Gradlife

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So you’re a grad student? Okay, then what? I imagine (quite literally) this question has permeated most of our minds at one point or another. Or perhaps you’ve heard this question posed to you: What are you going to do with all that education anyways? (insert judging tone). And quite frankly, you don’t know the answer. Well,  DON’T FEAR! I met with the lovely Maria Kapakos who is a career counselor at the Career Centre to discuss what services are available to us, and how they can help us plan for the future. It turns out she had more information than I expected – there’s lots of options! This post will focus on Academic Path Career Services. Here’s what I found out:

1)    There is one-on-one counseling that is personalized to your academic path, history and future. There are 5 career counselors on-board who are able to meet with you privately in person, on the phone, or via skype. These appointments can be made on Monday and Tuesday between 9am-6pm, and Wednesday through Friday from 9am-5pm. This is probably a good starting point, where you can have an in-depth discussion to find out exactly what you need and what direction to go in terms of other resources.

 2)    There is a special part of the Career Centre website made just for us! This portion of the website addresses issues such as: grad career development, grad career options, job search strategies, and how to properly assess your skills. You can also access information regarding workshops, (speaking of which…)

 3)    There are multiple workshops that take place throughout the year that address common issues for grad students. When you go to the workshop portion of the website, there will be a listing of the workshops offered. Notice that some specifically say PhD and Masters students – these are for you! Unless otherwise noted, assume that most workshops will have an undergraduate focus. Graduate workshops focus on subjects that are important to us, such as: the academic interview, and the academic work search.

**WORKSHOP HINT: Coming up on November 14^th: The Academic Interview Workshop and November 17^th:  Career Choice & Your Personality Workshop. Check out the website for more information if these sound interesting to you!

4)    The Career Centre can help you with issues you may be having with your supervisor. The reality is, not all of us have a supervisor that we happily write (email?) home about. Unfortunately, this means we can start to feel trapped and worry about who we can discuss these issues with, without causing potential injury to ourselves, our supervisory panel, or the department. The counselors at the Career Centre are there to help, with full-confidentiality. This could be another great reason to book a one-on-one appointment.

 And last but not least, you might be reading this thinking about how you’ve decided the Academic career path is the wrong one and you are considering other options. Not a problem, the Career Centre has a plethora of resources for this too. Unfortunately to cover non-academic career resources right here, right now, would make this post tragically lengthy. So, what does that mean? Stay tuned for another post in the future that targets non-academic career resources specifically! In the meantime, check out the Career Centre page and book an appointment.

The Career Centre is located in the Koffler Student Services Building (at the corner of College and St. George). Contact information can be found here.