Personal Philosophy, Career Goals, & Academic Opportunities

Joseph writes:

My personal philosophy regarding my professional life reflects what kind of person I have changed into after making a huge decision in my life. I turned away from being the typical crazy partying college guy and decided to get serious about life. I now believe that in any vocation I am in, it is not only necessary but a privilege to do the job as if unto God. And with that philosophy entails attacking a job with such appreciation and vigor that separates me from the rest of my coworkers. I not only strive to be the best, but I do everything by the book. I don’t cut corners and I go the extra mile.

I think this philosophy is interdisciplinary because I use all of my abilities, both right brain and left brain abilities and use them to interact with everyone I meet, both logic and intuition, sequential and random patterns, and whatever knowledge i have learned from all of my classes to talk to guests, to interact with them, and to give them the best time possible at a restaurant. And as soon as I can, I am going to use those abilities when I get an actual career that I would be happy with.

A few different happenstances have altered my career goals greatly. I had plans of working at NASA, with some family members who already worked there, but now that Obama, who promised not to shut down NASA so he could win the Florida vote, is shutting down NASA, I have had to make some different plans. I am now trying to find any job out there, and I am trying to rely on some friends who have good careers also. I know something good is out there for me, I just have to be patient enough for it.

-----

Ada writes:

Hmm, I'm not sure I ever really thought about having a philosophy concerning my professional life. I guess the main rules I try to live by are that I should be doing something I love and that I shouldn't compromise my ethics for work. The first one means I've mostly sought out jobs related to art or computers (though, ironically, I have no interest in digital media). The second one means that I've butted heads with a few of my managers/employers, particularly when they wanted me to knowingly lie to customers. This is the main reason I don't like sales-oriented jobs. I've always been very good at them, but I'm also not willing to lie in order to sell something, which makes a lot of employers unhappy. I'm not sure I really see anything particularly interdisciplinary about my philosophy, as it could really be applied to any job in any field, or any discipline or combination thereof.

I don't think my ultimate career goals have changed very much (my ultimate goal being to run my own business, which I've wanted to do pretty much as long as I can remember), though maybe certain "sub-goals" or aspects of my goals have changed over the years. For example, when I was younger I wanted to own a comic book store (I know, I'm a HUGE dork), whereas now I guess I want to focus more on selling my own artwork rather than other people's. And I always thought I'd spend a few years after college working full-time as a programmer before trying to start my business, but now, after several years of college, I'm anxious to just get my business started and make my dream come true.

-----

Discuss your personal philosophy concerning your professional life.

How is or isn't this philosophy interdisciplinary?

How have your career goals altered?

Cover Letters & Resume

Joseph says:

The resume I use is more of an educational type resume that definitely highlights my interdisciplinarity because I show the different types of classes I have taken. I try to highlight those classes I feel more directly reveals what type of person I am. If you have a cover letter, does this sound familiar?

Dear Hiring Manager/To Whom It May Concern:

I am extremely interested in such and such position.

I am a junior/senior at the University of Central Florida pursuing such and such degree.

My qualifications are such and such

Please contact me at this number/email to discuss … Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Your name

This is the basic format of almost every cover letter that is out there. I recommend trying something a little different to make yours stand out. Talk about the research you did about the company and your knowledge of the company and incorporate that into your cover letter. You can find many examples of cover letters online, with the same basic format, just make sure to personalize it as well.

-----

Ada says:

One thing I would strongly recommend for learning to write good resumés and other business documents is a technical writing class. I took Writing for Technical Professionals a couple terms ago, and even though I had already considered myself to be a very strong writer, it taught me a lot of important things about business communication. Aside from giving me lots of practice in writing different types of letters and memoranda, I received a lot of good feedback on my resumé. (And somehow this was the first time I had heard the tip that resumés should almost never be more than one page!)
Highlighting your interdisciplinarity is, I've found, very important. Skills I wouldn't have expected to use at a particular job have turned out to be valuable to potential employers. For example, when I applied for my research assistant job, I didn't expect my linguistic skills to be terribly important, but it turned out that my interviewer was looking for somebody with strong computer skills _and_ strong language skills (for reviewing/proofreading technical papers).

-----

What are ways your resume can highlight your interdisciplinarity?

What are some questions about cover letters you've have?

Share your best cover letter.

What are questions about resumes that you have and/or share some advice?

Share any resources you've found about cover letters and/or resumes.

Professional Opportunities & Job Skills

Joseph says:

I will admit that the only time I have used my interdisciplinarity at work is when I am discussing what exactly a light-year means and other things that interest me about space and mathematics. I speak to and with a ton of people because I am a server at a restaurant, but I really hope to work with something, anything in space, and since my professional career so far is all hospitality, I am doing my best to start a different path for myself. I cannot wait for the good things that are made for me.

My strongest job skill is my people skills, because I can basically become friends with anyone and have stuff to talk about because as an Interdisciplinary Studies student, I have taken some varied courses over many different subjects. I just have a lot of knowledge that is trying to manifest itself in my daily life. To be honest, my weakest job skill is my laziness. When I am serving at the restaurant, if it is a slow day, I tend to get in more of a lazy mode than if it were busy. On those busy days, you cannot even tell that I could be a lazy person; I just work smarter, not harder. I think the only thing I can really do to not be lazy is to make myself busy. I like to work fast and consistently, and get everything done with as fast as possible (but not sloppily or cut corners) so I can just get out of work and get home to my wife.

I have tried to do the internship and externship route but it never seemed to work for me. I have seen it work for some of my friends though, and I am really happy that it did. It helped them get the positions they have at their work, and it was invaluable to them. If at all possible, I recommend doing an externship, internship, or co-op. If you have not signed up for KnightLink already, do so here!!

According to the UCF Career Services website,

“It is never too early or too late to work on you professional development plan. The more time you invest in this process, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.”

Walk-in career assistance is available Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Career Services is located in Ferrell Commons (across from the Market Place), Bldg. 7G or make an appointment by calling 407-823-2361.

-----

Ada says:

Well, as I said in my previous post about integrating areas, I've used interdisciplinarity a fair amount in my professional life, though maybe not for all of my jobs. I've probably used it the most at my current post as a research assistant. My professional history has consisted mostly of art-related jobs: I've done body art (like temporary tattooing and body painting), photography, and assisted at a glass shop, and I presently work freelance as an artist. My interdisciplinarity has helped at these to a degree (like utilizing my technical skills at my photography job) but mostly those were single-discipline jobs. The only other jobs I've had have been one retail job and my current work as a computer vision research assistant.

My strongest job skills are probably my interpersonal skills (commercial art, especially body art, requires being able to talk to people, find out exactly what kind of art they want done, and make them comfortable) and my technical skills (being able to troubleshoot equipment, or to edit code at my current job). My weakest skill is probably my ability to prioritize my work; sometimes I have a hard time determining what's important for me to work on right now and what should wait. I've been working on this the last couple years; it kind of goes hand in hand with my work I've been doing on my organizational skills. I am really, really bad about forgetting things, even important things. I can make all kinds of reminders for myself and I'll still forget CRUCIAL things, so I've had to learn a system to make sure I get important things done. But learning to prioritize is probably my biggest work weakness right now. Sometimes I get little things done and run out of time for the important stuff.

I second Joseph's recommendation for getting involved in Career Services. If not Career Services, find someplace you can network, or a place that posts jobs, or even a club you can get involved with related to your field. My current job is arguably the best (and most reliably well-paying) job I've ever had, and I would have never known about it if I hadn't gotten involved with Women In Engineering; I found out about the job from our local chapter's mailing list.

-----

Questions for the Mentees:

How have you used your interdisciplinarity in your professional life?What has been your professional history?What are your strongest and weakest job skills?What can you do to develop and improve upon your weak skills?How have internship or externship helped your professional development?

Critical Thinking

Joey writes:

Edward Glaser, in his An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking (1941), writes that the ability to think critically involves three things:

1. An attitude of being disposed (state of mind regarding something) to consider in a thoughtful way the problems and subjects that come within the range of one's experiences,
2. Knowledge of the methods of logical inquiry and reasoning,
3. Some skill in applying those methods.

I believe this most closely approximates what I believe to be critical thinking, and I truly believe that it is quite important in your personal, professional, and scholastic pursuits.

Also, I believe that Critical Thinking is at the crux of an Interdisciplinary Studies degree, because you are asked to basically make up your own degree within certain parameters to highlight your skills and abilities. Critical thinking makes you decide what is important to you that you want others to know and what you have done to further those efforts. At the end of our posts are some more questions that we want you to ask yourselves and respond to. Thanks.

-----

Ada writes:

I agree that critical thinking is absolutely crucial to an interdisciplinary student. Strictly speaking, I think critical thinking is important for _any_ student, but I think interdisciplinarity is nearly impossible without strong critical thinking skills. It's only through critical thinking that we are able to synthesize multiple disciplines.

Objectivity is a skill which must be developed hand-in-hand with critical thinking. One of the most important parts of critical thinking, to me, is learning to examine yourself and your own biases and thought patterns, and only through objectivity can you critically examine and find flaws in your own thinking. The same goes, though, for critically examining the words and actions of others, like books and websites you might read. Learn to read between the lines!

Critical Thinking: an introduction to the basic skills is an interesting book on this subject; I particularly liked the section on objective reporting. (If my link works, you can read some of it on the free preview from Google Books.)

-----

Critical Thinking

How does your critical thinking relate to being interdisciplinary?

Comment on how the Virtual Philosopher scored your response. From the comments you received about your responses, what insight have you gained about your own critical thinking and reasoning?

How does the outline of your critical thinking disposition match with the application of it in doing the Virtual Philosopher?