Gaining work experience
The Taipei Times article, “Students gloomy about higher learning,” by Rachel Lin and Jonathan Chin (Nov. 28, page 3) shines a bright light on the challenges that college students worldwide face in these trying times.
As a university professor for the past two decades, I have devoted countless hours to reassuring my student advisees and others that they can and will succeed, but that they also will have to take some level of control over their academic and preprofessional experience.
I have no patience with my fellow faculty members who essentially ignore their advisees’ concerns and blithely tell them: “Your degree will get you ‘in the door.’”
Not so.
From day one with my students and advisees, I “preach” gaining as much experience through internships and outside interests as possible so that they will gain a clearer sense of just what gets them “excited,” as this is a clear indication of just what they are best suited to do after they graduate.
I also speak from having worked for three decades as a public relations professional — not my original course of study in college, but the career path that has proven to be my “calling.”
I urge my colleagues in academia to take a realistic approach to counseling their student advisees.
Know what has happened in the workplace and what hiring managers focus on in their efforts to fill positions. Do not look in textbooks for theory. Look in the workplace for reality.
Kirk Hazlett,
adjunct professor of communications and public relations
University of Tampa, Florida
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