graduate: v. afraid, qualified

Hey aska,

I’m about to graduate, and I have my last year of my undergraduate coming up in September. What can I do with a HBSc? What should I do in my final year of undergrad? I feel like I barely know anyone and I’m not sure how to establish a good connection with professors to ask for letters of recommendation.

Please help, I’m really stressed out and I’m not sure what to do in my last year to improve my outlook on life after graduating.
I’m enrolled in two majors, one’s the general human biology and the other is more specialized.

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hey there,

seems like all of undergrad is just about being afraid. in first year you’re afraid because everything is new, in second and third year you’re afraid because you don’t think you’ll be able to keep up your CGPA, and in fourth year you’re afraid because you realize your CGPA doesn’t matter nearly as much as you thought it would. i sure do love university.

here’s my opinion*: the market is so inflated with bachelor’s degrees that graduating with an undergrad in a certain area doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to go on to have a career in that area.

which, on the one hand, is super frustrating and unfair, but on the other, is incredibly liberating. you can start over now. and lots of jobs won’t care a hoot about what you did in your undergrad, so if you messed up a little, it won’t destroy your job prospects.

if you’re graduating with a B.Sc., obviously you have all the usual suspects available to you in terms of careers: medical school, nursing, pharmacy, graduate school, teachers’ college. if you’re not interested in continuing university, there are also college programs that you can take if you’re interested in becoming a scientific or medical technician/technologist.

whatever you decide, it’ll take some time to assemble application packages etc., so the best thing to do in your fourth year would be to figure out what you need to apply and start prepping (this applies even if you decide not to do another university degree: if you want to go straight into the workforce, it’s best to start looking and applying for jobs early).

as to reference letters, there is nothing to be nervous about. just remember: profs who teach third- and fourth-year courses expect to be references for students applying to graduate/professional schools. it’s part of their job. if they can see that you did your due diligence in sending them a proper request, they won’t hate you for it.

and you DON’T have to be BFFLs with a prof or have worked with them in their lab to ask them for a reference letter. if you did well in one of their courses and you remind them of that, odds are they’ll be willing to help you out.

of course, you can also just go out there into the job arena and see what you can find outside of science. there’s a whole world of random jobs out there – in sales, office work, shift work, you name it. there’re all sorts of wacky things to do – you just have to start looking.

best of luck in the real world. you can do it.

aska

* ‘opinion,’ as i’m sure you know, is internet shorthand for, ‘i’m just going to say this but i’m not going to provide any stats to back it up…so there.’