For many students, the road to finding a career can be challenging, but over 100 UW-Madison community members learned Thursday the trip might not be as difficult as they thought.
Susan Basalla, co-author of So What Are You Going to Do With That?: Finding Careers Outside Academia,"" provided students in Grainger Hall with tips on how to find jobs outside the academic world.
Basalla warned graduate students the process of leaving the academic world is a difficult road.
""It's not easy to leave a universe you have lived in for a decade or more,"" she said. ""The happy thing is it's only finding that first job that can be the hardest.""
Basalla offered strategies to hone job-seeking tactics.
According to Basalla, the most important strategy to finding careers outside of academia is networking.
""Networking is the number-one, hands down, best way to get a job,"" she said. ""It's about making connections, generating some possibilities and sitting back to see what happens.""
Micah Hahn, a UW-Madison first-year graduate student, said she found Basalla's networking tips to be the most thought-provoking part of the speech.
""She gave a lot of practical tips which were helpful,"" she said. ""A lot of her ideas were things you can actually use in the real world.""
Basalla said pursuing outside interests while in graduate school can be important not only for forming connections outside of academia but also to help make the process more smooth and enjoyable.
Katie Holman, a UW-Madison second-year graduate student, said she felt underestimating her non-academic pursuits was her biggest problem in graduate school and was glad Basalla addressed the issue.
""A lot of times when people are in grad school they forget about what they enjoy,"" she said. ""Graduate school tends to come first, but it's nice to hear someone say that you don't have to love school, you can have other hobbies.""
Basalla encouraged graduate students not to portray dissertations as their greatest accomplishments. She said the process of the research is more important than the actual content.
""The process of formulating your problem, structuring your argument and actually going through that process is what's valuable,"" she said.
