Career Changer « The Career Development Center Blog

The path may have many forks, bends, and waves, but the skies are clear!

Hi, OSU Career Beavers blog readers. It’s Finals Week of spring term 2012, and I’ve been writing to you all year about my changeable and wavy career path. I’ve taken many roads! Since graduating with my undergraduate degree, I’ve been an actor, a waiter, a receptionist, a creative writer, a college composition instructor, a gas station attendant, a high school drama coach, a substitute teacher, a real estate office manager, a writing workshop leader, a nonprofit program director, and now, while I’m in graduate school, I’m a career advisor! Imagine that, me with my wavy path, I get to help other folks figure out their paths, write their resumes and cover letters, prepare for their interviews, and search for jobs. One thing I’ve learned from helping students with these skills is that the better you’re able to articulate who you are and what your goals are, the easier it will be to explain those things to potential employers, through your resume, your cover letter, and in an interview situation. When I work with students that learn how to do this, they have the ability to land the jobs and opportunities they want.

If you’re still searching and your career path may be wavy like mine, you can still have goals and a strong sense of your identity. I needed to take the path I took in order to discover that advising at a college would be a great fit for my skills, my needs, my strengths, and my goals and priorities. But along the way, I was still able to tell others why the next experience, whatever it was, was the experience I needed to get me closer to my goal. Goals change, people change, but from where you sit right now, what is your goal? What is your dream job? If you could wave a magic wand, where would you work? Now, what do you need to do to get to that dream? If your dream changes in the process of getting there, that’s fine. The important thing is to have the dream and a plan.

In this swiftly changing economy, workers of the future will need to be adaptable. That is a given. So, why not look at change as opportunity, change as the ability to learn more, change as a way to explore another facet of who you can be in this life. I’ve always viewed change as positive and exciting. We only get one chance at this life thing; we might as well learn as much as we can!

Thanks for following my story this year. Good luck to you in your own path. May you be always learning more, about yourself and the world of work, so that you can create the place where the two meet and like each other a lot.

Jessica Baron is currently a Graduate Assistant in Career Services at OSU and a full time student in the College Student Services Administration Program.

Make Sure You Do Your Research to Find the Grad Program that Fits!

Week 9, can you believe it?? The Career Changer is back to tell the penultimate episode of her wavy career path, a career path that continues on in this moment, as I sit here at my desk in Career Services at OSU. But cutting right to it, when I left off last time, I was working as the Director for a nonprofit in Colorado. Yet no matter how much I enjoyed that work, I knew that I wanted to be in higher education, advising students, using some of the administrative, leadership, and team building skills that I was cultivating in my work as an office manager for a real estate agency and a nonprofit administrator, as well as my teaching and tutoring background. I realized, as I was applying for the jobs I really wanted at colleges and universities, that I might not have the degree that most applied to my field of interest. I was definitely competing against applicants who had a degree directly related to advising and educational administration.

I needed one of those degrees if I wanted one of those jobs. So, I began the search for my next graduate school. This time, my process of searching was much more intentional. I took note of the degrees that colleges and universities preferred their applicants to have. For instance, many of the job descriptions I looked at that sounded exciting to me would say, “Preferred Master’s in Higher Education, College Student Personnel, Educational Leadership, College Student Services, or Related”, so I was looking for one of these degrees. To search, I found professional organizations associated with higher education, several of which have databases that list graduate school programs in the field. I examined programs’ courses of study, their placement statistics, their requirements, and their mission statements and values. A priority for me in a school concerned location; I didn’t want to attend a school in a community in which I did not want to live. The opportunity for funding was a huge factor as well, as I did not want to graduate from a program with an enormous amount of debt in my mid-thirties, and I also wanted job experience to help me get my first position out of school. Graduate programs will often offer assistantships, for research, teaching, or administrative work, in exchange for a monthly stipend and a tuition remission. These assistantships are amazing opportunities for students to fund their own education.

In the end, I applied to just four institutions; four schools that I thought would give me the total package to graduate with the experience and knowledge to get the position of my dreams. When you are considering graduate school, it is important to do this level of research. Because graduate programs can last 2, 3, 5, or even 7 years of your life, you want to ensure that you will learn and grow in the ways that you intended and also in ways that may be surprising. Ask yourself what your goals are and how each program will help you achieve those goals. Also, talk to current students and faculty. Do you fit with the program and the campus culture? In my case, it was clear to me after my interviews that I wanted to be at OSU. This worked out well, since here I am, blogging to you all!

Have a great end of the term, and I’ll be back finals week with some closing thoughts about what it means to forge your own wavy path through your vocational life. There isn’t a right way, just a right way for you!

Jessica Baron is currently a Graduate Assistant in Career Services at OSU and a full time student in the College Student Services Administration Program. Before making her way to Oregon State, Jessica worked as an actor, waiter, online tutor, receptionist, college composition instructor, creative writer, gas station attendant, nonprofit program director, writing workshop leader, high school drama coach, Hallmark card straightener, substitute teacher, real estate office manager, and SAT tutor, not necessarily in that order. Her “Confessions of a Career Changer” will focus on her wavy career path and the challenges and joys of wanting to do everything.

Howdy, Career Beavers blog readers! Week 7 of spring term already, and the Career Changer is back to continue the story of her wavy career path. All school year, I’ve been writing the story of the shifts and changes on my professional path that got me here to OSU after graduating with my undergraduate degree twelve years ago. In my last post, I told the story of how I began working as a real estate office manager in Colorado, a totally new position in a totally new industry for me. While I was contributing to this office, I was also keeping my ears open about other opportunities. One arose about nine months later that could be a good fit for my skills, experience, and personal goals.

In the small town of Creede, the arts are very important. So important, in fact, that in addition to the Creede Repertory Theatre, there is a local nonprofit arts organization that sponsors gallery shows, arts education, art in public spaces, and other arts related events. The Creede Arts Council’s director was leaving after many years of building a set of programs that added value to the community, events that people had come to expect and count on to sustain them year after year. The Council needed a new Director.

With my background in writing and theatre and because I had completed an internship in nonprofit development while in graduate school, I was chosen to direct this organization of very dedicated volunteers as they worked hard to provide arts programming for their community. This opportunity may not have happened in a big city, but the available candidate pool was small, so I got lucky! Because it was part time, I continued working in the real estate office while taking on grant writing, volunteer organizing, event planning, and marketing.

Some of these tasks were brand new to me. Some of these tasks were new facets of skills I was already comfortable with. All of these tasks were a challenge, so I learned as I went, asked the board and the previous director lots of questions, and tried things out to see if they would work. I learned so many useful skills in this job that there isn’t the space to list them all. Looking back on it, I’m so glad I took a chance in applying, and they took a chance by hiring me!

The most valuable skills I cultivated regarded working on a team while leading that team. A volunteer board hired me to manage them but also to serve their needs. I needed to balance my leadership style with the goals and purpose of my position, supporting everyone’s ideas and acting as a facilitator for conversations to decide the direction of the organization. So, many of the skills I cultivated in that job are skills I use today and skills I will continue to use in the future. However, I still knew I wanted to work in higher education. In Week 9, I will tell you about my next steps in achieving that goal. Have a great week!

Working in real estate helped me to improve skills and abilities in different areas!

Welcome to week five!!! The Career Fair last week was a huge success, and we’re inching closer and closer to the end of this academic year. As we do, I’m inching closer to the end of my story of a Career Changer. Or maybe not the end, but I’m definitely inching closer to my present moment, where my career path is right now; though it’s always a living and breathing thing that can morph and change.

Last time we talked, I had just graduated from my MFA program and realized that I didn’t want to teach; I wanted to advise. Because of this switch late in the game, I decided to take the summer “off” from thinking about the future by working as an actor at the Creede Repertory Theatre again. It was great fun to perform again, be with friends, and regroup.

As the fall and the end of the season neared, my time was taken up by wedding planning for a September date. After the wedding (A great party, you should’ve been there!), I started to ask around town for possible winter jobs. If I could find something, we could just hang tight, work in Creede for the year, and I would job search for my advising dream job from there. In a small town like Creede, it didn’t take long. A couple of people approached me about work they needed done. I got my substitute teacher’s license so that I could work at the school. I was asked to work part time as the high school drama club coach for a small stipend. Then, rumor had it that one of the local real estate offices was looking for an office manager.

Now, I’d worked in offices before, but not in a long time and never for real estate. But my skills in writing were unusual, as was my facility with different software programs. I brought a resume into Broken Arrow Ranch and Land Company and spoke with Anne, the owner and main broker. The following Monday, I started at an hourly wage.

One thing I want to stress was that I was able to sell my skills to Anne, letting her know that I would be comfortable with taking on marketing, writing up advertising, filing, phones, etc., and also that I would be comfortable learning everything I didn’t know about her business. She trusted that my previous experience as an instructor would translate to managing her office well. And although it took me some time to learn the procedures of real estate, I jumped in to learning about a brand new field with both feet. As you move into a new industry, it is important to acknowledge what you don’t know and what you need to know in order to do the job well. I spent much of my first week studying the file folders on the computer network, learning how to use Microsoft Publisher, and asking a lot of questions. Soon, I started offering small suggestions for streamlining some of her processes and improving her advertising. I was in a totally new field, and it was really fun!

So, all this is to say, be flexible, be open, be a learner, and you never know what doors will open. Although my job at Broken Arrow Ranch and Land Company was not in the industry I hoped to be in, I was learning skills and honing abilities that would help me get that dream job someday.

Have a great midterm season, and I’ll be back Week Seven with the next chapter in my Career Changer life!

Me Near the Colorado Sand Dunes After Graduating

Welcome back, everyone! Can you believe that we are already in the third week of spring term? Hope your courses are going really well, and you’re enjoying warmer, sunnier weather every day.

So, I’m the Career Changer, Jessica, and I’ve been writing all year about my wavy career path to illustrate that the straight path isn’t always the right path to a rewarding life’s work. The last time I wrote, I told you about how I was teaching composition and creative writing in an MFA program, enjoying my students, and learning about myself every day. Although stressful and busy, these three years were an amazing period of my life!

As I was finishing my thesis, (a 120 page book of poetry!) I began to realize that the moments I most enjoyed with my students were one-on-one. As part of my writing course curriculum, I had several conferences set up over the course of the term with my students, and I loved when they would come into my office and tell me what was going on in their writing AND in their academic lives. It was exciting to hear about the diverse paths, interests, and goals of my students, almost like getting to experience all these things myself by learning about their strategies to find their way in the world. I began to provide my students with feedback and resources so that they could make more informed choices, and it was really fun!

When I graduated from the program, I knew that what I really wanted to do was advising of some sort. At first, this was disappointing because I had spent the past three years preparing for a career in writing instruction. But I valued the experience, and I felt that a lot of to skills I learned in those three years applied directly to advising. But since this was a shift in my plan, I needed some time to regroup. I decided to go back to the Creede Repertory Theatre to work as an actor for the summer again; I’d figure out what was next after that.

What was next was a wedding and a winter in a very cold house and a couple of new jobs that taught me a ton along the way. I’ll fill you in on these next time.

Jessica Baron is currently a Graduate Assistant in Career Services at OSU and a full time student in the College Student Services Administration Program. Before making her way to Oregon State, Jessica worked as an actor, waiter, online tutor, receptionist, college composition instructor, creative writer, gas station attendant, nonprofit program director, writing workshop leader, high school drama coach, Hallmark card straightener, substitute teacher, real estate office manager, and SAT tutor, not necessarily in that order. Her “Confessions of a Career Changer” focuses on her wavy career path and the challenges and joys of wanting to do everything.

Can you believe it is week ten? This term has flown by for me; I wonder if it has for you too. Terms didn’t fly by like this in my previous graduate degree. We were on semesters! Sixteen weeks to delve deep into subject matter or get tired of subject matter that no longer interested you. In my last Career Changer post, I started my graduate program at Colorado State University in Creative Writing. My first year, I spent tutoring in a writing center, but I really wanted to get a teaching assistantship, so that I could teach and try out my chosen career path. So, I worked really hard my first year and applied for my second year. And I got one! A graduate teaching assistantship meant that I would teach one or two sections of college composition (similar to OSU’s Writing 121 Course) each term, and I would receive a tuition remission and a monthly stipend.

At the beginning of my second year, I went through an intense training course for two weeks to prepare for my first class. We were given a syllabus, readings, and lesson plans to follow. We gave practice lessons to each other and wrote personal teaching philosophies. This experience, I decided, was going to be great fun. And it was fun. Looking back on my first semester teaching college composition, I truly enjoyed the interaction I got to have with my students, learning their stories, and working with them on their writing. Each day I was teaching, I geared up to seem confident and act like I knew what I was talking about. That is the crazy thing: a lot of the information I was teaching to my students was information I was learning along with them. Not to say that I wasn’t a good writer, I was. But I hadn’t learned the rhetorical strategies, the structures, the genres, the ways to learn how to write. I just knew writing was something I was good at, but I didn’t always know the best way to teach it to others.

This fact became especially difficult in dealing with one particular student in my first semester. I had one older than average student in my class. He was in his mid-50s, and for most of his life, he ran a successful photography shop. He could see the direction that the industry was moving, however, with more digital and online media, so he retired and closed the store. Now, he wanted to begin again in a new career. But sometimes it was difficult for him to take direction from a teacher more than 30 years younger than he, and sometimes it was difficult for me to have the confidence to teach someone with so much more life experience than me. It was also tricky for him to have patience with some of the traditionally aged students in the class, who sometimes came to class late or fell asleep in the back row or didn’t turn their work in on time or didn’t come prepared for a peer review day. I learned a lot from this student, and this learning is why I most enjoy teaching and working with college students. I end up learning more than I end up teaching, about myself and about other people.

Happy Week 10, Everyone! I’ll be back in the spring term with more episodes about my wavy career path. Have a great finals week and spring break!

Sometimes we need to stop and reflect about what comes next.

Career Changer, Jessica, here, ready with another episode in the tale of my wavy career path. Last episode, I was in Colorado, working at the Gifts & Gas, when I decided I would go to graduate school. I made this decision for a couple of reasons, some good and some not so good. First, as part of my winter in this small mountain community, my favorite memories occurred during a Women’s Writing Group that I helped create. Six or seven women would gather at one of our homes on a Tuesday or a Wednesday night, share things we were writing, respond to creative writing prompts, and share those impromptu writings as well. I really enjoyed coming up with writing activities for the group, challenging myself with writing, and the whole experience allowed me to share things through writing that I might not share in casual conversation. So, I thought, why don’t I go to school to do this as a job? Why don’t I get a degree in creative writing so that I can be a writing instructor and do this all the time?

I mentioned that there were good reasons for me to go back to school and a couple of maybe not so good reasons. One good reason was that I was truly going to pursue something that I loved doing. Another good reason was that I could see myself in higher education, working in some capacity at a college or university. I loved college towns, and I could see myself raising a family in a college-centered community. However, some of the other reasons I went back to school involved a lack of knowledge, about myself and about the field I would enter. I didn’t quite know what was next for me. I felt a little lost, and thought, why not more school? I wasn’t a person who was motivated by writing; I didn’t need to write, but I enjoyed it. Also, the creative writing instructor market is pretty saturated with MFA graduates trying to secure professorships. I didn’t know then that it can take 10 to 15 years to find a secure creative writing job at a college or university. I probably could have done a bit more homework investigating my own strengths and ultimate goals and what I could expect afterward.

Without acknowledging all my reasons, good or bad, I applied to 9 programs across the country. I applied so many places because creative writing programs can be competitive. Only three of the nine schools admitted me, and I decided to go to Colorado State University.

In August of 2006, I began my first graduate degree, an MFA in creative writing with a concentration in poetry. We found a house to live in, and I settled into the fast pace of graduate level coursework. Let me tell you – it was intense! I tutored for several hours a week in the writing center and spent all day Saturday and Sunday each week reading and writing. Remember that I’d been out of school for 6 years; it was difficult. But I eventually found my footing and made it through my first year, studying poets I’d never heard of before, writing my own poems and critiquing my peers work, and investigating theory, something I’d never engaged with before. Next time, I’ll tell you about my 2^nd and 3^rd years of school and what happened when I graduated. Have a great Week 8, OSU!

Here I am in a musical called, "A Wonderful Noise" at the Creede Repertory Theatre

Hello, OSU Career Services blog readers. I’m back with another installment of “Confessions of a Career Changer”. I left off last time with the recent death of my mother, acting in a professional theatre company in Colorado, and wondering what to do next. The following winter I wanted to regroup, ask questions about who I was and wanted to continue to be, and plan my next move. I stayed in Colorado with my boyfriend (now husband) to reevaluate.

Of course, I still had to make a living. So, by virtue of the very small community I now lived in, which dwindled down in population to less than 400 full time residents within the city limits in winter, word of mouth quickly spread that I was looking for a job. But my situation was enormously lucky. We lived in a home owned by a good friend who charged us a miniscule amount for rent. Plus, there are very little opportunities to spend money in Mineral County, as the closest movie theatre is an hour and a half away and the closest shopping center even further. In Creede, Colorado during the winter months, people have potlucks and board game nights for their entertainment. So our expenses were very low, basically food and utilities. Also, my mother left me a legacy of support with her pension. She was able to will it to me, and I suddenly had a small but reliable monthly income, courtesy of my mother. So, I was looking for a part time job to help us fill the gap between the income I received through her kindness and our bills. And I found one at the Gifts & Gas.

The Gifts & Gas is the only gas station in Creede. It is more than a gas station; it is a hub of information sharing, community gathering, and social work. Most people who live in the county need to patronize the Gifts & Gas over the course of a week, and these people share stories and information as they come in to pay for their gas, their candy bars, their dozen eggs, or their lined notebook. Because there are so few shops open all year in Creede, the Gifts & Gas provided a lot more than just your typical convenience store fare. And the manager of the store at the time was a true local. A woman who taught me a lot about caring and communicating, Kris had lived in Creede most of her life. The wife of a retired silver miner, Kris ran the Gifts & Gas as the social institution that it should be. As my boss, she showed me how a community can use whatever means necessary to care for its members, including discussing the latest troubles of those who lived in the community, trying to get them direct help, and referring folks to the resources they needed (the health clinic, the sheriff’s department, the city council). She did all this while fulfilling her title as the manager of a gas station. I didn’t realize it then, but this is the kind of worker that I wanted to be in the world: engaged, compassionate, and interdisciplinary. We all need role models and mentors in our workplaces to see what is possible. I was lucky enough to watch and learn from Kris.

While I worked at the Gifts & Gas that winter, I began to apply to graduate schools, and I will tell you about this next step next time in “Confessions of a Career Changer”.

Here I am in the Autumn mountains of Colorado!

Hello!! Jessica, the Career Changer here, and I left off last time with my first job experience as an actor in the mountains of Colorado. At the end of that summer in 2004, after some traveling and visiting with family and friends, I returned to New York City. I quickly found a job back in the restaurant business at a very fancy restaurant in the TriBeCa neighborhood. They trained me to be a hostess, and I had to memorize the faces of a slew of famous and not so famous but important people that would be seated first, treated better, and given whatever they asked. The whole thing made my skin crawl a bit. This was the first place I worked where they actually trained me to treat some people better than others, and I did not like the concept at all. I’m one of the people who wouldn’t get treated very well, and so are my parents, and so are my friends. I followed the procedures I learned, but whenever possible, tried to treat everyone, famous or not, the same. I went back to auditioning periodically and performed in a couple of small projects.

But here is where my story gets a bit dramatic and complicated. That year, my mother was pretty sick with cancer, so even though I was living in New York and working at this fancy restaurant and auditioning for theatre, a lot of my time was spent at home in New Jersey with her. And here is another lesson I’ve learned. There are more important things than work. I needed to work less that year and spend time with her more because I knew she might not be around much longer. So, I let my supervisor know this situation, and he was very understanding. I left that job and my apartment in February of 2005 to live with my parents and help take care of my mother. My plan was to return to Colorado for another season of acting in May.

In May, just before I was scheduled to leave for the summer, my mother passed away. I believe she did that on purpose so that I could be there with her and with my dad. I still made it to the beginning of my contract in Colorado, but I knew then I probably wasn’t going to back to the New York City area. I’d worked really hard to make a life for myself there, but in Colorado I didn’t need to work quite so hard at jobs I didn’t like or didn’t feel right about doing. The community in Colorado embraced me and took care of me through this grief, through a time of mourning, and also showed me where to go and what to do next. And I did figure it out… Next time, I’ll let you know what I figured out in “Confessions of a Career Changer”.

My Professional Actor Headshot: What Do You Think?

Remember me? I’m Jessica, the Career Changer, telling you the story of my wavy career path. Before the winter break, I wrote about working at a pretty fancy New York City restaurant. I was let go from that particular restaurant because of new management, and I soon got a job at a café as a hostess. I worked until May of 2004 at this café, which was a stressful, busy Austrian dessert and gourmet coffee café on the Upper East Side. But then I got an amazing job offer. I was offered, along with my boyfriend at the time (who is now my husband, by the way), an acting job in a small mountain town in Colorado. I was going to work as an actor at the Creede Repertory Theatre for the summer. Continue reading →

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Category Archives: Career Changer

Confessions of a Career Changer: My Wavy Path Forward

Confessions of a Career Changer: The Return to School

Confessions of a Career Changer: An Opportunity in the Arts

Confessions of a Career Changer: Always Learning

Confessions of a Career Changer: MFA to Find Your Passion

Confessions of a Career Changer: Teacher, Teacher!

Confessions of a Career Changer: What do you love?

Confessions of a Career Changer: Take Refuge in Your Community

Confessions of a Career Changer: Back to the City Grind…

Confessions of a Career Changer: Summer camp as a job? Yes, please!

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