Turning Resolutions into Goals – Part 1/2

 
An image of the Eaton Center during the winter holiday season - there are 3 giant reindeer made from LED lights
One of my new year's resolution was to improve my photography methods by taking a picture a week
  January is the month of New Year's resolutions – discounted gym memberships, free calendars, half price journals and schedules, cook books with new recipes for the year, etc. It seems as if everyone is ready to ditch their old habits from the previous year and start a fresh positive life. However, as January ends, this hype slowly fades away. Why?

“So, How’s School Going?”

Two Christmas cards lying on a bed
Reflecting on another stressful holiday season
“So, how’s school going?” “What are you studying?” “And what do you plan to do with that degree?” The only thing scarier than homemade fruitcake and the song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause” during the holidays is the bombardment of questions from relatives and family friends pertaining to my career during holiday get-togethers. However, I could easily be persuaded that their responses to my answers are even scarier.

Overcoming my Fear of Networking

Several stick figures branching off from one central stick figure so that they look like a web
This could be me one day. Photo by Peggy Margo via Pixabay
Networking makes me uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that I try to do it as infrequently as possible. That’s why I decided to attend the Career Centre’s Talking to Professionals workshop to learn more about how to network, and how to become more comfortable doing so. Since networking can sometimes be just as important in finding a job as your actual resume, I decided that it was time to overcome my fear.

Revisiting the World of Social Innovation

Before I made the decision to finish my education, I was fortunate enough to experience the beginnings of a promising career in social innovation. It was an exciting time because I was working in a community transitioning between a decade long recession and a promise of economic recovery. This community, at the time, was being courted by several large-scale industrial projects with deep pockets.  Though the social implications from these projects' investments were mostly welcome, the challenge lay in figuring out how best to benefit from them, while mitigating as many negative social impacts as possible. The majority of my work involved leading projects that required me to be immersed in the world of social innovation.
Photo of the sunsetting on a slightly cloudy day behind islands and the ocean
The Community
Unfortunately, for all of the work I was doing on the ground, there were always significant obstacles being met at higher levels. I guess this is the plight of grassroots movements, but as frustrating as it was to experience, it also brought me to an understanding of the difficulties faced by today’s social innovators. In this understanding, the only way I could see myself becoming a more effective social innovator was to finish my degree and gain more access to higher level decision-making processes.

Entrepreneurship 101: All About Ideas

A picture of a screen asking for audience participation
The audience could interact directly with the panelists through text
For a perfectionist who’s extremely insecure about my ideas, it’s a wonder I’ve been able to publish weekly blogs without collapsing under my own pressure. In order to gain some insight into how to come up with good ideas—and how to make sure they’re actually good—I attended Entrepreneurship 100: Conversations, a live, interactive panel hosted by the Impact Centre in collaboration with the Career Centre. The panel featured three University of Toronto-affiliated entrepreneurs and centred on discussing where ideas come from, and how to tell if they’re any good. The audience could participate in the discussion through text, take part in polls, and ask the panelists questions. The entrepreneurs answered the audience’s questions and spoke about their experiences throughout their careers.

The “Study” in Study Abroad

Study abroad has been a life changing international experience where I have learned to live independently, experience a new culture, and study in a different academic environment. Most of my posts have been about the fun parts of traveling and living “abroad” part of studying abroad and now I am going to focus on the main reason for my exchange which is to “study” abroad.

All About the Work Study Program

Aesthetic shot of a type writer with notebooks scattered around it
I wish my work space looked like this. Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
As a work-study Career Centre blogger, I think it’s about time I blog about U of T’s Work Study program. U of T’s Work Study is available to U of T students registered in at least 2.0 courses from September to April of the school year. You cannot work more than 12 hours per week, and are paid at least minimum wage per hour. Usually, these jobs are relevant to your studies, interests, or anticipated careers. Intrigued? Read on to hear how I found my work study position, how I make time for work with a full course load, and the lessons I learned from my current blogging job.

9-5 Wars: My Journey from full-time student to full-time employee

I lived near campus when I was a full-time student and I still had to rush to just barely make my 10 am classes but lately, I’ve been out of bed by 6:00 am and out the door by 7:00 am. I recently started working full-time while being in school part-time two days a week. I didn't quite feel done with my undergraduate experience when I first got the notification of having completed my credits so I decided to step into the workplace and get the experience but still stay in touch with academia. Before this new position, I had never worked 9-5 every day; I have had summer jobs but all with odd shift hours or 4-6 hours per shift which made sense for me at the time. Now that I have joined the workforce, I am in complete shock of how much more my body is capable of in a full day.
Tim Hortons cup in Sargam's hand
coffee and I, what a wonderful love story

How I Found Value in a Bad Job

A professional photo of snowy mountains
Okay, my job didn't take place on a treacherous snowy mountain top, but it FELT like it did. Stock photo taken by ZivotNaCestach.cz via PicJumbo.
The snow was piled as high as a small dog and the wind roared so ferociously that the temperature dropped almost forty degrees below zero. I stood outside, on a street corner, with a security shirt pulled over my puffy winter jacket. This was one of my first jobs: acting as “security” for a weekend-long outdoor winter festival. After that weekend, I—understandably—caught a cold and developed a phobia of snowmen and red and green sweaters.
A picture of the app, Forest: there's a timer set to thirty minutes and a count down of thirty minutes happening around a picture of a pine tree

Adventures in Time Management: Finding Time For My Career

A picture of the app, Forest: there's a timer set to thirty minutes and a count down of thirty minutes happening around a picture of a pine tree
Setting up Forest before tackling one of my essays
One of my goals this year—as a Career Centre blogger and as an undergraduate student—is to focus more on my career through exploring different jobs, networking, and building my skills and resume. However, as midterms and essays and extracurricular activities started to pile up during October, I realized I wasn’t contributing as much time to developing my career as I would like. In university, I think it’s just as important to strengthen your employability as it is to get an education. An undergraduate degree is usually just four years. After that, you’re in the work force for most of your adult life. Thinking about this partly motivates me even more to prepare for life after graduation, and partly sends me into a panic. Since October was not as balanced as I would have liked, I decided to try out Forest, a productivity and time management app. It didn’t go quite as well as I thought it would, but it did yield some career insights.