By Yessenia Rico Zamora, SAA 2020
As I amin the process of job searching, I have been thinking a lot about thetransition process of becoming a full-time employee since I have never had afull-time job. Although I am thinking way ahead, learning about the transitionhas helped me appreciate more the last couple of months we have as graduatestudents. In looking at the topic of transition I found a really good NASPAarticle with ten tips on how to make the transition. These tips got me toreflect a lot on my graduate student experience. For this blog post, I willonly talk about four of them.
Tip #1: Mentally Prepare Ourselves for the Transition:
Asgraduate students, we have a lot of flexibility in our schedules that we mightnot always be mindful of. This first tip made me reflect on how much time Ihave that could be considered “free time” and how I won’t be able to come homefor an hour or two in the middle of the day as I can now. Now I am trying toappreciate more the time I have during the day where I am not in meetings or atwork, and I can either be home or do other things.
Tip #2: Be Aware of your Work-Life Balance
Whentransitioning to a new position, our first year might be challenging to keep agood balance due to our excitement. It is essential to keep track of our hoursand try not to have too many late nights. This tip takes me back to my firstyear of grad school and how excited I was to be working in residence life. Iremember spending a lot of time working and wanting to do everything in onenight. Of course, that got tiring super fast, and I had to take a step back tofind the right balance.
Tip #3: Setting Boundaries
I thinkthis tip goes hand in hand with the work-life balance. Setting boundaries earlyon is super important, so you don’t struggle when you have to put up boundarieslater in your job. This is definitely a skill I was able to learn and practicewith the Assistant Community Director position. I found it super helpful havingset strict boundaries in the beginning and being able to loosen up more throughoutthe semester.
Tip #4: Take ownership or your journey
At theend of it all, we have to be confident in our skills and ability to befantastic at any job! I know I have experienced imposter syndrome and still dothrough this job search process. However, it is important to recognize we areamazing student affairs professionals, and anyone would be lucky to hire us!
I amincredibly grateful for the experiences I have had in grad school. I will missbeing a student and the flexibility we sometimes have, but I’m so ready for afull-time job. I can’t wait to see where we all end up in a couple of months,and for now, I’m working on enjoying the last of my grad school experience. Ifyou’re interested in reading the article, the link is below!
https://www.naspa.org/blog/tips-for-transitioning-from-graduate-student-to-new-professional