You Majored in What? This is the state of the art when it comes to education publishing; also check out the webpage
Brooks, Katharine. You Majored in What?: Mapping Your Path from Chaos to Career. New York N.Y.: Viking, 2009.
I feel like I already know everything in this book, but I want to read it anyway so that I can show off my knowledge. For example, a central feature of the book is the "Wise Wandering System," which sounds very close to my original vision of the purpose of my blog "WanderMonkey" : "...while you may not see a coherent pattern in what you're doing right now, you'll learn to think about the connections you're building between your classes, your experiences, and so on."
I had no trouble doing the first of 11 exercises, so I'll post it below, along with any others I happen to get to:
Chapter 1: A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings and You Find a Job
Butterfly Moments in Your Life So Far
As you look back on your life, can you identify what Dickens called "memorable days" ...?
1. The day I went to the GLBT support group at Harvard -- I think it was in Adams House -- I met Adam Robbins. Looking back, meeting the love of my life was the most important day of my undergraduate career. And I did actually have some inkling that this was so. As I first ran my eyes over Adam, I imagined what life would be like if we were lovers, best friends, together on the project of life. And when it comes to jobs and career, we were influential on each other. He helped me more than any advisor or professor to leave my course of study and pursue another. And I persuaded him to come with me to Texas where we both went to graduate school.
2. Having already learned some of the lessons of this book, when I met RAA a few weeks ago I consciously chose to wander along with him, to keep in touch, and to begin my own course of creative writing, which includes attempting to put together a screenplay.
Have you already decided the career you plan to pursue? Describe the connections between the courses you're taking and your experiences so far that connect you to this career
The author shows that the book is for undergraduates still enrolled in courses. But if I step back and ask myself, instead of courses, "What are we learning now," I'd point how right now I'm learning yoga, learning to teach large groups of undergraduates effectively. I'm learning to research and execute major writing projects. I'm learning to translate academic prose from Chinese to English efficiently and professionally. I've also got mentors right now who are helping me with creative writing, to see how a story works from the inside out. What I picture doing with all this is throwing myself at the academic job market and trying hard to become a tenure-track assistant professor, but I want to have the flexibility to work in China or even pursue a creative writing project if my academic career doesn't take off as hoped.
Here are some ideas for future "classes," by which I mean things to learn: languages (German, Japanese, French and Spanish), more on the story: novels, short stories, poetry vs. stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment