Working at a job after college – what it tells the student heart and head
By Chloe Woodward UA’24 and Jim Stellar
We wrote a previous blog about her graduation. Now that she has spent at least 5 months on the job at a YWCA shelter for domestic abuse victims, it is time to reconnect and see what she learned post-graduation that she might have only distantly recognized when she was in college.
CW writes: Transitioning from being a full-time student to a full-time employee has been a peculiar experience. While in school, I feel that I was often able to work on projects or assignments on my own, and even when I did work with others, I generally took a more solitary approach to whatever it was that we were doing to ensure that I did my part the best that I could. In contrast, in my current job role I need to effectively communicate with my co-workers during the majority of each of my shifts. Even in my past jobs I was able to complete most of my work alone and work issues definitively ended once I clocked out of work for the day.
In a shelter setting, situations are constantly developing and changing even when you’re not on the clock, making communication a key factor in providing effective services to clients. Although it has taken some acclimation, it has taught me how to professionally interact with others to meet important goals and enhanced my skill set as an employee working in the human services field.
One of the main subtle but powerful changes to the impact of a job vs an internship is that the job is permanent, at least potentially so. While long-term employees tend to have more social capital, know more things about the workplace, and have more power/respect, all of that is “on the runway” for a new employee. We think this happens in a way it is not true for an intern, even a paid-intern, precisely because they will be returning to school after the internship.
If the internship is long enough, like a 6-month full-time, paid, cooperative education work period at Northeastern University (where JS was a Dean for 10 years), some of this permanent-job effect can occur. But in the student’s mind, the internship still has an end, even if the employees forget that the intern is not an employee. Still, even if the student loves the job and wants to return to the workplace after graduation, it has an end.
We think that this gets a bit into the “heart reasons” that accompany the “head reasons” that all people carry with them. The trick is that the heart reasons are sometimes unconscious and that affects the feel of the experience to the student and that can affect the commitment to it and what folks get out of it. As stated repeatedly in this blog series, the heart reasons are from the limbic system which is always on and running to do evaluations of the experience that the cognitive mind (neocortex) has propelled the student into. In this case, the first job. This is the primary reason why we recommend internships – to get a taste of the field and the profession. But a taste is not the whole-meal, to continue the analogy. Sometimes things occur in the limbic system that are not obvious in the beginning and that is why people change career fields or in college students change their majors. It is natural. There is nothing wrong with the person. We are just built that the computations underlying the limbic system value processes are not shared with the cognitive planning apparatus in the cortex. The cortex only gets the conclusion.
So, let’s go back to Chloe and ask her again how she sees this effect (cognitively of course) playing out in her time since graduation at work.
CW writes again: While working in the human services field, I have noticed that myself along with many others are drawn to this type of work for the “heart reasons” rather than only the “head reasons”. It is human nature to admire the idea of helping others, and working in human services gives individuals the opportunity to apply that to their everyday lives. A crucial idea that has been stressed to me by my mentor at work has been the idea of separating work and personal life. In an environment that is heavily involved in the lives of others, it can be emotionally draining, and in turn it can be difficult to not carry any issues that clients are facing home with you.
Working in a setting like this is also unique in the fact that the populations that we assist live in the facility 24/7, meaning that there is no set ‘open or close’ for the services that we provide. In my own experience, every other job I have had has much lower stakes than this one based on how staff decisions or actions affect the lives of customers or clients. For example, I worked at ITS while studying at the University at Albany, where the job duties consisted of assisting faculty/students with any technological issues they faced. When there were issues that put classes on hold, faculty members were often understandably upset or frustrated, but these problems generally weren’t something that would alter the course of their personal life. My mentor has explained to me that over the years, she has seen many people in this field leave it entirely because of this issue, both with the intensity of the work that is done and the difficulty of forming a healthy work-life balance. This is not a determinant of how compassionate or qualified that those who left the field are, but it goes to show just how difficult this concept can be to put into action. Although many go into this field for the “heart reasons” it is just as important to find a balance between the head and the heart, as going in only with your heart can lead to becoming emotionally burnt out and leaving the field altogether.
When we return, we will talk about what is next for CW.
