Building your career part 2, the sports university, and the truth about passion.
😊 Welcome
This week, in part two of What you can do at university to start building your career, we look at the plethora of opportunities at university to explore and build your future career.
We have a look at the university that everyone knows is good for sport. Yep, you know the one!
And we finish with the truth about passion.
✍️How to start building your career while you are still at university (Part 2)
Last week we began looking at how you can start building your career while at university, and in particular how understanding your own specific situation can help you work out what type of opportunities you should be seeking during your course.
In a nutshell:
The profession seeker: If you are studying to enter a specific profession, seek out as many opportunities that are directly relevant to your profession as possible
The problem solver: If you have a particular industry where you’d like to address challenges, seek out opportunities to learn more about that industry.
The subject explorer: If you are looking to get deep knowledge of a subject, but don’t have a specific career in mind, seek out broader opportunities outside your subject, to help you explore what kind of career could be for you.
The skills builder: If you are looking to build a broad range of skills, precisely because you don’t know what your future holds, be bold and explore as much as possible through a wide range of extra-curricular activities.
What opportunities are there to do all this?
This week we have a look at the huge range of opportunities that there will be for you to do this; all while studying your degree. While breadth and scale of opportunities will vary from place to place, every university in the country will have at least some of these available.
Below I outline the types of opportunities that will be available to you, and for each I have given an example of a university that you can look at to find out more…
📸 University Snapshot: Loughborough University
Became a university in: 1966
Student population: 19,435 (2022/23)
Location: 523 acre single-site campus in Loughborough
Subject areas: Engineering, Sciences, Business & Economics, Art & Design, Social Sciences & Humanities, and Sport, Exercise and Health.
Admissions: Generally competitive for entry. Most courses ask for AAB at A-level, though grade requirements vary from BBB for Textile Design up to A*AA for MEng and MSci courses and for Sports and Exercise Science.
Loughborough Technical Institute was formed in 1909, and grew rapidly over the first part of the 20th Century, splitting into four separate colleges, three of which now form the present-day university.
It is located on the largest single-site campus in the UK, which stretches nearly 2 km end to end. The oldest buildings, Hazelrigg and Rutland, wouldn’t look out of place in one of the US Ivy League campuses, while most of the campus has been developed through the slightly more questionable architectural periods of the 60’s and 70’s.
But… what is Loughborough really known for?
Sport of course!
It's hard to think of a university anywhere in the world that is so synonymous with sports…
📢 Quote of the week
“Passion is a feeling that follows action. It tends to be created or discovered, not predicted or planned. You don't find your passion. It finds you, when you get in the mix and try things.”
James Clear
Author, ‘Atomic Habits’
So, if everyone is telling you to go and study something you are passionate about, but you don’t yet know what that is, don’t panic, the truth is that most young people don’t know what they are passionate about - so you are in very good company. Just follow James Clear’s advice: get in the mix and try things. Over time you’ll work out what leaves you cold, and what really ignites your interest!
⌛ And finally…
Back on those Facebook groups I mentioned last week, and there are still loads of parents whose sons and daughters are applying to university right now, but who haven’t had any information or briefings themselves, even on the basics of how UCAS works.
If you know anyone in this situation, do tell them about my UCAS Essentials videos: six short videos that tell you everything you need to know when you (or your sons or daughters) are applying to university.
Just like most of you, I’ll be taking a break over Christmas and New Year, so I wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Thanks for reading!
Jonathan
