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Extending the Network
Hundreds of alumni attended Career
Week 2007 to offer—and, in some cases, to look for—jobs, internships,
and career guidance. The week’s events, which ran from January
22 to January 27, attracted more than 2,000 students and young
alumni, and included everything from panels on specific career
tracks and discussions about balancing work and life issues to
a wine-tasting and etiquette dinner for seniors. The Duke Alumni
Association, along with the Duke Career Center, was the chief sponsor.
Among the goals, according to the sponsors, were to “build and
support the Duke career community”; “introduce employers with internships,
summer opportunities, and full-time jobs”; “encourage mentoring
and networking”; “showcase the myriad career choices available”;
“share strategies and suggestions for success”; “provide opportunities
for reflection about complex career-related issues”; and, above
all, to “make connections.”
Some alumni represented their employers at the week’s Career and
Summer Opportunities Fair. Since many firms do their hiring in
the fall, the fair traditionally attracts fewer employers than
September’s Career Fair, but this year it set a record with ninety-five
organizations—compared with eighty-two in 2006. “One of the things
that is different this year is that the economy is very good,”
said Sheila Curran, the Fannie Mitchell Executive Director of the
Career Center. Curran noted that some alumni were lured back to
campus by a pair of men’s basketball home games on January 25 and
28.
The final day of Career Week brought the Fannie Mitchell Career
Conference. Panels of alumni spoke at workshops geared to career
fields including advertising and public relations, biotechnology,
finance, government and defense, investment banking, nonprofit
and social responsibility, journalism, and scientific research.
Many alumni counseled students not to worry too much about their
first jobs out of college, pointing out that new college graduates
can expect to wear more hats during their working lives than previous
generations have.
One alumnus who has gone through his share of career changes is
Wilson Adam Schooley J.D. ’80, who spoke on the “Public and Social
Law” panel. After graduating from Duke Law School, he joined a
large corporate law firm in California and moonlighted as a professional
film, television, and theater actor. Finding his corporate work
unsatisfying, Schooley resigned his high-salaried partnership at
the firm to pursue indigent criminal defense at the appellate level
and serve as an adjunct law professor at the University of San
Diego. “What I found is that I’m just as happy now as I was then,”
Schooley told attendees. “I just had to spend a lot more money
to be happy back then, because I was doing work I didn’t enjoy.” |
