I am a true believer in creating your own luck and I believe
that is achieved through putting yourself in opportunistic situations. Taking advantage of every opportunity that
comes across you and not being afraid to fail at those opportunities is a key
to being successful in life. I try to
seek out and participate in every opportunity that presents itself to me to
explore different aspects of life.
Whether it be joining various clubs on campus to exploring the world
through school run programs I try to dabble in all of them. I am apart of the Sports business association
on campus which has allowed me to meet and network with many different people
in the business world and I am also apart of a social fraternity of campus
which has allowed to me expand my social horizons beyond what I thought they
could be. I also participated in a study
abroad program through school which let me explore a completely different
culture in Europe for the first time.
Participating in these opportunities have increased by life experiences
ten fold and I am very glad I participated in them.
On the other hand, there has been plenty of opportunities
that I have missed out on because I was not ambitious and neglected to
participate in them. One recent
opportunity I did not take advantage of was the business career fair on campus. The career fair provides a platform were many
business students can network with and hand applications to big companies
around the country that are looking for interns and potential employees our age. This is a great opportunity provided by the school
for all students to have face to face time with great corporations that could
be a future career for a student.
However, I did not go to the career fair this year and in my junior year
it is crucial to get a good internship this summer. I kept downplaying how helpful the career
fair was and kept procrastinating revising my resume so it would be ready for
the fair. On the day of the fair I
realized I did not have a revised resume and had done no research on potential
companies that would interest me. Being
this underprepared I chose not to go to the career fair thinking it would be of
no benefit to me at this point. I regret
not taking advantage of this opportunity because now all of my peers that went
to the fair are setting up interviews, in personal contact with recruiters, and
had a great networking experience at the fair which I was unable to have due to
my own fault.
In this situation I missed two opportunities: being under
prepared and not going to the fair at all.
Overall, I extremely regret procrastinating building my resume so it
would be prepared to present to potential companies I would like to work
for. There was plenty of resume
workshops on campus that could have helped me but I just never committed to any
of them. I also did not research any of
the companies that are there which is essential to looking prepared to these
companies while talking to them face to face.
Lastly, not going to the career fair at all because I felt too
unprepared was a mistake as well. I could
have still gone and at least began to network with these companies and could
have gotten contacts and good insight for future career fairs. This was an opportunity I missed out on and
could effect me in the future but it was also a good learning experience to
never pass up on any opportunity whether its small of large.
I normally don't correct student grammar or word usage but since you did this more than once, apart as one word means the distance between things, e.g. far apart, while a part of (two words plus the preposition of) means belonging to.
ReplyDeleteNow as to the subject matter of your post, you didn't understand the prompt and therefore wrote about taking advantage of opportunities or not, giving examples of these. The prompt, however, was about opportunism, which has an ethical dimension to it. Acting opportunistically usually means somebody else has been harmed or, at least, there was the potential for harm and yet the person undertook the action without regard for that consequence.
On the procrastination itself, you mind find this piece called Later an interesting read. We all procrastinate somewhat. The question is coming to terms with ourselves with what we do manage to accomplish and what we end up putting off. In your case, it is less than ideal to not have an internship after your junior year, but that is still possible now and in any event you can recover from the prior mistake. It will take time and effort, no doubt, but it is definitely do-able. And this time your motivation may be a lot better, so procrastination is not an issue.
I found the piece Later a very interesting read because it outlined that procrastination is the quintessential problem in the modern world. People's preferences are not consistent over time so our long run desires get changed due to the short run. Why? Some would say it is due to ignorance because people are more interested in short term pleasures while pushing back long term consequences
DeleteI agree with you that being able to realize and take advantage of opportunities is important in one's quest for success. We all have certain situations in life that we can look back on and say, "Wow, that has really benefited me in a lot of ways." There are also those opportunities that we fail to take advantage of. For example, I went to the career fair, but don't feel that I was fully prepared. The fear of not getting the job you want is created by the fact that there will always be better resumes, someone might always interview better than you. However, I suggest focussing on the successful opportunities to keep a level head towards hopefully more success.
ReplyDeleteJohn,
ReplyDeleteI agree not being afraid to fail is a very important aspect of success. Also being involved in campus RSO's is also a great thing and something I do myself; definitely opens doors for you socially and (hopefully) professionally. However, I do agree with Prof. Arvan that you unfortunately did not write a response for the exact prompt assigned. While I do relate to the procrastination you have explained in this post as I myself unfortunately do it as well, hopefully in the future you can write a slightly more relevant post to what Prof. Arvan assigned so we can all have a better discussion and understanding from its lessons.