As a student, we all have an aspiration… an aspiration to learn in life. One of the biggest decisions of our lives is about our careers. We aspire to have a great and fulfilling career. To achieve that, we have to learn from our situations and keep on working towards our goals.
In this article, we are sharing 5 career lessons with you, which will help you, create a master plan, help you formulate a road map and direct you in the right course of action.
Have a Strategic Career Plan
A career plan is a strategic way of listing short-term and long-term goals highlighting the actions which you will take-up in future. Every student is unique so is your plan of action. However, the strategy to create the plan should remain standard for every student.
Strategy 1. Think, where you see yourselves after 10 years down the line. You could either have some clue or no clue about it. Here, a career expert plays an essential role. Consult a credible expert for your aptitude & personality testing and understand the career domain you fit. It is not necessary that you should have a clear and crystal idea at this stage of your life, yet you should get a general idea about what excites you the most.
Strategy 2. Analyze, the list of subjects which you can take in 11th grade that can help you achieve your goals. You can talk to your mentors, teachers, and counsellors at school to help you out with the subject combinations. Every school offer different set of combination of subjects. Before you finalize, make sure you reach out to your school and understand the combinations in depth.
Strategy 3. Research about the course options, list of universities that offer that course, eligibility and admission deadlines, post when you have finalized on your subjects.
2. Aim for Skyward Learning Curve
One of the best things about life is that we learn each day and every day. Now-a-days, the competition is very high. As a student, you should always upgrade yourself with new skills and techniques. Here are the ways a student can have a skyward learning curve-
Strategy 1. Participate in online or offline Academic Quizzes for general knowledge, mathematics, vocabulary, & science and technology.
Strategy 2. Write Olympiads such as National Level Science Talent Search Examination, National Mathematics Indian Talent Olympiads, National English Indian Talent Olympiads etc.
Strategy 3. Take participation in competitions organized by your schools. It’s not about winning the competition. It’s about participating and learning how to compete with others.
Strategy 4. Play a sport. It not only makes you mentally fit but it also adds to your profile.
Strategy 5. Choose any extra-curricular activity and upgrade your skills in the same. You can paint, sing, dance, cook, debate, and volunteer as per your choice.
Strategy 6. Summer Schools, Many Indian and Abroad universities offer summer schools for school students. Some of the top summer schools in India are Symbiosis Summer School, Amity University Summer School, and Summer School at FLAME University. Some of the summer schools in Abroad are Harvard Summer School, Oxford Summer School, FASS track Asia: the Summer School by National University Singapore.
3. Understand that Life is beyond your GPA
Academic scores do matter yet they don’t define your intellect level. Your text books equip you with the technical knowledge and your scores help you get into your dream college, but you learn about life when you go out of your text books and read additional texts. Here are the following strategies which challenges your intellect:
Strategy 1. Pursue Online Certifications of the topic of your interest. You can refer to platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Edx.
Strategy 2. Learn a new skill or a new language. Keep upgrading you with what’s the industry is demanding from the people.
Strategy 3. Try to intern under someone to learn the functions of the organizations. This helps you to get clarity at a younger stage.
4. Always Set (and Stick to) Deadlines
No task can be completed without any deadline. You have to schedule and set a start and end date to the task.
Strategy 1. Collect a list of all the tasks. Identify which task is urgent and determine your priority.
Strategy 2. Figure out the right time limit for each task. The range of the time limit should be 15mins to 45mins. If you allocate more time to a particular task, make sure you break it into two sessions.
Strategy 3. It’s easy to put off undesirable assignments until the very last minute, but the only thing which it would bring to you is all-night stress. Hence, avoid procrastination and complete your task when it is allotted to you.
5. Hard-Work v/s Smart-Work. Choose?
A Hard-Worker is the one who puts equal effort in the entire task given to you, whereas a smart-worker applies brain and puts his/her effort in the most efficient manner with minimal human energy.
Strategy 1. Prepare for your next day, a night before. This way, you will be handling all the tasks smartly.
Strategy 2. Go for the Smart Studies. Understand which topic carries more weightage from exam perspective. Review each topic periodically instead of cramming. Make sure you simplify, summarize, and compress the information for a long-lasting learning experience.
Strategy 3. Multitasking makes you less productive and more distracted from your goal. For effective and efficient results, focus on one thing at a time and avoid multi-tasking.
