Thursday 22 January 2015

2nd Year Undergraduates

My Visit to Bath Spa.

On Tuesday 20th of January I visited my alma mater to speak about my experience post graduation. I LOVED it. First of all I got to meet a few lecturers and staff who I never had before, plus meet up with my old tutors. I also got to meet some other graduates who had really interesting stories as well. It was lovely to meet them all.

There was a distinct feeling of students up at my campus. Usually, in the wild, I see them all spread out or in small groups roaming the cities. I saw a guy skateboarding to the SU. That guy was winning at being a student.

In my final year, much of the campus was under construction while a new giant building was built. We were lucky enough to get to speak in one of the new lecture theaters. Obviously there were about 35 people in the room, this is their writing week to do nothing while the uni puts on career focused workshops.

There were definitely some despairing faces out there. Who didn't know what they wanted to do. But I felt like I crowbarred in enough of what I really wanted to say. One of the questions the leader of the seminar asked was:

If you were sitting in this room right now, what do you wish someone had told you:

"How much time you have now. Once you leave uni, there is no money, and no time. So while you have time and money at uni, make the most of it. Freelance, blog, intern, work shadow, and read."

One of my fellow graduates said: "Ah see, I'm pretty sure someone DID tell me, and I just ignored them. I'd say just make sure everything you do is useful. If you're on a team, think about how that would reflect on your CV."

And

"It's going to be hard. and scary. And it takes months or years of persistence to get a job." Why not start now??

What I enjoyed was that we all had very different stories, and we all said the same things from a different view point. If I was invited back next year, I would try to frame my answers a little better there was so much that I wanted to say that sometimes I felt a little garbled.

It was great to go back and I'd do it again!

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