There’s been a flurry of activity at the Office of Career Services and Cooperative Education over the past month. The co-op counselors’ schedules were filled with students looking for leads on summer co-ops, employers conducted on-site mock interviews, and the office hosted our series of 30 minute career workouts. The annual Connections job fair was a resounding success for both students and employers. Overall, I’ve been impressed by the amount of students who are putting in serious time preparing for their future careers.

I’m not due to graduate myself from my MA program for another year, but I can’t help but reflect on my own career choices after I finished my undergraduate degree. I’m not sure whether it was Generation X apathy, lack of ambition, fear of the future, or old-fashioned laziness, but after graduation I found myself back in my little boy bed in my family home. My mom was doing my laundry and I was working at a retail job that I could have held in high school. Things eventually got better, but it was not an auspicious beginning to my professional career.

I’m determined not to make the same mistakes again, but it’s easy to fall into old habits. I’m working in the office with co-op employment counselors, scheduling appointments for students, and encouraging them to act soon. Yet, I practically had to be forced by the graduate student career counselor to make an appointment for myself. Slightly embarrassed, I penciled myself in for an appointment with one of our co-op counselors. The day of our meeting, my counselor asked about my career goals and pointed out several summer co-ops that would look great on my resume and provide valuable experience for my career after graduation. I thanked him, took the information, and it’s been on the floor near my desk at home for over a week. “Have you applied to any of those jobs yet?” he asked the other day. “Not yet,” I replied sheepishly, pretending to be concentrating on some important office task.

The moral of this story is to get started on your career plans now. I could throw a bunch of clichés at you: early bird gets the worm, etc. but I’m offering myself up as an example instead. Procrastination will get you nowhere. Get started and hit the ground running. Take it from me, I’m a graduate student and I’m 104 years old. (Some elements of this story have been fictionalized for dramatic effect).