Has anything ever thrown a wrench in your expertly-planned future? Did the difficulty of that setback leave you temporarily stunned? That is exactly how I felt last week after an academic advising appointment where I was told I have to make a lot of adjustments to my academic and professional roadmaps to stay on track and maintain my competitive edge professionally. In this article, I will tell you how I responded to this setback and teach you how to bounce back in similar situations.
To better understand my situation, I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. I am a second-year English major with a minor in professional and technical writing. I came to Kent State because I planned to pursue the Master’s program in library and information science.
Last Friday, I scheduled an advising appointment to help me figure out if I was on the right track to graduate on time and in a position that will benefit me in the long run career-wise. In this advising session, I inquired if the classes I am taking would be preparing me for this master’s program and eventually a career as a Librarian and if continuing my academic career at Kent would benefit me scholastically and professionally.
To my chagrin, my adviser let me know that this program is leaning more towards information technology and the use and creation of databases, which are not things I am actively interacting with in my current studies, and it doesn’t quite align with my major and minor. Additionally, they provided me with the insight that employers prefer seeing that you attended different institutions for your undergrad and graduate school, which was not something I was aware of or had taken into account when I chose to attend Kent in the first place.
After the appointment ended, I walked back to my dorm with my head reeling from all of the different ways I could go about addressing the discrepancies in my studies and what I needed to be doing to be adequately prepared for grad school and my career.
I felt so lost and confused, like I had done a poor job of preparing myself for college and that all of the effort I put in during high school to get ahead was all for nothing. This was a hard place to be in, especially with the mounting pressure from family to get a job and my father’s uncertainty that my undergraduate degree would put me in a good position to get employed and prepare me for grad school.
Although it was difficult to sit with these feelings, it is important to feel the discomfort and let it empower you to address the problem, as long as you don’t let your doubt and worry become all-consuming. To help me recover from this temporary setback, I used a few different methods to address and overcome my issues, like talking through my situation with friends or in writing, scheduling additional advising appointments and doing my own research.
Throughout the next couple of days, I spoke to my friends on campus and reached out to friends and family back home to let them know the situation and see if they had any insights that might help provide me with any solutions to my problems or just to hear encouragement to propel me to take additional steps to resolve it on my own.
Additionally, I decided to look further into the resources my adviser had provided me with like advisers or offices that would help address my particular situation such as my designated care team of my academic and honors advisers. Finally, I resorted to my own research on schools and courses of study that I may pursue to best prepare me for my future, so I can better understand what needs to be done because no one else knows what I want and need in these realms except for me.
Sure, we have all been in a position where not everything is working in our favor, but having the skills in your back pocket to best prepare you for what is to come is essential to help you overcome these obstacles. I hope the next time you encounter a setback in your life plan, you can refer to my experience, and use it to bounce back with resilience.