Week 1 Integrative Learning: Creating a Career Plan Video

The purpose of this activity was to look at some strategies that will help develop my career and career plan. Using these strategies not only strengthens my plans, but it also stands to hopefully separate me from other potential competitors in my chosen path.

The first strategy that really hit home for me was learning to self-market. It seems like an obvious this that you would need to do in order to become successful, but how Dr. Austin explained it in the video just made so much more sense than what I already knew. "Visibility is credibility." He broke it down in to three clear steps; define your brand, practice how to articulate your brand message, and networking/marketing/selling your brand. Looking at it before hand, it seems like a lot of work to market yourself, but he explains that you go through each of these steps and only when you fully understand, do you move on.

The next strategy that he discussed was identifying your passion. This one was easily the most helpful for me personally because as of right now, I still don't really know what I want to do after grad. He explained that it was OK that we're not sure, and that not only will be experience plenty of different careers to try and find a passion, but there are also helpful ways to figure it out yourself. I really enjoyed the exercise of imaging yourself doing different things however you want, and using that to see the similarities between them, I will definitely be using that in the near future.

Lastly, the strategy of creating goals. This is seemingly the simplest but most important. I feel that goals are important because not only are you creating a longterm plan for yourself so you don't aimlessly do the same thing for the rest of your career, but having small attainable tasks to accomplish makes you feel good, and helps to reach that longterm/career goal. This is something I can use in my career for the rest of my life, as well as any other aspect of my life itself.