College Grad Lessons

As some of you may already know, I decided to take a break from blogging for a bit to focus on my transition to grad school and figure out a good work/school balance for myself.

Please let me know if you have suggestions for full or part-time positions that would suit my interests in web development and social media and are located in the DC area (or allow telecommuting).

I hope to come back to College Grad Lessons shortly to share my preparation for grad school, my thoughts on being a year out of college and more.

I’m looking for part-time work that would complement my grad studies this fall. I’ll be attending University of Maryland for their Master’s in Information Management program. Of course, a graduate assistantship would be great but I realize that state schools are facing budget cuts.

I’ve submitted my graduate assistantship application to the school and have slowly started reaching out to people on campus that might benefit from someone with my skill set (web development and training).

I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for finding part-time work for grad students. I want to continue doing something related to web development so I can continue to build my resume during grad school.

Grad students - How did you find work? What do you do?

Others - Any ideas? What have your friends/family done?

About two weeks ago, @Falldog sent me an article that he thought would be fitting for College Grad Lessons. The article, “Job Forecast for College Seniors: Grimmer Than Ever,” was featured in Time and highlights what many of us are experience or trying to avoid. For recent college graduates, like myself, having any job is considered lucky. This might mean a rough start to our ideal career path, but it’s a reality. For college students thinking about graduating from college, the grim job forecast means flexibility and preparation are imperative.

The article highlighted the colleges and universities are amping up their career services because grad school might not be the best option for student that already have loans and even those with job offers need to keep handing out their resume:

Meanwhile, schools are pulling out the stops to help students beat out the competition. Counselors everywhere are encouraging students to turn to their alumni networks for help. The University of Maryland has conducted workshops with an emphasis on networking. The career office shared by Haverford and Bryn Mawr recently gave each senior 50 business cards listing their name and major.

For students who have already managed to snag an offer, they might want to keep their business cards handy. According to NACE, as many as 8% of employers will be forced to rescind at least some of the offers they made in the fall. “In this economy, we don’t even use the terminology ’sewn up’ anymore,” says Roseborough. More like coming apart at the seams.

The college that I graduated from and currently work for has certainly increased the number of resume and job-hunting workshops, but honestly I don’t know if they are even throwing a career fair.

What is your college or university doing to help students find jobs in the tough economy?

Liz did a two part post this week about the question, “What is success?” I caught myself frequenting her blog to read all of the comments, but it took me a few days to come up with my own response. Liz is a college student and questioned, “How can you be successful in your chosen career without having a corporate lifestyle?” Comments on her first post about success centered around happiness, but defining happiness and the so called “balanced” life is tough.

After some thought, I finally came up with what to post as a comment on the second post:

It’s been less than a year since I graduated college and this is a question I wish I had the answer to. The one thing I have learned is that it’s okay to change your mind about your career, the lifestyle you want, etc. I majored in Economics, thought I wanted to go to law school, changed my mind, took a post-grad internship at a top PR firm that I thought would be perfect and didn’t like it. I ended up working as a web developer (definitely wasn’t in my plans) at the college I graduated from (also not in the plans) and LOVE it. The point is the definition of success and happiness changed for me many times between junior year of college and now. Luckily you don’t necessarily need a degree in what you want to do. I want the experience of the big “corporate” lifestyle at some point in my life, but not my whole life. For me, I think that’s how I’ll reconcile the conflict between wanting to have career success/challenges and also wanting a laid back, slower life where a career isn’t my focus.

Over the past day I thought about the balance I’m looking for in life a bit more. I figured this was an important thing to reflect on given that I’m 95% sure that I’m going to be quiting my job this summer and going to grad school full-time in the fall. Given the state of the economy, I’m lucky to have a secure, challenging job (even if I feel it’s underpaid). At the end of the day, I’m happy with my job, so I need to be 100% sure that grad school is the right step toward “success” and “happiness.”

Ten years from now, I want to have a senior or mid-level position (depending on the size of the company) in the IT industry doing a mix of consulting and actual development projects relating to knowledge management and/or web development. I want to be making enough money to be able to own a comfortable sized condo or home and have money to spend on fun stuff. Accomplishing these things would make me feel successful.

On the other side, I want to be married, have a kid or two and have time to spend with family and friends. I want to have time for a hobby or two and an occasional vacation. I think having these things in my life ten years from now would make me feel happy.

Beyond the next ten years, I’m less certain what I’ll be looking for in life. Currently, I consider my “dream life” to be one in which I work for myself/have a small company (something web development/business consulting related), have a flexible schedule with free time (I realize the first two don’t always work together), can work from home if I want to and live in the South and close to the beach. Accomplishing these things in the next twenty years would be the next level of success and happiness for me.

I try to make decisions about things like grad school based on whether they will get me closer to these goals. I suppose the challenge is that I’ve changed my mind a lot (as I mentioned in the comment I posted), so what’s to say I won’t change my mind again.

Do you have goals that you use to evaluate big decisions? Have they changed in the past few years? Do you feel them changing now?

This post was written for Twenty-Something Writers, a new blog that promotes writing, sharing ideas and motivating each other to sit down and write. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

As twenty-something writers, most of us are students or young professionals that wouldn’t mind making some extra money. Although writing might be something that you just do for fun, you can use your blogging and other writing to help land freelance or part-time jobs.

I’m attending grad school full-time starting this fall and have been looking for a part-time job. I currently work full-time as a web developer and training specialist and recently interviewed for a part-time/contract web design position with an interactive design firm. One of the samples I sent to the firm was a blog template that I built for WordPress, so the person interviewing me asked if I had experience writing. Although I hadn’t planned on talking about College Grad Lessons (something that I do for fun and still needs a lot of work), it was the perfect writing sample for web content. The positive response that I received regarding my blog made me realize that I should consider freelance/part-time copywriting as another type of part-time job to pursue during grad school.

As a twenty-something writer, here are ten freelance/part-time jobs to consider:

1. Copywriter - Search job postings and contact local PR and design firms to find potential copywriter positions. Send a link to your blog and few other writing samples and highlight your computer skills.
2. Blogger - Blogs are becoming increasingly popular for small business marketing, but business owners often lack the time to research and write blog posts related to their business. Watch local job postings and search for businesses with blogs that need more or better content to find potential blogging jobs.
3. Web Content Editor - Small businesses and design firms may be interested in hiring a web content editor to edit copy and add content to web sites. Look for job postings with WordPress listed as a desired skill.
4. Tutor - Local schools or private companies may be looking to hire English tutors. Also consider posting flyers or an ad in a school newspaper to find interested parents and students. In high school, I tutored as a part-time job and made a decent amount of money. In addition to helping students with homework, you could offer creative writing lessons. (more…)
   

After getting accepted into grad school for information management last week, I’ve started thinking about how it will impact my career. I plan to send my response to the program saying that I will attend in the fall within the next week, but need to be absolutely sure that leaving my current job won’t be a mistake.

As someone with a B.A. in Economics and an interest in web development/information architecture, I feel that a Master’s in Information Management is an important step in putting some theory and formal education behind the skill set I have gained through independent projects and working as a Web Developer/CMS Training Specialist at the College. The Web Team I work for met me as an intern and I had the opportunity to prove that I was a fast learner and had natural talent for web development before applying for a “real job.” This made it easier to land my current job with them. My fear is that my career development will be too slow if I don’t get a degree to add some weight to when I take about my experience and interests. I hope that my time in grad school will also double as some time to take risks, work on my own projects and try out some other positions.

As much as grad school is important to me, I don’t want to be left without a job when I graduate or with a job that I didn’t need the degree to get. With enough planning in advance, I would expect that I’ll find something I’m happy with but is that just wishful thinking? In the short run, what about part-time work? I’m not sure that a graduate assistantship is the right move for me and I might not get one. I’d love to do some freelance to gain broader experience outside of higher ed, but maybe I need to have a more traditional job first? Ideally I’d like to find a place that I can telecommute most of the time and would allow me to keep working with Content Management Systems, but figure such jobs would be highly competitive.

I’d love to hear anyone’s insight or personal experience with grad school/jobs. Even better, does anyone have recommendations for a good job for me?

A few days ago I got accepted to University of Maryland’s (UMD) Master’s of Information Management (MIM) program. While I’m still deciding if this is definitely the program I want to attend, I’m excited about the program and surprised at the relatively easy admissions process. Compared to applying to college (over a year long process for me) or law school (I only made it about 75% through that process before changing my mind), applying to grad school for a specialized field of study was much easier.

My grad school application timeline went like this:

• Late November/Early December: Started to seriously consider going to grad school for information architecture, interaction design or something similar.
• December: Researched schools, made a short list of programs that might work based on curriculum, location and cost; signed up for the GRE; bought a GRE study book.
• Late December/Early January: Came across UMD’s MIM program, which “meets the growing need organizations have for information professionals who understand the issues of information management; business management; computer science; and information systems.”
• January: Applied to UMD (had a Feb. 1 deadline, but luckily I didn’t have to submit GRE scores); studied for the GRE; took the GRE and did better than I thought I would (around the 80th percentile)
• February: Worked on my list of other programs to apply to; got accepted to UMD’s MIM program on February 10

My entire grad school application process - from deciding to seriously look at programs to getting accepted - was just a little over two months. The process wasn’t stressful and I am confident that this is the right academic path to take for graduate study. When thinking about why this process was so easy compared to the law school application process, I think that the main factor was that the programs I was looking at this time felt right. (more…)

Driving back from my grandparents house (also know as “The Farm”), my boyfriend and I got to talking about all the things that we had done in 2008. It was a busy year for both of us, but 2009 might prove to be even more eventful. It’s exciting to think about what New Year’s Day 2010 might be like for me. I hope to start working on a Master’s Degree in Information Architecture, Interaction Design or something similar. I’ve also been thinking about looking for a job in another state (hopefully in the South) since some of the graduate programs I am applying to can be done entirely online. Ultimately I have no clue what I’ll be doing when 2009 comes to a close, but I’m enjoying the uncertainty.

In light of all of the possible changes I may experience in 2009, one of my resolutions is to make sure any changes I make in 2009 move me closer to my long term goals. (more…)