Life After the WPMBA Program
Wait, is there life after the WPMBA program?! Right now, with just two quarters under my belt, it’s easy to feel like post-graduation is far off. But it’s important to remember that I will eventually graduate one day. And while I really like my job, I don’t know if it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. So that’s why, when Fisher Career Services scheduled a career session specifically for WPMBA students, I immediately signed up.
The session, held this past Sunday afternoon, focused on helping us think through what our values, talents, and likes/dislikes are, and then use those to create a “Career Marketing Plan”. Personally, I found the values exercise to be the easiest – out of a list of about 30 values, check the eight that matter most to you. Things like health, friendship, challenge, and variety were at the top of mine. From there, we went to the likes/dislikes exercise, in which we listed out things that we both liked and disliked about our past three positions. In doing this exercise, I realized how much of what I currently do at work I really like, and forced me to articulate what I don’t like as much. The talents exercise was more of a challenge – it instructed you to recall times in which you felt certain emotions, like “proud” or “fulfilled”.
These three exercises were meant to give us a foundation for building our “Career Marketing Plan”. By knowing what is important to us and what we like to do, we can lay out a description of who we are and what we want out of our careers. This helps us focus our job search on positions that will actually fit our needs, rather than approach the process with a more open and generally haphazard approach.
Overall, I was very pleased with the WPMBA Career Session and appreciative that it was offered. I hope to attend more events like this in the future that will better prepare me for life after the WPMBA Program!