. The more foundations you can lay down now, the easier life will be later.

Take control. Get organised

Create a folder – call it something like ‘Life After University’ – and put everything in it you need to work on to save yourself time rummaging for information here and there. Create a career folder on your PC or laptop for email. Bookmark useful websites you refer to continually. Efficient organisation will clear your mind of clutter and enable you to think more clearly. Your ‘life after’ folder should grow week by week as you add to it and expand your knowledge, contacts, ideas and work. From time to time, summarise where you are in your thinking about life after university, and in particular, your career plans. Keep that summary at the top, so it’s the first thing you see when you pull it out. Review it frequently.

Then look ahead

There are several decisions to make about your life after graduating. These vary from the urgent and/or important, to those things which simply need to be dealt with, such as ‘What will I do with all my books and materials?’ and ‘Which friends do I want to keep in touch with?’. There will be urgent decisions you need to make today. The important ones are not usually time pressured but they affect the big picture, i.e. your life. An important and urgent decision may be: Do you accept that offer of a postgraduate place you had yesterday? It’s Tuesday now, you’ve got until Thursday at 5 p.m. to decide.

Two major issues you’ll need to deal with are those of career and finance. Devote more time and energy to these now. Socialising may be fun but it won’t bring you the best rate of return career-wise, nor will it help you pay off your debts. Plotting your career and working up the ladder will bring a higher salary, and you’ll need to apply discipline and rigour to managing your finances if you are to clear your debts.

Let’s follow these two areas in life further.

Do career and financial audits

Table 1.1 demonstrates questions to ponder.

Table 1.1

Doing an audit like this empowers you because you’re choosing to address the situation. You’re looking at it head on, dealing with known facts rather than assumptions or guesses. You can move forward by creating an action plan and implementing it. With regard to debts, it is better to know what your bottom line is to prevent yourself getting further into debt. You may have a student debt of £15,000, but how much further are you prepared to allow it to increase before you start paying it back? £20,000? £30,000? It doesn’t mean you’ll never go out for a wild night out with your friends again – but it could mean that you look for other ways to have a wild time so that you can control the finances more firmly. Do it jointly with friends in the same boat and work together to deal with it. Yes, there are times when we don’t like the decisions we have to make; they are uncomfortable and don’t fit in well with the lifestyle we want. But discipline never did anyone any harm and can frequently bring unexpected rewards, not least of which is selfrespect and an in-built self-belief that you can turn an uncomfortable situation around.

Take action now!

1. List the decisions you need to make now and in the next six months.
2. What have you done so far towards making these decisions?
3. What else do you need to do or to know to decide? How will you get that information and where will you get it from?
4. Whose help will you need?
5. When do you need to make each decision?
6. What action will you take?

Many of the decisions in one area of our life will impact on others. For instance, your career choice will affect where you live and work, the structure of your life and the people you work with and/or socialise with. It will impact on your standard of living and your overall happiness. You may need to undertake further training, learning and development to acquire your professional status. Career choice can determine the hours you work and whether you’re on call or not, the pace of your working day and your stress levels. The effort you put into your career will affect your ability to pay back your loans and start laying strong financial foundations to your life.

Are you an effective decision maker?

You can learn a lot about yourself from the way you’ve made past decisions. Take two decisions you’ve made about your university life or course. Ask yourself:

1. What motivated you to take these decisions?
2. How did you make them? For example, was it by gut instinct, by careful research and thought, weighing up the pros and cons, tossing a coin, following the lead of others, force of circumstance or meeting the expectations of others? What process do you follow?
3. Who influenced your decisions and subsequent actions? Who could you have involved more or less?
4. What, if anything, held you back from making decisions and how did you overcome it?
5. Is a pattern emerging about your decision making? What does it tell you about the way you make decisions? Are there patterns which aren’t helping you that you need to break?
6. How can you make your decision making more effective in your career planning and life overall?

In making any decision, there are various factors to take into account as Table 1.2 shows

Decision-making skills transfer well in life, from making career choices to buying a home. They are essential at work, whether you are self-employed, an employee, or the boss, in making business decisions such as the clients you choose to work with, which suppliers you choose to work with and whether you should relocate your business to a more cost-effective area. Action plans to implement our decisions are often interrupted by (unexpected) obstacles, making the journey en route more of a roller-coaster of a ride, but a focus on the end result will help you to steer through the rougher patches.

Focus on the result you want and the obstacles will shrink

Often when faced with a decision, we tend to focus too much on potential problems. ‘There are too many graduates…’, ‘not enough time in the day…’, ‘I don’t want to…’. Problems have a way of shrinking

Table1.2

when put into the context of what we really want. Let’s say you are offered a dream career from an employer you’d love to work for but you don’t know anyone in the town you’d be living in. ‘Where will I live if I go somewhere new?’ you may ask. But compared to the job offer, which you’re wild with excitement over, the accommodation problem is minor. You know you’ll sort it out somehow. The most important thing is that you have the offer you wanted. You found somewhere to live at university; you can do it again.

Have faith in your own ability to create a life for yourself even if you move to a place where you know no one.

It isn’t easy, but you’ve done it before and survived – and you’ve developed strong transferable skills at university, such as the abilities to:

1. Start completely afresh – new people, new place, new things to learn, new challenges.
2. Take part in and contribute to an organisation – previously, your university, now the workplace, the community, new friends.
3. Find your way around and learn the ropes.
4. Ask the right questions of the right people to get the answers you need.
5. Network and get to know people across the organisation – as you did at university.
6. Take the initiative and make things happen in a day at university or college which – lectures and tutorials apart – is pretty much your own.
7. Show how adaptable and flexible you are in juggling work, study and social activities, often changing plans at the last minute.
8. Organise your time.
9. Hunt out new friends and like-minded people you can particularly relate to.
10. Relate to people of different sorts of backgrounds, nationalities and abilities.

University has taught you to think, to question, to be creative, to think laterally, to challenge, to research, to find problems to solutions and to interact. Those skills will never be wasted. And the more you stretch yourself and expand them, the more powerful a resource they will become. Use them or lose them!

Wait a minute …

Before you start making decisions, consider what’s really important to you.

Where are you going? How does the decision fit into the bigger picture?

A key starting point to making successful decisions involves knowing what is right for you in life or work. You need a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness. These things encompass areas such as the roles you want to play in life, your career interests, ambitions, aspirations, the environments and conditions you thrive in and learn best in, the things you need around you to make you happy and feel fulfilled and those things that are important to you and what you couldn’t do without, i.e. your values. Know what you want, and life has more purpose. It goes deeper than this: you need to consider your purpose in being here on earth; why you have the skills, talents and capabilities and personality that you do, and how you can you best contribute them to a rapidly changing world.

Know yourself and what you want and you’ll move faster to get it – you’re less likely to deviate and waste time. Many people simply wait for that lucky break to knock on their door. Unfortunately, they have a long wait. You can create your own luck, as Dr Wiseman points out in his excellent book The Luck Factor (see Further Reading).

What’s important to you?

When you live by your values, you look forward to the start of a new day or week, and you wake up with a happy heart. Life feels right: you feel fulfilled with a strong sense of your own self-worth. Your goals, hopes and aspirations seem easier to work for because you’re at your best as you strive towards them. You know you’re making the right choices and decisions and moving in the right direction. Similarly, the company which recruits staff with values equal to its own has a good feel about it. The staff are happy, motivated, fulfilled and feel appreciated. They look forward to going to work and are a tight-knit team.

Five signs when life – and work in particular – does not encapsulate your values

1. You’re exhausted trying to work at something that doesn’t gel with you while pretending that all is well.
2. You’re frustrated and short tempered, especially as Monday looms.
3. It’s lonely. Everyone else seems to be on a different wavelength to you.
4. You keep thinking, There must be more to life than this! This thought persists over time, making you increasingly frustrated and angrier.
5. You’re disappointed in yourself because you know that you should cut your losses and leave, but you can’t find the courage to do it.

Of course, you may find the perfect match and then something hinders its progression: a technological innovation, a change in the markets, a drop in demand, restructuring, redundancy. Employers understand that it takes time to find the right match, and when reading your CV, they consider your achievements, progression, development, and future career plans and the person who lies behind the words on paper and portfolio. But it’s your responsibility to find the career and role you want. You need to be prepared to move to find the right next move even if this means going through the rigmarole of job hunting or hooking the right contract every two or three years. The sector you choose to work in may be driven by contract arrangements in any case.

Table 1.3 gives examples of life and career values. Which ones are important to you to have or be in your life and career to make you truly happy and feel successful?

Having considered which values are important to you, you can build a life and career which incorporates them. For example, if achievement is very important to you, you could look for careers where results are exceedingly important ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Decisions, decisions …
• Chapter 2 Creating your career
• Chapter 3 Working out the ‘how to’
• Chapter 4 Connecting with your network
• Chapter 5 Hunting out that right opportunity
• Chapter 6 Proving yourself
• Chapter 7 Promoting yourself
• Chapter 8 What’s stopping you? Make it happen!
• Chapter 9 Moving on … Your future
• Chapter 10 Here’s to life!
• Further reading
• Useful addresses and further information