My Career Workshop

We are often told in grad school, if you really want to learn something, teach it. Let's hope this is the tru-ism that is leading me to lead a 'Social Workshop' on Careers for PhDs. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned, but after having relative success with WISC, when the grad students in the department started grumbling that we needed some guidance on some major life events, I figured I could get it off the ground. Last summer I volunteered to be the Chair of the Social Workshop Committee.

I supposed we should have a mission statement, or core principles, but we really just have a need to respond to a need. Specifically, the grumbling of grad students- namely, our first years seem to make predictable and avoidable mistakes every year, no one knows how to graduate, or get a job and there seem to be some useful career skills we've never picked up on. We led a session in the fall for the first years, that I've been told they appreciated. And then I got overwhelmed by fall. But now we are back on track, and ready to do careers, next week!

I've asked the grad students and post-docs to share any resources they have about careers, and I'm compiling all these to a handout. I've already gotten a couple emails back, and several people have expressed interest. Then my awesome Social Workshop Committee will talk about some of the things from the list we have experience with, and hopefully people will want to chime in. Of course they will want to chime in though, it's an important topic and our CORPORATE SPONSOR is buying us beer. Yeah, we got sponsored. Our GSO president hooked me up, and I think it will be great.