YOUR SENIOR YEAR

Finishing and Beginning Again

The two big jobs for most seniors are finishing up and starting up again. Both of these offer a lot of challenges.

Finishing up for many of you involves some large projects, such as co-ops, student teaching, or some other similar project that you can put your stamp on. Finishing up might also involve taking some courses that you haven’t had the opportunity to take so far. Finishing up might also involve some new living arrangements or social life.

Finishing up also might involve avoiding some problems: for those of you who were actively involved in junior year, you might need to find ways to avoid becoming a slack rubber band this year and to find new challenges for your considerable energy. Frittering away an excessive amount of time is another temptation seniors face. Worrying about the future or hiding your worries sometimes consume a lot of energy too.

Getting ready for life after college is also a big challenge. Thinking through your goals, getting together your work to show potential employers, making lists of employers, polishing your resume, making some contacts—these are all preoccupations of many seniors. You need to take COM 487 (Career Preparation and Job-Search Techniques) this year.

We hope that during senior year you experience some of the effects of your liberal arts education: perhaps you are making more connections among things you’re learning in courses and outside experience. Perhaps you feel a sense of confidence about how you have grown. Perhaps you are thinking more about your own set of values as you observe your peers make their choices of values.

Here is the way two counselors, Herant Katchadourian and John Boli, describe senior year:

Senior Year:—A time for closure

“‘I love it here, but I don’t want to stay any longer.’ That parting statement pretty much sums up the prevailing sentiment among seniors. The dominant theme of the year is leaving the university.

“Academically, the senior year is most rewarding for students who are engaged in a culminating experience such as working on an honor’s project. For those who have fulfilled their major and distribution requirements, the year provides a relaxed occasion to take a variety of courses for interest, to round off one’s education, or to mark time. But there are also those who are trying frantically to complete their requirements so as to graduate and others who want to ‘drain every last bit of experience out of the final year.’

“Another major task is completing applications and interviews for graduate school or jobs, a time-consuming and oftentimes anxiety-ridden task. . . . Separation anxiety and concerns about the future are primary ingredients of ‘senioritis.’

“More than any other year, the senior year is described as happy, fun, rewarding, and relaxed. Academic experiences are much more often described in positive than negative terms. . . . Social and romantic relationships are likewise seen as positive. There is a feeling of ‘heightened appreciation of the world around me.’

“Courses are seen as less demanding. . . . Interestingly, personal motivation . . . is among the most significant [academic problems] for seniors. Freshmen squander their time through disorganization and lack of direction; seniors fritter it away.

“Overall, the senior pattern is one of disengaging not only from academic life but also from extracurricular activities. Students follow through on commitments made in previous years but do not become involved in new activities. On the other hand, informal social life with small groups of close friends becomes very important.

“The key question in the freshman year is, ‘What am I going to do in college?’ In the senior year it is, What am I going to do after college? In freshman year one asks, Where are you from? In the senior year the question is, Where are you going next year?

“Students develop and mature over the four years of college along a number of dimensions, in addition to their academic and career orientations. The overall effect of college on student attitudes is one of progressive liberalization. Although they mostly retain the politics, religious, and ideological orientations they came with, undergraduates show a greater openness to and tolerance of other viewpoints, values, and life-styles by the time they leave.

“Interactions with those from other backgrounds leave few students untouched. Gender roles are reconsidered, ethnic roots are explored. The world of ideas expands their intellectual horizons. Experiences outside college—as they work, perform voluntary services, and travel—expose them to the adult world.”

YOUR CAREER DEVELOPMENT REPORTS—SENIOR YEAR

Your Career Development Reports should be well written and presented to your adviser on the dates due. Please hand in two copies—one will be returned to you with comments, the other will go into your permanent file. It is a great help to faculty when they write letters of recommendation for you.

The report has four parts.

1. preparation for Senior Skills Presentation (due third Friday in October )

2. Senior Skills Presentation (early November)

3. finishing and beginning again (due Friday after Spring Break)

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

I. Prepare for Senior Skills Presentation: (due third Friday in October)

In addition to the goals of specific courses and areas within the department, all English and English and Communication majors will achieve the following common outcomes:

• 1) You will be prepared to enter your chosen profession. You will be aware of career choices. You will be able to articulate your skills and talents for potential employers or graduate schools.
  2) You will become adept at structuring your professional work—whether it is a letter of application for a job, a theater presentation, a speech, a lesson plan, a newspaper story, a video, a radio show, a photo story, or a marketing communication plan--to meet the needs of an intended audience (rhetorical proficiency).
  3) You will have a working knowledge of technology as it relates to your chosen field. You will be able to demonstrate the appropriate use of technology to communicate your ideas in a professional project, publication, or presentation.
  4) You will become a skilled written communicator. You will be able to write academic papers with a clear focus, correct conventions, adequate content, appropriate organization, and effective style.
  
  

In November you will present a sample of your skills to department faculty and fellow seniors. The format will be a 15-minute presentation similar to a practice job interview. In preparation for the November presentation, follow these directions:

• Click to view the instructions to use for your October report.

You may also want to print out the November Senior Skills instructions to help you prepare.

II. YOUR SENIOR SKILLS PRESENTATION (done in November. Sign up online in October.)

III. Evaluating where you stand now: --due Friday after Spring Break. Call it: yourlastname403MarchPaper.doc

Submit through WebCT.

The DVD of your senior skills presentation is on reserve in the library. Download the self-evaluation form. Email it to yourself and fill it out on a computer. Go to the library and review your presentation. (You will have to watch the DVD there.) Use the form to evaluate yourself and to plan what you might need to do to improve. Fill out the form and upload it to WebCT by the Friday after Spring Break.

IV. YOUR OVERALL DEVELOPMENT DURING COLLEGE: (due in April). Call it: yourlastname403AprilPaper.doc

Submit through WebCT.

Question:

Refer to the 5^th and 7^th vector of Chickering when writing this report. Chickering suggests an ambitious goal: identity formation. Although it seems like a goal that can never be reached, given its dynamic nature, it may be that the goal is met precisely in the shifting contours of our changing answers to the question: “Who are you?” Nonetheless, the question remains, “Who are you?” Equally important and no doubt equally elusive is Chickering’s goal of articulating what is important to you. What do you care about? What values do you consider non-negotiable? How do these values impact the choices you must make over the next year? Tell the story of who you have become now in any way you see fit. Due to your adviser by the day specified in WebCT. Thank you. Keep in touch in the future. We wish you the best!

V. OPTIONAL QUESTION: FEEDBACK

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