Dr. Paige Tan's

Career and Graduate School Advice

with special focus on international careers

Devaraja Market, Mysore, India (Tan)

Some students at UNCW know exactly what they want to do when they finish. Some don't. All students can help to make it easier to achieve their dreams by putting themselves in the best possible position during their undergraduate college years.

My advice is that your goal during your UNCW years should be to make yourself the most interesting candidate/applicant for whatever it is you are going to want to do in the future.

Here are some things to consider:

1) Take your school work seriously and get good grades. It's never too late to start. You'll be surprised how much you'll be able to talk about your own GPA and grades in applications and interviews.  "I wasn't serious in my first two years, but look at my 3.7 GPA in my last two years." "I had difficulty in the Basic Studies courses, but when I found my love of X, my GPA shot up to a 3.5."

2) Be known and liked (not the same thing) by your professors, so you'll have people to call on for recommendations and references in the future.  Go in and talk to your professors during office hours. This will help with grades as you can learn ways to do better in your courses and also you can show your professors that you care about and are trying constantly to improve your performance. Talk to them about what you do when you're not in school. Talk to them about your favorite trip you've ever taken. Just get to know your professors as people. Show your professors that you are interesting, engaged, mature, serious, and fun.

3) Create a portfolio of your best work during your undergraduate career to present to future schools/employers. Use your professors' feedback and the feedback of others (friends, parents, work colleagues, the Learning Center) to keep working on these pieces and make them as good as you possibly can. The portfolio should highlight all the skills you wish to show future schools/employers: your mastery of different subfields of your major, writing, critical thinking, analysis, oral presentation (a video of you giving a talk), campus activism and leadership, web and other computer skills (PowerPoint).

4) Take an interesting major/minor combination.  I'm not of the school that says you should load up on majors and minors. I believe a major in Political Science and a minor in International Affairs (or something else) along with a "concentration" (defined by you) in Russian Culture (Language, Literature, and Society) are just as impressive. Someone who loves learning will love learning his or her whole life and will make a better graduate student or employee. Show that you love learning.  Follow a passion, whatever it is.

5) Take courses that will open up opportunities. If you think you might be interested in law school but aren't sure, try the 300/301 Constitutional Law courses in the Public and International Affairs Department. Try Criminal Justice courses (future prosecutor or defense attorney). What about Business Law in the Cameron School (future corporate attorney)?  Or even environmental science courses (future environment attorney)?  If you think you might be interested in journalism, try some Communication/English classes.   

6) By your second or absolute latest the third year, go to the Career Center http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/ at UNCW.  Get yourself ready to make career/graduate school choices in the future. Attend workshops on improving your resume. Attend seminars on how to interview well. Go to job fairs to practice interviewing.  These are not skills that most of us are born with.  We get better the more we practice, learn, and do.  Survey your likes and dislikes to find out what sort of work you might be suited for.  My husband is a manager, but e-mail makes him miserable . . .  Find out what you might have a penchant for.  See the Career Center's Assessments page at http://www.uncwil.edu/stuaff/career/students/assessments.htm.

7) Network with people who do what you think you want to do. Meet them, talk to them, ask questions.  Sometimes people will say "I don't have time." If you get a "no," just go to the next person on the list.  Be persistent.  You'd be surprised how many kind and caring people there are out there who will be willing to share some advice with a young, eager student.  It doesn't hurt if you buy lunch or coffee. Always, send a thank you card afterwards.

8) Do one internship or more to learn more about prospective areas of employment.  This can turn into a real job or at the minimum opportunities to network and get known by people in the field you are interested in.  If you want to do the internship for Political Science credit, see http://www.uncwil.edu/pls/documents/UndergraduateInternshipInfo.pdf.

9) Speak a foreign language.  It is never too late to start learning a language. And, because so many Americans are reticent to do so, you can really distinguish yourself by becoming good at another language or languages.  For international jobs, knowing one or more foreign languages is important: Spanish for Latin America, French for West Africa, Portuguese for Brazil, Chinese for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan.  Consider doing an intensive summer program at Middlebury http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ls/ , one of the best language schools in the country.   Look into the National Security Education Program, which provides scholarships for study abroad in strategic languages like Arabic, Chinese, and Russian http://www.borenawards.org/boren_scholarship.   The Foreign Language and Area Studies Program (FLAS) http://www.ed.gov/programs/iegpsflasf/index.html funds language study as well. I used a FLAS to study Indonesian at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI) at the University of Wisconsin Madison http://seassi.wisc.edu/.  Other languages at SEASSI include: Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer (Cambodian), or Burmese. 

10)  Study abroad.  Whatever you decide to do in the future, studying abroad will help you.  Who would you remember out of a stack of applications? The 3.0 GPA from UNCW who got B's and didn't do anything outstanding or the same student with the same grades who did a summer program in Guadalajara and helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity? Go to UNCW Office of International Programs http://www.uncwil.edu/intprogs/ to learn more about studying abroad. Start by your sophomore year to investigate programs, so that you can plan them into your program of study.  Do you know you can go for a whole semester abroad and pay just what you pay to go to UNCW? If you're an out-of-state student, going abroad could even be cheaper!

11) Get involved on campus or in the community.  I mentioned Habitat for Humanity above. Consider a Habitat trip.  There's also Model United Nations. Simulate the actions of a real diplomat/policy maker.  There's STAND, which works to end genocide through lobbying and education.  Follow your interest and help to make a difference in policy, welfare, whatever.  A place to start might be the Campus Activities and Involvement Center in the Fisher Center http://appserv02.uncw.edu/caic/index.asp.  Consider getting involved with a local political party. It's a great way to meet people and a passport to DC jobs.

12) Many people who talk to me about careers are interested in working internationally.  Now is the time to think about best positioning yourself to get one of these international jobs.   First, try to internationalize yourself as much as possible during your undergraduate years: learn a language, study abroad, do internationally focused internships-best in Washington, DC or abroad, take internationally focused courses in art, literature, politics, economics, geography, and sociology.

Then, start thinking about potential careers.  The Career Center has information about international employment. I also encourage students to look over various international job search sites (a few are below) in order to learn what types of jobs there are out there and, importantly, what types of skills, degrees, etc. these jobs require. 

To work internationally, or on international areas, there are different ways to go (just a few ideas): 

Start now to make your dreams come true!

Houseboat, India Study Abroad, Alleppey, Kerala, India, May 2009 (photo courtesy of Cheryl Lowda)

 

June 22, 2009

Contact Dr. Tan at tanp@uncw.edu

Return to Dr. Tan's homepage: http://people.uncw.edu/tanp/