Surviving your senior year stresses

Senior year seems so stressful! Graduation and getting a job, what should I expect?

Senior year is definitely a doozy, and depending on your major it can seem practically impossible. As I embark on the last two months of my college experience, I have to keep one thing in mind to keep from going insane. That one thing, you ask? Well, I tell myself that it’s better to get used to this kind of pace now so that I can be better prepared for the real world.

I may have mentioned this before, but I used to hate the comparison of college and the real world. It made me feel as if my reality was not real, or that I was living in a dream world. Well, take my totem away and get me back there! These days, I lament the loss of days where I could watch television marathons all day long. Bye-Bye Bravo. Senior year has no time for that.

So, in short, you should expect to be busy and to be stressed, but after a while, you will adjust and get used to the pace. If you are busy like me then you wont know what to do with yourself when you do have spare time. By senior year, you should know yourself pretty darn well, and you should know how to study and what to focus on or let go.

Some of you will be heading straight into the work force, others (like myself) are in a mad dash to secure an internship, and the rest are heading to higher education. Either way all of these routes take lots of preparation. In this way, senior year is a preparation year of applying to law school, grad school, taking the LSAT, the GRE, or working at jobs that are already field-related experience. Therefore, the best advice I can give is to start preparing in your early college years when school and life are a lot less complicated.

Getting a job is by far the most intimating thing in the whole world. Well to me at least. In a lot of ways, getting a job seems like a whole lotta luck, but it really isn’t.

These are the things you may need to get a job: a résumé, work samples, cover letter, writing skills, experience, connections, determination AND luck.

So please, get organized, keep an updated résumé, hunt down all of your best work and find references.

Figure out who you know, or who your dad knows. The power of a personal connection is not to be underestimated.

It seems cheesy, but in a lot of cases that connection makes the difference.

If you feel overwhelmed, then that’s okay. Here’s the thing to remember: Stay calm, be proactive and it will all work out. Eventually.

Posted by Claire Childs on Mar 10 2011. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.