First Day of Interviews

So much goes on behind the scenes to make career opportunities blossom for university students. There's a great team developing opportunities with the employer community and others dedicated to the logistics of bringing the parties together.

The bloom opened today. We've got a full house of employers and students who are all trying to make the best decisions for themselves.

It brings a real refreshment to the air through the energy that exudes from the overall excitement. Yes, students may be more on-edge than employers since they look at the mountain from the bottom, while the hiring people feel it through their obligation and willingness to make the right selection and keep their team moving up the mountain.

At the risk of forcing the metaphors together, everyone should recognize that flowers in the meadow on the mountain are what it's about.

Career Trajectories

We often speak to Co-op students about their career trajectory. Keeping in mind that the possibility for one work-term that doesn't suit a student can happen, students generally are developing their career sense, if not a definable progression, during the three or so years they're in Co-op. So, when they're finished and graduated how does this continue?

Take a research scientist...as a Co-op student you would hope they get a few good stints in the lab. Perhaps they even get to explore some notions and ideas under a good mentor. Will they ever have the rapid rise in capabilities and exposure to personal development that happens in the crucible of the work-term? If they commence work in a research lab, post-graduation, will they be drinking the same amount from a fire hose or just a water fountain?

Consider a marketing student. They see four different studios and four different organizational structures, perhaps. This in the span of three years. Is that going to happen to them again...even with the shuddering thought that they will have to bounce from job to job due to economics?

Co-op is a steep learning curve for many reasons. First, you have to learn to know yourself and sell this notion on paper. Then, you have to adjust and perform in a new working and learning world for four months and return to apply that new knowledge in class. That point isn't really expected in the conventional working world...but maybe it should be...in the sense of sharing knowledge with your team.

Have any of us thought about the rapid adjustment and the need to internalize the change that goes on in the person of a Co-op student...likely not from the vantage point of our rather more shallow, later in the career, learning curves.

Swirling Textbooks

Dust is swirling. Papers are flying up in the air. Hammering sounds are echoing off walls. Sandals are scuffing down Winegard Walk.

It looks like change is here; new buildings; new carpets; new faces; new programs. It's feeling like Autumn and it looks like the new school year is almost here. When buildings are built, it takes a while. Each floor goes up over the course of weeks. I can watch the Engineering (north) work easily from where I am. That construction has been underway for a while. And soon it will be occupied.

When the new cohort comes here, that's nearly instantaneous. Nearly, I say, because the student presence changes every day during August. Varsity teams start to show up. There are early arrivals, with parents being toured around. What you can't mistake is the population change. There are definitely more people on campus today, relative to one month ago in July.

What are they expecting? That's something we focus on regularly. We are very concerned with not building false expectations, particularly for careers and their futures. Each new Fall intake of students has a different outlook. We will seek to understand that and we will encourage their dreams. We'll work with those dreams and help students make them real, even if those dreams can't be completely fulfilled without the intervention of building and change.