Planning is the key component of a successful venture. Now has come the time to put together a plan that incorporates the skills and information that you have learned this semester in this class. Keep in mind that a successful plan changes over time. As you move forward with pieces of this plan, you will gain new insight, knowledge and information. You must use that to inform and modify your plan.

Once you have identified a particular career or occupational goal, there are 3 parts to your plan

Education:

Working backwards from your career goal, what type of degrees are necessary? Is a graduate degree necessary or maybe just desireable? Is there more than one educational path to your goal? Which is more appealing or affordable or obtainable?

From the above information, determine what type of undergraduate degree or coursework you will need. Sometimes you only need certain courses, not the entire major. For example, medical school does not require a biology degree, but rather a certain list of courses.

What transfer institution have you chosen? Which of the above courses or majors do they offer? What SRJC courses do you need to take to get into those courses? You may want to make an appointment with atransfer counselor to help with this piece.

Skills

Careers and jobs don't just need a degree or certificate. Ideally the classes you take will give you the skills needed to do the job. Unfortuantely, this isn't always a perfect match. One common problem is that we learn skills in a course, but don't have a chance to perfect them (using a specific computer program for exampke, or working with a piece of equipment). There are also skills that can't easily be taught in a class and need to be done on our own (field biologists need to be comfortablel outdoors in bad weather). Further there are skills that preferred but not required. Knowing how manipulate data or understand complex statistics is beneficial in most of the sciences.

From your Career Exploration, you are going to create a list of skills that are necessary vs. those that are preferred and your plan to acquire and master those skills.

Networking

Even with all the education and skills needed for a job, we are going to need the connections. The most effective way to get a job is through the people you know. And networking is the means to develop relationships that wil help you do that. Furthermore, your network can be used to help friends and colleagues. For this assignment you will need to create a list of the types or specific people you need to network with and plan to do so..

Assignment.

The first part of this assignment will be to create a plan.
The second part will be to incorporate feedback and create a poster presentation