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By: Michelle Bancroft, GradLife Ambassador

Hi everyone, I am Michelle Bancroft the new GradLife Ambassador and I am overjoyed to have the opportunity to share helpful tips, tricks, and resources so that you continue to get the best out of your graduate experience at UofT!

 Picture of me! (Michelle Bancroft)

Who am I?! Great existential question. The short of it is, I am a graduate student like you! I am currently doing my Master in Adult Education & Community Development, at OISE. I did my undergraduate in Kinesiology, a post-graduate in Workplace Wellness and Health Promotions, and I dabbled in two years of Respiratory Therapy school before I found out it wasn’t the right place for me. I bet many of you have had windy paths to get to this point as well!

I also bet that many of you were not expecting to have this majour pandemic as an obstacle in the road to completing graduate school – I know I wasn’t! However, I am trying to use this unexpected departure from my “normal” life routine to embrace learning to be more adaptable. The way that I see it, all of us navigating this new experience are actual at an advantage to have time to flex our ‘adaptability’ muscles, and practice for all the inevitable ups and downs in our lives.

Therefore, it can be helpful to focus on the great skills your building through these unprecedented times, and Forbes.com has an excellent article helping you do that! In their recent article Five Skills Everyone Needs To Become More Adaptable In The Coronavirus Era — And Afterward, author Jarret Jackson explains how to harness you developing adaptability skills and highlight them to future employers. However, you can also use the recognition of these new skills as a way to embrace some of the positives that are coming from this current situation.

Jackson (2020) explains that “adaptability is both an attitude and a capability: It’s thinking differently about problems so that there are always opportunities over obstacles”. Doesn’t that sound great?! He goes on to describe his SCIFF acronym for the 5 characteristics of adaptability. Curious what they are???

Check out this article for the full details!

ARTICLE LINK

Picture from article Five Skills Everyone Needs To Become More Adaptable In The Coronavirus Era — And Afterward, by Jarret Jackson, 2020

I hope you enjoyed my first post! Leave a comment below on what you thought about this article, post, or any questions. I can’t wait to connect with all of you and provide you some more fun and engaging tips, tricks, and resources to help enhance your experience as a graduate student! Until the next time, stay happy, healthy, and adaptable! 🙂