Taking a year off after graduation?

I am planning to returning to school after I graduate. As a senior, however, the thought of another 3 years of school right now (at minimum) makes me a bit queasy. That's why I am planning to take a gap year.

I didn't realize that there were so many gap year resources out there. The career library has several related  books, such as Taking a Gap Year and Short Term Job Adventures, which list different organizations and programs. It seems like you can do anything in a gap year - volunteerism, expeditions, seasonal farmwork, au pair, manual labor - really, anything and everything you could think of is out there.

I met with career adviser Irene Komor to talk about my options. She recommended idealist.org as another great resource to find service programs that might be of interest. Idealist.org is a service program search database full of tons of listings of opportunities. When sifting through the website, I felt that I really needed to know what I wanted to do so I could make my search terms narrow enough to make the number of hits manageable.

So - how to decide? One thing to think about is location. Stay at home or go abroad? I know that the U.S. has many established programs such as Teach for America, Americorps, and CityYear, but there are endless opportunities abroad like the Peace Corps, au pairing, non-profit work, and who knows when I'll have another chance to do something like this again?

Another thing to think about is what you want to do. Do you want to wet your feet in your future career field? Do you want to engage in public service projects and get more involved in your community? Or do you want to try something completly new? The important thing is to consider what you want to get out of your experience.

Check out the "Cornell Gap Year" and "Arts and Sciences Career Services, Cornell University" for other potential gap year ideas. As I continue to pick my way through the forest of gap year programs, I will update you with my findings!

~ Elizabeth L.

Student Career Ambassador

College of Arts and Sciences

Cornell University

Walkthroughs for Life

I'm not going to lie - I am a walkthrough person. My roommate and I watched one of our friends play a game last night and I found myself consistently shouting 'Google' every time he got stuck and didn't know what to do. Granted that should have been our cue to stop procrastinating, we nonetheless persisted and eventually beat the game - two hours well spent doing nothing. If life were that simple, I'd be able to land a job in Australia and the visa to go along with it in two hours.

I was browsing the Career Services page and found a lovely guide to getting jobs abroad so I decided to actually sit down and answer the questions. And of course, it turns out that I'm pretty clueless about what I want to do. All I know is that I want to go to Australia because 1) they speak english, 2) they have an accent(!), and 3) they have koalas and the largest rock in the world (why else would you want to go to Australia if it weren't for the rock?). Of course, I also want to do environmental policy and Australia is a very environmentally-oriented country. And according to the International Job Search Guide on the Career Services page, I should assess my options and develop a strategy. So let's assess:

• It's important to clarify what you are looking for: I want to work in a non-profit or an environmental organization so that I can gain some experience for grad school/life.
• What kind of opportunity are you pursuing? A year-long opportunity. So that would probably fall under long-term because short-term in my mind means 3 months.
• Skills & experience? I speak Chinese - not really. But I do speak English so I think I'm all set for Australia; No technical skills unless Excel counts. I will be a Cornell graduate though! And I've had several internships with non-profits, doing everything from stuffing envelopes to developing fundraising strategies to grant-writing.
• What is the market like? I spent a good while in the A&S Career Services Library last week so I learned that, like the US and probably everywhere else in the world, citizens get preference over foreigners for job opportunities. But I did find this amazing link to environmental organizations in Australia and I'm still in the process of going through the site.

That was relatively painless. The next step, according to the International Job Search guide, is to develop a strategy. And that's the hard part so I'm just going to slack off  and leave that bit for next time. Maybe by then someone will have created a walkthrough for my life and I can just do a Google search every time I'm stuck. ~Jessica

Career Counseling

So I took the plunge and had my first career counseling appointment with Irene Komor. It was helpful just to talk to Irene about what my career ideas were and why. She helped me realize that the careers I'm currently most interested in are eerily similar to my parents' careers...hmmm. Her advice was to keep branching out and to try to find internships/jobs in other fields I might enjoy so that I can begin to see them from up close--much the way I've already seen my parents' jobs up close. When I mentioned that I might be interested in history research, but don't have time for it over the school year, Irene brought up the novel idea of looking for a research opportunity in my hometown over the summer. My lovely city is full of universities, but I had never thought of looking for work there. Irene also suggested that I make a list of things I liked and didn't like from past jobs and volunteer experiences so I can get a better idea of what kind of work I enjoy.

I'm supposed to be taking two self-assessment tests before my next appointment: Myers-Briggs for temperament and Strong Interest Inventory for, well, interests. I haven't given them a try yet (pesky prelims) but I'm very curious to see the results. My next appointment is in a week and half or so. I'll keep you updated.

If you're interested in scheduling a career counseling appointment with Irene Komor to take some fun tests and maybe figure out what'll make you get up and look forward to going to work, please call A&S Career Services at 607-255-4166 or stop by our office in G55 Goldwin Smith.

Liz
Student Career Ambassador

Where the platypuses (platypi?) roam...

Over the past summer, I ambitiously decided that I would go to Australia after I graduate so that I can have the adventure of my life before heading off to grad school. However, as life at Cornell started to pick up again, I began to feel less confident about whether I will be able to pull it off. I’ve been contacting people and doing research but it seems like I’ve only made the most marginal amount of progress:

I’ve talked to my friends in Australia, I’ve talked to my relatives in Australia, I’ve talked to my advisors about moving to Australia, and I’ve talked to recruiting agencies in Australia. I’ve also browsed through the international binders at the A&S Career Services Library, and I’ve scoured the Cornell Career Services site for information about going abroad. And, so far, the general impression that I have right now is that it’s not impossible but it’s definitely going to be a lot more complicated than I had originally thought it would be. For one thing, I have to worry about getting a visa, then there’s the fact that Australia is in the Southern hemisphere, meaning I would be going in the winter. And where would I stay while I’m there? What if I get sick while I’m there? And of course I can’t forget the fact that I haven’t even found a job yet.

But I have been investigating opportunities through AIESEC, and there is always BUNAC to fall back on or even some other volunteering opportunity. Plus, I’ve been going through books in the A&S Career Services Library and I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration. International Jobs, by Nina Segal, has a lot of great resources that I’ve been slowly going through. The recruiting agency contact that I spoke to had also recommended that I do some research about the Australian market so I’ve been going through this other book, Jobs and Careers Abroad, by Guy Hobbs, which covers just that. It describes the visa process and has country profiles for a number of different countries. The book also lists online employment sources specific to each country, long-term and short-term opportunities, and even lists international companies with subsidiaries in the country. Hopefully I’ll be able to find something that works for me in those books. If not, my next step would be to start contacting alumni through CCNet. In the meantime, I also have the luxury of stressing out over job applications and grad applications in the US! If worse comes to worse, I can always work at a McDonald's - in Australia.

Jessica
Student Career Ambassador
Arts and Sciences Career Services

What am I going to do with my life? Career Counseling

In an effort to get more of an idea of my ever-elusive purpose and direction, I just scheduled an appointment for next week with Career Counselor Irene Komor. This appointment will help me identify my strengths and areas of interest. I'm told not to expect a silver bullet; Irene can't look into a crystal ball and tell me my calling. Still, I think it'll help just to sit down with someone and talk through possible career paths. How often do you get to take a break from rushing around from classroom to library to meeting to stop and consider the goal of all your hard work? Even if you think you know exactly what you want to do, it might be helpful to reexamine and open your mind to other options.

Career Counseling appointments are an hour long. You can schedule over the phone by calling A&S Career Services at 607-255-4166 or in person at Goldwin Smith G55. You'll need to fill out a quick form about your interests and return it a day before your appointment. That'll help give Irene a chance get to know you a little bit beforehand.

Hope you all enjoyed fall break and are enjoying being back in lovely, freezing Ithaca.

Liz
Student Career Ambassador
Arts and Sciences Career Services

A&S Student Career Ambassadors: Right There With You

Here's a secret: I work at the Arts & Sciences Career Services Office, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

I spend my days helping other students find their career paths by critiquing resumes and scheduling appointments with career advisors, but my own path is not clear to me. Law, nonprofit work, editing, photography--they all sound great. So how to decide?

As a history major, I get nerdily excited about scrounging around for information. So my Step 1 is finding all the summer opportunities and future options that I can.

Today I flipped through a binder of fellowship listings in the A&S Career Library and discovered how many opportunities (and how much funding) are out there waiting for students to claim them.

Who knew about the American Bar Foundation Summer Research Diversity Fellows program in Chicago (http://americanbarfoundation.org/research/Fellowshipopportunities/SummerResearchDiversityFellowshipsinLawandSocialScience.html), which offers the opportunity to learn more about social science research over ten weeks? It may have an unwieldy title, but the program does provide housing and a $3,600 stipend.

Or what about getting funding for an unpaid or underpaid summer service internship through the J.W. Saxe Memorial Prize (http://www.jwsaxefund.org/)?

Or one to three month "Studentships" at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy? Sure, you have to be over 20 and speak fluent Italian--which I'm not and I don't--but this one was too exciting not to mention.

The Career Library is full of finds like this, but most people don't know it exists. Come on over to Goldwin Smith G55 (our lovely basement office) anytime between 8 am and 4:30 pm on weekdays--even during fall break!--and take a look. I guarantee you'll be pleasantly surprised.

~Liz
A&S Student Career Ambassador