Your Career and You

Your Career and You
December 22, 2014 Doug Haslam

By Kirk Hazlett, APR, Fellow PRSA

(Note: This blog article originally appeared on A Professor’s Thoughts)

It’s spring semester registration time at Curry College, and my Communication advisees are in varying stages of “OMG!” WADDAYA MEAN REGISTER FOR SPRING SEMESTER?!?

This “real-life” inevitability is something I try to impress on my charges, especially those who have enlisted in my Public Relations Concentration.

As I remind the troops day after day, life after graduation is going to be filled to the brim with looming deadlines. Get used to it… and be prepared.

As one student said wistfully a few years ago, “But I’m just a kid.”

He had some other issues he was dealing with besides registering for courses, but I gently reminded him that he was only a “kid” in his mind. In the eyes of those around him, especially potential employers, he was a “young adult” – a big difference and one that I remember from my own experiences half a century ago. I wanted so badly to just finish my studies and go home to be taken care of by my long-suffering parents.

Stuff happened, though, and I wound up in Vietnam teaching English as a second language to the Vietnamese military. Saw some things I’d like to forget. Did some things I love to remember. Learned a ton… grew up in the process.

And that’s the lesson I try to pass on to my disciples… things happen. You learn from your successes and your failures, and you get a better sense of who you are and where you’re going in life.

But this won’t happen if you just sit around and wait for someone else to tell you what to do. You have to take control. You have to make plans. You have to take action. On your own, but with the help of others. Now’s the time. Now’s your chance.

Don’t “fall behind”… “spring ahead”!

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.” Mark Twain, “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” ch. 19 [1895]

 

Post Author

Kirk_HazlettKirk Hazlett, APR, Fellow PRSA, is associate professor of communication (undergraduate) at Curry College in Milton. Prior to his move into academia, Kirk practiced nonprofit and government public relations and marketing for more than 35 years in the U.S. as well as Asia. Accredited by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Kirk was inducted into PRSA’s prestigious College of Fellows in 2009 and is one of just two actively teaching college professors in Massachusetts to have earned this distinction. He is a member of PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards. You can read more of Kirk’s musings on his blog “A Professor’s Thought”.

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