Faculty of Art
I find myself struggling to use my imagination these days. As a Master’s student, whether it is having not read anything for fun in years, or hitting a stalemate with my thesis, or being stuck in the worst timeline ever of polycrisis and hellfire—it is difficult to imagine what the next month will look like, much less be creative about what I can do with my future after this degree. But as I approach the end of my program, how can I prepare for what comes after? The following resources can be helpful for grad students like me, as we are forced to stare into the big, scary void (of our “infinite potential”).
- Odyssey Planning. Construct three different alternative realities: your current plan/trajectory, a back-up plan, and a “perfect world” plan. This one can be a fun journaling prompt in helping parse your professional goals and desires. It also apparently led this PhD to realize they wanted to go into consulting instead of academia (and they made it happen!).
- 5 Exercises from “Designing Your Life.” This exercise gives you a framework for how to think through an open-ended question (e.g., “What should I do when I finish graduate school?”). If you are a mind map type of person, this one is good for linking together different kinds of solutions.
- Imagine PhD. As someone who has not been exposed to many professional pathways, this was a great resource for just becoming aware of all the “job families” that are possible, the different skills most recognizably tethered to each, and how that might align with my own values. Good for learning about what can be put in the search bar for “jobs.”
- Meaningful Work Kit. This guided reflection asks you to identify core values, compatible work cultures, and desirable skills. While the most speculative of all the exercises, it did provide me with useful language to articulate what I seek in a workplace and gave me a way to ruminate on past work experiences (which will also come in handy for interviews and such).
It might feel burdensome to try to use these tools. Like me, you might approach them with a jaded lens that reads them as selling the very same pipe dream that academia once offered—that I can find work which will give me a sense of purpose and fulfillment. It can be hard to square that hopeful view of the future with the “challenging” (euphemistic) job prospects that currently exist in a world that can feel upside-down. However, these four tools have forced me to begin imagining, within bounds of reason (rather than doom or fantasy), what skills I have and how they can be put to use. At the very least, they have helped me to amass a vocabulary of useful words that carry meaning in the job market and could be used in a resume/cover letter.
Let us know if you try them out, what your thoughts are, and we can talk (or complain) about them together at the next Career Design Conversations session.
Written by Ying Han, Master’s student in Asian Studies, Curriculum Development and Communications Assistant at the Arts Amplifier.
Published: 11 October 2024