What Now? - Opening address - Part 2

The last reason I bring up my story is because I - kind of going back to my white t-shirt and basketball shorts moment - is, you have choices. You know, you're dealing with failure, you're dealing with these issues you may not have been ready or seen coming. And so you have a choice to either wallow like I did and grow a ridiculously patchy beard or... [laughter] to kind of get yourself out of it and to kind of be proactive and move forward and learn from it and make it an experience that will help you kind of prepare you for whatever comes next. And so I hope, and by being here today that that's part of that process for you. So like I said, I got a job, I'm here, been doing it for a long time and the thing that, for some reason, maybe it's because my beard starts to come in grey and I have a lot more white hair, or that I squint a lot more because I can't see as well. But for some reason people seem to think I do okay at my job. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to go back to my grad program and talk to students in the masters' program who are taking a career counseling type of jobs, or class. And one student asked me once, you know, is there a career theory or model, because there actually are models out there for how we do our work, aside from Freud, because that would be a different type of work. But what type of theory or model best fits your career path so far? And the thing that, thinking about it, I came up with this one that probably fits me best. It's called "planned happenstance". And what that really means, I'm going to quote here because I don't remember much anymore is, planned happenstance is this model that's focused on taking advantage of and creating events in your job search that open doors or new opportunities. So basically what it boils down to is kind of the make your own luck. So the more you open yourself up to new experiences, the more opportunities you take advantage of, new doors are going to open for you. Makes sense, pretty straightforward, people have made good money off of that kind of thing. The thing that I really appreciate about planned happenstance is that they outline what are some of the qualities that open-minded people exhibit. And I'll just read those quickly for you. One is curiosity. Another - persistence, flexibility, optimism, risk-taking. So the optimism one has always been a difficult one for me because I'm kind of a glass half empty guy. Sorry to tell you. But I really do appreciate this model because, thinking back on my experiences and everything that I've done, the times when I've been successful have been the times when I've been proactive. And I've been willing to take risks and try things that are outside of my comfort zone. And so why in the world am I talking about that? Because thinking about this event and what we're hoping that you get out of this event is that we hope this is one of those opportunities for you to try something different, to open new doors for you, to learn new skills or learn new things about yourself to get yourself prepared for whatever's next in terms of looking for jobs or grad school or all those other things. You have done a great job so far. You're here. So that means you have opened the door. Now is how do you take advantage of this opportunity? And I really suggest that you think about those qualities that I mentioned before and especially a couple of them. First of all, be curious. Ask a lot of questions. This is your day. There's going to be employers here; ask them anything you want to know. There's people who do this for a living. Ask us what we know enough to help you. But also kind of focus on that taking risks piece. You know, I'm an introvert and I'm standing up here thinking oh, there's a lot of people in this room, I'm going to have to go take a nap. [laughter] And so take a risk. Try some of these things that they're going to ask you to do today. They're going to ask you to try networking and you know, kind of the 20 second commercials, things like that. So try them. Try them out. See how it feels. Understand yourself enough to feel how's this going to fit for me. How am I going to be able to benefit from this and take this experience, this skill, and kind of mesh it into who I am and how I approach the job search? And the other thing I would also suggest, you know, from planned happenstance is that you know, you probably bring a lot of experiences. You might have done a lot of stuff related to writing resumes and interviewing. You might actually know the answer to how many jelly beans fit inside a 747. You may have done networking. You might have a great network already. Share those experiences with all those other people in the room because you're going to learn as much from them and you might be able to connect with some opportunities that you didn't know about because of the people that you surround yourself with. So it's not necessarily just sitting back, listening to us talk, because hopefully no one's sleeping yet, but being able to be interactive with the people around you and use them as a support network. All right, the one thing I would add about planned happenstance, even though I think it makes the most sense related to all the other theories for me, the one thing that I see that's missing kind of on a personal level is the idea of having support around you. You know, going through this process can be really tough. You know, even in a good economy the average student might take three to nine months to find a job. And so it's really difficult, it's time consuming. If you don't understand it, you might not understand what's happening. You might get into that "I'm a bad person" but having people around you to help support you and kind of keep you going is important. And so having a professional or friends from college or a family that can support you is integral to that. But I also want you to understand that we're all career services folks. This is what we do for a living and this is what we love to do and we have - except for maybe her [laughter] - We're really good at what we do. [laughter] (female) Thanks Mark. Yeah, you're welcome. It's because you videotaped me. (female) I know. But I just want you to understand, we're here to help. Each college has their own career services office so we specialize in understanding what makes each college unique, the job opportunities that are available for each college, and relating to each different major. And so take advantage of us. We want to be here to help you. That's why we're putting on today and that's why we kind of do the work that we do. Whether you kind of come in asking, I don't know how to market myself appropriately on a resume or I'm having a tough time understanding why in the world someone would ask me how many jelly beans fit inside a 747 or kind of getting to the point of I'd like to negotiate a job offer, things like that. We're here to kind of help you through that entire process and understand all the pieces of that process so that you don't get caught in thinking that it's you, but understanding how different things happen along the way. The one last piece I would add, again I'm going to have a sports metaphor in here, is a lot of the stuff you're going to learn today are skills. And for some of you you're probably more advanced at some of those skills than others of you who have not maybe thought about some of these things before. And the only way you get better at skills is to practice. And whether it's you take advantage of the opportunities to practice today, using our offices to come in and practice with us, that's what we're here to do. And so please take advantage of all of those things. You know, my sports analogy is always think about dribbling a basketball. You know, watching my five year old try to dribble a basketball is pretty funny. First of all we have right now - we're redoing our driveway so we don't have a very good place. So it's really funny to watch. But when she dribbles her head goes up and down like her head's dribbling because she's so focused on that ball, making sure her hand touches the ball. But when you think about doing this over the course of 10, 15 years you get so good at dribbling a basketball you don't have to think about it. You can think about who am I going to pass to? Am I going to shoot? How am I going to beat my defender? All of those other things that are available. And we kind of see ourselves to some extent - this is a bad metaphor - but kind of as your coach. To help you understand what are the different options and how to practice so that you dribble effectively and by the rules and all of those other things so we want to make sure that we're here to kind of... [end]