Hi Everyone! Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read my blog post.
As a senior at Scripps, I thought it would be useful to talk about my experience with finding and applying to postgrad experiences. While my plan is to attend law school in the future, I wanted to take a gap year between then to take a break from academia and gain valuable real-world experience within the field that I want to pursue. While finding and applying to jobs and fellowships has been a daunting and stressful experience, I am extremely grateful for the resources Scripps provides students and the strong alumni network that I’ve gotten the opportunity to interact with. Our career planning and resource center (or CP&R as it is best known for the Scripps community), is a great resource for students who are at any point in their internship/fellowship/job search process! Our career counselors really take the time to get to know students at a personal level and are there to walk us through the sometimes-scary steps of finding a job that is the perfect fit for us! Part of the job search process for me has been networking with alum who are doing the work that I hope to be doing. Similar to LinkedIn Scripps recently created a platform called “Olive Grove” that allows current and graduated students from Scripps to interact and find each other. Using both LinkedIn and Olive Grove I reached out to alum who took a gap year from law school, were currently in law school, or practicing attorney’s! I was amazed by the number of responses I got from alum who were eager to talk about their experiences and answer any questions I had for them. It was a great opportunity to learn from the advice they gave me and follow through on any recommendations they made for my job search. From these conversation ripple effects began to occur—the people I reached out to recommended I speak to other Scripps students who they thought would be helpful or some of their friends who could provide a new perspective. If I could redo anything from my last four years at Scripps, I wish I would have utilized our alumni network sooner! I remember hearing about the strong alumni network that Scripps talks about as a prospective student and being able to experience it now as a senior I can genuinely confirm all of these statements. As a Scripps student you are not only leaning on the support of resources that the institution provides, but the strong community that the Scripps student body creates.
Until next time!
Aby’21