YOUR JUNIOR YEAR

Capabilities

You are now past the halfway point of your college career. Some of you in your first two years may have found your strengths by exploring the different areas of the department. Others of you may still be unsure, but you should not feel bad because this is not uncommon.

Your junior year is a time when you should be taking key courses in your major and trying out the knowledge and skills you’re learning. You might also be gaining a sense of perspective on yourself.

During your junior year you might be developing a greater sense of your strengths, weaknesses, and values and coming to some idea of the kinds of work you would like to do. We suggest that you use your junior year to see if what you think is a possible career area really is and to continue to establish your entry-level credentials, through suitable experiential activities like extracurriculars and co-ops.

You may also be beginning to see the effects of your efforts to develop the qualities of a liberally educated person in yourself. You may notice yourself thinking analytically about the academic and social issues that confront you; you may find yourself relating what you have learned—in your courses and through your experience—to issues that confront you; you may find yourself becoming an interested, responsible member of the campus community, as well as of your family, local community, etc. These habits of mind are some of the strengths you want to cultivate, for your own sake as well as for the sake of your future career.

Putting your Skills to Work and Developing Leadership:

In your junior year we suggest that you try out the knowledge and skills you have been learning and develop your leadership and management potential in several ways:

1) by enrolling in some courses that are related to a potential career.

2) by actively participating in some on- or off-campus project or activity that requires use of the knowledge, skills, strengths, and values that you feel are important for your future. For example:

-department or college activities (like the newspaper, magazine, theater, radio station, television productions, SEM 300). Junior year is typically the year when students who have been able to participate in extracurriculars assume some leadership role.

-a work situation like a work-study job, a volunteer position, summer or term-time work, a practicum or internship, an independent study project.

If you have not found a way to develop yourself in a larger project, you should discuss with your adviser other options, like an independent study project, that would require use of your knowledge and skills.

Your Junior Year in College:

Here is the way two counselors, Herant Katchadourian and John Boli, describe junior year. What do you think?

“Junior Year:—A Period of Consolidation: directions attain more certainty, greater focus adds substance and depth to learning.

“The junior year is the linchpin of the academic experience. By this time, most students know what they want and how to get it. They have settled on a major and have begun to concentrate on in-depth learning in a given field. There is a sense of mastery, intellectual excitement, and academic purpose. . . . It is a time of heavy but satisfying work.

“Students are generally more satisfied with the junior year than either the freshman or sophomore years. They have a new sense of purpose derived from focusing on a particular field of study. There is a sense of direction, of things 'falling into place.' Juniors are more mature and have a stronger sense of self. They feel more in control of their own lives and less controlled by the institution or their parents.

“Most students by the junior year are fully integrated into one or another niche of the college subculture, socially as well as academically. They have fallen in and out of love, made and lost friends. Typically, there is by this time a significant restructuring of personal values marked by greater tolerance and understanding. However sheltered a student’s background, he or she has been inevitably exposed to issues and controversies revolving around gender roles, ethnicity, sex, drugs, alcohol, sexual orientation, and broader political issues.”

That was what these men found at their university; what do you think?

YOUR CAREER DEVELOPMENT REPORT-JUNIOR YEAR

Your Career Development Report is due on certain days each semester. Please upload your report to WebCT.

The report has four parts:

1. your professional growth (due first Friday of October)

2. developing and presenting your skills (due Monday after Thanksgiving)

3. your own experience in developing capabilities (due first Friday after spring break)

4. your overall development this year (due in April)

I.   Paper 1: Your Professional Growth: -- due first Friday of October. Call it: yourlastname303OctPaper.doc. Submit through WebCT.

1. Your  junior  year is a time when you should be  taking  key courses  in  your major and trying out the knowledge  and skills you're learning.
   • What courses have been key for you so far?
   • What have you gotten out of them?
2. What are you doing to establish entry-level credentials?
   • in writing
   • in public speaking
   • in technology
3. What are you doing to develop leadership and management skills?
   • department or college activity or SEM 300
   • other experience
4. Do you have any evidence that you are becoming liberally educated?
   • thinking analytically
   • challenging yourself intellectually
   • seeing interrelationships among areas of knowledge
   • becoming a responsible member of the community
     
     

Paper 2. Developing and presenting your skills: (due Monday after Thanksgiving. Call it: yourlastname303NovPaper.doc) Submit through WebCT.

Write a paper, 2-3 pages long, on how you are developing your essential skills in significant ways and in new dimensions. Submit the explanatory paper through WebCT and also submit samples of your best work as additional files uploaded to WebCT in November. You can submit as many samples of your best work as you wish in November.

Please follow the established department method for naming all files -- LastNameCom303UniqueFileIdentifier.xxx:

• .doc for Word documents (for example: SimpsonCom203RomeoJuliet.doc)
• .pdf for web documents
• .mp3 for sound and radio documents (for example: SimpsonCom203IAmMe.mp3)
• .jpg for photos
• .mov for Quicktime video of video projects (for example: LaneCom203Desperate.mov)
• .ppt for powerpoint (for example: SnicketCom203PenultimatePeril.ppt)

Write this paper as if you were explaining your portfolio to a potential employer. Do not write casually as if you were writing for your adviser. Topics to cover in your 2-3 page paper:

• How you are developing essential skills in significant ways such as

• 1. Writing in varied genres:
  • Writing: how are you growing in significant ways to advance yourself toward professional-level writing skills? Imagine that you are explaining this to a potential employer.
  • Attach several samples of your best work as a writer. The samples should show the ability to write in varied genres. Attach a statement (no more than a half-sheet in length) to each sample to explain the challenges you faced in writing in that genre and to what degree you think you succeeded. These pieces should go in your portfolio. ("Genre" means "type" or "kind" of writing. Examples are a research paper, an informal essay, a letter, a PSA, a video script, a Powerpoint presentation, song lyrics, a "hard news" story, a feature story, a first-person narrative, a proposal, a plan, a report, a short story, etc.)

• 2. Targeting communication for particular audiences (Technically, this is called communicating in varied "rhetorical modes."):
  • Attach several samples of your work that show your ability to tailor communication for specified audiences. You should choose samples from any genre of communication (see above, such as a news story, magazine article, Quicktime video or audio .mp3, graphic design file, a photo for a newspaper, an art photo, a proposal, a lesson plan for a 9th grade class, etc.). Much writing in college is written for a teacher as the audience (a final history exam or a 5-page informal essay in a literature class). We are looking for something different in this heading. We are looking here for several samples in which you produced communication for a different audience than a professor in a course. (Some samples may be the same as the ones you chose above.)
  • Attach a statement (no more than a half-sheet) to each sample in which you explain how this sample is structured to meet an particular audience's needs. Since most writing after college that will be a part of your job will be writing for a specific audience, we here are looking for evidence that you thought about your audience and made choices in your approach based your analysis of your audience.

• 3. Professional qualities and transferable skills. Explain and give instances of professional qualities and transferable skills you possess or are developing. Professional qualities and transferable skills include personal organization, time management, ethical behavior, and responsibility. Other transferable skills can be found on this list of transferable skills. Give an example from your life or work for each skill you name. Write a paragraph or two about particular instances in which you embodied some of these traits. Remember to address a potential employer here, not your adviser.
• 4. Technological proficiency -- Describe and provide an example of your growing proficiency with communication-related technology, if you are able to. If you are not able to provide such a sample, what are yout specific plans to grow in this dimension?

Paper 3. Your own experience in developing capabilities: --due Friday after Spring Break. Call it: yourlastname303MarchPaper.doc

Submit through WebCT.

This report should have two sections: 1) a discussion of the capabilities you’ve developed/are developing, and 2) your information-gathering interview, which is an exercise in developing capability.

• First, discuss what you’ve done this year that you wouldn’t have thought you could do a couple of years ago. Re-trace the steps that led you to this capability. In your experience, what was the relationship between the development of capability and discipline? Between the development of capability and the uncertain?

• Second, please do an Information-Gathering Interview. An Information-gathering Interview is an interview you conduct with a person who is working in a job that might interest you. The purpose of these interviews is to expand your knowledge of the types of careers available and what these careers are like. A second purpose is to develop a network of contacts. You will be doing at least one Information-gathering Interview each year in college. How to do an Information-Gathering Interview is explained here.

• In a page or two, write what you learned from this interview about the other person and especially about yourself and insights it gave you into career possibilities. A list of questions is found in the freshman section.

• Please also explain what other means have you used to explore possible career areas:

•List any relevant part-time jobs, volunteer positions, or other experiences that have helped your career exploration.

•List courses, reading, speakers, etc., that have helped you think about your strengths and possibilities.

NOTE: You should register for COM 487 (Career Preparation and Job-Search Techniques--3 credits) for one of the semesters of senior year. It is the best immediate career preparation for graduation possible.

Paper 4. Your overall development this year:--due in April. Call it: yourlastname303AprilPaper.doc

Submit through WebCT.

Question:

A major developmental step necessary for true adulthood (and not achieved by many adults!) is described in Chickering’s Vector 3, Moving through autonomy toward interdependence. In your freshman Career Development section, you thought about the separation from the stories written for your life by others and moving toward writing your own story. That is achieving autonomy. Assess where you now stand with regard to autonomy. Chickering holds that true adulthood means moving beyond autonomy toward healthy forms of interdependence. In your SEM 300 Common Good course you reflected on your place in a larger society. Whether you have taken SEM 300 yet or not, what ways have you found to contribute to the community, the society, the world?

V. OPTIONAL QUESTION: FEEDBACK

Having experienced the major this year, what feedback can you give to the department? What recommendations do you have? Thanks for your input.