Evaluating My Informational Interview Report

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I believe the key to a successful professional career is recognizing, articulating, and utilizing the interconnections amongst all things. Many people think of their network as a group of people, but I think of my network as including people, ideas, devices, and pathways connecting them. Before enrolling in the Career and Professional Development for Graduate Students class, I would not have synthesized my opening sentence. In fact, I have been long opposed to the traditional idea of a network and its importance to landing a career. I have come to this new realization and acceptance through a series of ‘ah-ha connection’ moments in conversations during the semester. The life-values inventory and Myers-Briggs type indicator exercises and class discussions gave me insight to some of the personal life struggles I had been having at the …show more content…
Specifically, the categorizing of my values and methods of rejuvenation showed me probable causality connections of the stress in my life. Evaluating my informational interview I was reminded my Mrs. Yancey to approach new fields of study with the resources and skills that are your strengths. This fit with my advisor’s comment that, “Acoustics is a new simulation field for [me] that aligns with many resources and goals [and] fits with [my] overall approach.” Yet another connection of informational interviews for job searching came during a lunch lecture by an author from New York City focusing on the international student job search, where he spend 40 minutes convincing the audience to use informational interviews to bypass the standard job application. Another iteration of topics covered in class was by a manager at Intel referencing the need for PhD new hires to be a T-shaped professional with board field knowledge and deep dissertation topic knowledge just as Mr. Gahagan mentioned in his leadership presentation. Perceiving these and other connections through the semester is the first step toward a successful