The Big Bad World

In six months time I will see myself entering the real world, and what a scary thought that seems. In the midst of it all, I can reflect on my past four years in a university setting and think of the things that I have learnt that will assist me in reaching my full potential – to do the things that I want to do, and achieve the things that up until now, I merely dreamt about.

Will I get fired if I don’t write my reports in the TEEL format? Would it be frowned upon if I didn’t set my margins to 2.54? Or used another source of referencing other than the APA style? I’m hardly criticising the fine details of tertiary expectations, rather, I acknowledge that these requirements are set in place for students to recognise an appreciation for attention to detail and become ‘report writing technicians’ so to speak, however, what is it that is going to really set us up for that big bad world out there?

I once had a tutor that didn’t care for the punctuation, grammar and technical marketing terms. The seminar based class was supposed to run for three hours and he was happy to get it done in half the time, as long as we produced ‘the goods’. The students didn’t know what to think. We had been raised in first year to think centrally, and stick close to the sidelines but he wanted the guts, and he had a unique way of interacting the class to think critically and profoundly. In fact, it was this man that persuaded me to choose marketing as my career pathway. And I haven’t looked back since. Alike this man, opportunities such as the Google Challenge remind me of the things that are important in career development. We need the patience to be able to sustain our hard work, and being aware that in time our persistence will pay off – alike making changes to the AdWords campaign, we had to give it time to reap results. Team work. You think as a university student you understand team work. Let me tell you, you don’t fully understand team work until you’ve tried the Google Challenge. Integrated thinking. Two minds are always better than one and each one of us has contributed something to which all of us have learnt ten-fold. Confidence. To have the confidence to walk into that potential employer’s office and be beaming with self-worth because we were the ones that had the real-life campaign experience. No portfolios, no tests – just experience. We got ‘the goods’.

And most importantly, the reminder. Being reminded every day why we’re here, and why we chose to do this. Because, we’re motivated, passionate and hungry to learn – this is career development.

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