Enter the Career Center at any day of the week recently, and you will find hordes of students dressed in suits, ties, blazers, and maybe even a briefcase or two. You may ask yourself: Why are all my peers dressed so professionally? Did I time-travel ten years into the future? Does Drop-In Career Advising have a business attire requirement that I’m unaware of?
Elana Lyn Gross wrote this article for Skill Crush, I’ve excerpted it and added some Duke- specific thoughts on the dream job search. Gross has great advice on how to explore careers, talk to people to find out about the day-to-day of an industry, and know that it’s totally normal not to have a clear cut path to retirement right now.
How to Find Your Dream Job (When You Don’t Know What You Want)
Do you ever have that feeling where you already know something to be true, but are still occasionally epiphanically surprised by it? I get that feeling a lot, mostly having to do with simple facts that have become part of the fabric of my everyday life, but are still somehow awe-inspiring.
Every fall, the campus descends into a corporate frenzy. Immediately after O-Week ends, students in dark suits start popping up all over campus, and the environment at the Career Center becomes increasingly corporate. Until my senior year as a public policy major, I considered myself relatively immune to the consulting rush and stress that accompanies it.
I am doing a lot of work assisting first-year students in making the most of the Career Center and put together this list of some important things that many students wish they knew in their first year at Duke.
Whether you are a first year or not, this is important information for you.
I first joined the Career Ambassador (CA) Team at the Career Center as a rising sophomore that really marked the beginning of my career development journey at Duke. I came across someone tabling for CA application in front of marketplace during freshman spring semester and out of whim, I applied and was later accepted as a CA. It has been a journey full of surprises and growth.
So, I’m a senior now and feeling pretty sentimental. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my time at Duke, and it somehow feels simultaneously like a blur and a lifetime. When I think about the past three, almost four years, I find it difficult to delineate each step, each decision, that made my Duke experience what it is now.
Class of 2023,
Welcome to Duke! Now that you are here and beginning to get acclimated into your new environment, I would like to take a moment to let you know what we have available for you!
Class of 2022, I know it feels like just yesterday you were attending orientation and trying to get acclimated to your new environment and with the blink of an eye, your first year of college went right before your eyes.
