Feel-Good Resumes

    Happy March, everyone! Spring is coming, and if you're in university like me, another school year is rapidly approaching its end. And if you're in your last year of study (also like me), then graduation is just around the corner and you might be thinking (again, just like I am): What the heck do I do now?

    For me, plan A was to be accepted to a medical school, and have the summer off to go on some of the adventures my wife and I have been dreaming about before school in September. But that didn't happen. And my plan B was, well, underdeveloped at best. I knew I would go find work, until I do get into a medical school, but I never bothered to think about where, or what kind of job I'd get.

    But! No matter what I end up doing, one thing has to come first: I have to write a resume.

    No matter where you are in life, or what pathway you chose to pursue after high school, there will come a time when you'll look for a job, and this almost always means that you'll need to write a resume. Not only that, but you need to write one that will catch an employers eye, and it needs to be impressive enough to stand out from maybe dozens of other resumes, but somehow short enough that the employers reading it can take it all in over the 7 seconds they'll spend reading it. Yeah, that's how long an employer will spend reading your resume, on average.

    Sounds hard, right? You're probably right. But there's also a lot of help out there if you look for it. Google can be a real friend here. Chances are, too, that your government has a resource centre in your town, or at least nearby with professionals ready to help you draft your resume and find jobs. If you're in university or college, there's probably resources there to help you along, too. But the important thing to remember is that writing a resume should make you feel good. I'll explain why in a bit, but let's start with some other tips, first:

Keep it short:
    Two pages is plenty. Any more than that, and you risk employers not reading the whole thing. 7 seconds, remember? Look at examples online, and you'll see that most resumes look like lists. That format will help you keep your resume short, and you should use it.

Adapt it to the job posting:
    One clever way to make your resume stand out is if you emphasize the right things. For example, I just applied to a job to a fitness centre a few days ago, and the posting for it mentioned that one of the key responsibilities would be pushing sales. So, even though I'm about to get a shiny new degree in human kinetics (which is mostly health and exercise science), I emphasized my previous experience in sales as much, if not more, than my education.
    Another way you can adapt your resume to the job posting is by researching the company that posted it. Doing this will give you a better idea of what the company does, and what kind of work you'll be doing.
   If you adapt your resume to job postings, you might end up writing a few different versions of it. If you're applying to a lot of really similar jobs (like fast food jobs for the summer, for example), you probably don't need different resumes for Wendy's and McDonald's. Unless you want to. I wouldn't stop you.

Write your achievements, not your tasks:
    This is probably the best resume advice I ever found (thank you, UBC!), and this is what I meant when I said writing a resume should make you feel good. Most people, when they write about their previous experience, only write the tasks they had to do at previous jobs: "cooked food"; "sold cars"; "built houses". That's boring, and it doesn't sound impressive, even if it was actually impressive.
    Compare the car selling example to this one: "organized regular marketing campaigns to sell an average of twenty cars per month." I don't know if that's a realistic example, but it sounds more impressive, right? Not only does the employer know more about what you did, but they also know how well you did it. So what's different? UBC calls these "accomplishment statements", and they follow the basic formula: VERB+TASK+RESULT. Start with the verb of what you did, then describe your task and end with a result, remember to keep it short. Basically, if you're doing this right, you should feel better about yourself because you're writing down things you've achieved. It's pretty much a feel-good-Friday about yourself, and it goes a long way in making resume-writing a lot easier and less scary, and it makes your resume look a lot better.
    Check out this UBC webpage for more examples: https://students.ubc.ca/career/career-resources/resumes-cover-letters-curricula-vitae


   There's a lot more to resume writing. What are some tips and tricks that helped you write your resume?

The Life You Actually Want

Call me crazy, but I think I know the secret (or at least one of the secrets) to end up living the life you actually want to live.

Why do so many people fall short of their potential? Why do so many people waste years of their lives on jobs they hate and devote their precious hours to meaningless entertainment? What are they waiting for? Why aren't they going anywhere?

There are two big ideas I want to talk about her: vision, and goals.

Originally I just wanted to write about goal-setting, but it occurred to me that it's really hard to set goals if you don't have a vision of where you want to go. In short, vision is the destination and goals are the path you take to get there. Having a vision means knowing what you want and when you want it. It means being able to picture yourself happy and healthy, doing what you love and genuinely liking your life.

You might not know exactly what you want right now, and that's okay. Maybe asking you "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" is too much. Start with what you do know. Do you want to be debt-free? Do you want to have a family of your own? Do you want to travel? Do you want to graduate from college or university? Do you want to start your own business and be your own boss? Do you want to run a marathon or swim across the English Channel?

It doesn't matter how big or how small your vision is right now. Whether you have a detailed picture in your mind about exactly who you'll be twenty years from now or you can only grasp one aspect of your life you want to improve, it doesn't matter. Start small if you have too. Dream big if you can. But make sure you have some kind of vision, or you run the risk of never going anywhere.

Take a minute. Think about it. Do you have a vision of the life you actually want?

Great! Let's move on to how you can go about getting there.

You've probably heard of the acronym SMART when it comes to goal-setting, but just in case you haven't, here's a crash course:

Specific - Don't be vague. Make sure you know exactly what you're asking of yourself.
Measurable - Try making a checklist or graph to chart your progress.
Attainable - If you can barely run two minutes, don't expect to run your first marathon next month.
Relevant - Your goals should make sense to you and be appropriate for where you're at right now.
Timely - Give yourself a deadline.

I'll add another tip: write your goals down! It's a good way to keep yourself accountable. If it's written down then you can't pretend it doesn't exist. I set some goals for myself at the beginning of January this year. I wrote them down and broke each one down into bite-sized chunks that I can cross off as I go, then taped them up above my dresser so that I see them every day. Each time I look at that paper, I'm reminded of how much I've accomplished already and also of how much I still have to do.

Goals are the stepping stones to achieving your vision. That being said, things don't always go according to plan, even if you're doing everything in your power to make things happen.

One time, I set the goal of going back to school and getting a bachelor's degree in music. I had previously taken classes at a university in Calgary, but I hadn't been going to school there for over a year and had since moved back to my home province. I discovered that I was still technically a registered student there. I studied for months for a high-level music theory exam to meet the entrance requirements, and passed with honours. I made an appointment to meet with a school advisor to change my major from Psychology to Music the next time I was in Calgary.  I talked to my husband about moving there so I could go back to school and he agreed.

But when I actually met with the school advisor, I found out that despite my months of preparation, I had inadvertently missed the deadline to change my major for the upcoming school year, and would have to wait another full calendar year to make the change. (Here's another lesson for you: there are deadlines for changing your major!) This news felt like a punch in the gut! Music is a pretty specialized program, as you can imagine, and the vast majority of music classes are reserved for music students. In my heart, that included me. On paper, it didn't.

So my husband and I took a step back and reassessed. When we took other factors into account, we agreed that it didn't make sense to drop everything and move to a different province just so I could take a smattering of electives that Fall in the hopes of starting my degree for real the following year.

I'm a very goal-oriented person. Not achieving that goal after all that planning kind of kills me. Or, it did at the time. I also believe that things happen for a reason, and in the end I'm really glad we didn't move away that summer because we would have missed out on all kinds of experiences and opportunities that we've had here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's healthy to move forward. Pick a direction and go for it! Get a vision, set some goals, and do everything in your power to make that vision a reality! But there's also beauty in learning to accept the things you cannot change and choosing to bloom where you're planted.

What are some of your goals?

School for Grown-Ups

   One of the very first things you have to do as an adult is to pick and start a career path, and most of the options out there require some level of post-secondary education. Be it a university degree, a certification course from your college or elsewhere, or trade school; buckle up because you're not done getting educated yet! But don't worry, grown-up schools like these don't come with the problems of high school because you're not a pubescent angsty teen being sardined into classes with twenty-nine other pubescent angsty teens every day. But don't worry, there are some things about post-secondary education that might have you pulling your hair out all the same.

   I want to be a doctor, and to be a doctor you have to go to university. So since that's all I know about that's what I'm going to talk about (sorry to anyone going into trades, but I can't really tell you what trade school is like).

   Now, university is actually pretty sweet, in a lot of ways. But it also sucks in a lot of ways, too. I'll try to cover all the things from beginning to end; from applying to graduating.


Applying to Universities:

   My only advice that really matters here is: apply to several schools. Don't just apply to one and hope for the best. Find several schools that you think you'd like, whether there's three or thirteen, and apply to all of them. Okay, maybe don't apply to thirteen; that will be expensive and if you had reasonably good grades you shouldn't need to apply to that many to get into one. Anyway, university applications for bachelor/undergraduate degrees are actually pretty straightforward, and aren't that hard to find on university websites (unlike most things, as you'll find out; university websites universally suck at being easy to navigate).

   Yes, university applications cost money. It's a bit of a drag, but I guess it makes sense. The good news is that application fee usually gets taken off your first round of tuition... which is a whole new financial nightmare. But not nearly as bad as living expenses!


Being a Student:

   Once you receive acceptance offers, you'll have to send an acceptance letter to the offer. Now you're a university student! Congratulations (you're going to be poor for the next four years, but it will be worth it in the end)! Now here's the first thing you need to do:

   Plan all your classes for the next four years. Seriously. You'll thank me later.

   One thing that nobody told me that would have saved me so much trouble over the course of my degree was exactly this. Every degree (and every major and minor within a degree) has a list of requirements that you have to check off in order to graduate, Now, in my BHK degree, I didn't have to worry about picking a major or minor. Instead, I got to pick one of two paths for my last two years, each with a different set of required classes. Required classes are pretty much planned out for you in any degree, but depending on the degree you might get some flexibility in what those required courses are.

   But the thing you have to watch out for are the electives. In my degree (and in other degrees) you have to take a certain number of "upper-level" electives. For those who don't know, most universities use a number code to organize classes: first-year courses are given a number between 100 and 199, second-year courses 200 and 299, and third- and fourth-year courses (which are the "upper-level") are in the 300's and 400's respectively. You might also run into 500's at some point, but I don't think it's very common, and most of those are probably for people getting a master degree.

   Back to what I was saying: The thing about upper-level courses is that they almost always have prerequisites in the 100 and 200 level that you have to take first. And this is why having a plan right from the beginning is so important: if you get to your third year and you don't have the prerequisites you need, you're either going to be in university longer than you thought or you're going to end up taking classes that you probably don't care about. I've met students who are in their fifth year just because they have to finish their elective requirements. They were not happy people. Don't be like those people.

   The good news is that universities tell you exactly what you need to do to graduate so you can plan accordingly (if you can find it on the website). And every university has academic advisers that can help you understand what you need to do and help you plan. That's literally their job. They're super helpful and you should visit them at least once.

 
   There's a lot more to being a university student, like living arrangements, succeeding in classes, working with professors, dealing with a bad class, and planning for after your degree. These deserve their own posts, so they'll come in the future.

   To any current university students out there: what's one thing you wish you had known before starting university?