Purpose and Description
The MA and Career Goals Research Project, along with the reflective conversation conducted at the beginning of the semester, offers an opportunity to reflect on your career goals in relation to your pursuit of an MA in English.
There are two possible paths for this assignment:
1: Explore a career you are not already in; or
2: Explore opportunities for advancement or change in your current career.
In both cases, you will return to our conversation about personal and professional goals at the start of the semester. This assignment also asks you to do some additional research to give some greater clarity and substance to your goals.
Option 1:
In a roughly 3-4 page paper, begin by describing the ways in which earning an MA in English reflects the kinds of things you value and kinds of things you do well. This speaks to your broader interest in the degree. Next, move on to how this degree fits into your career goals, which would ideally also be aligned with those values and competencies. Identify the educational qualifications you will need in order to pursue it, and enumerate with more specificity the skills, credentials, and actions required to enter the career and do the job. Finally, you will develop and share a plan for how you might best use your time in the program to prepare yourself for this prospective career (including your choice of a capstone project, possible internship opportunities, GA work, and so on).
Option 2:
This will be similar to options two, but framed in the context of advancing within or beyond your current occupation if you are currently a working professional. How does this MA fit into the work you’re already doing and hope to do in the future?
Research Required for Both Options
In addition to conducting secondary research (websites, articles, etc.), for this assignment, you are also required interview at least one “contact” in the field in order to gather, depending on which option of the paper you are writing, a better understanding of the prospective field or to better understand how an MA in English can assist your advancement within a current career. I’m happy to help you locate a relevant CofC MA graduate, but your interview subject doesn’t need to be associated with the program.
Content of the Paper
Option 1:
The paper should answer the following and related questions/prompts (not in any particular order, but this should be helpful for brainstorming):
- What potential career are you exploring?
- Why do these plans make sense for you as an individual–that is, how they align with things you value and things you do well.
- Describe this career option. Use your secondary and primary research (articles, interviews, etc) to characterize it as fully as possible.
- What, if any, are the requisite educational experiences and/or degrees?
- What, if any, are desirable other educational experiences and/or degrees? In other words, what would be a “plus”?
- What are the technological or technical skills required?
- What prior experience is needed or desirable?
- What “soft skills” are needed or desirable?
- What do people in this career do?
- How can you actively shape your experience as you complete your MA toward this career option?
- Consider your options for completing tutorials, independent studies, an MA thesis, or an internship: would any of these help you push toward the career option you are exploring?
- Consider your “co-curricular” options: are there conferences at which you might seek to present a paper or make a presentation?
- How can you develop relationships with your professors that will serve you in advisory ways? What networking outside of the College and The Citadel might you engage in to help you pursue your goals?
Option 2:
The paper should answer the following and related questions/prompts.
- What potential current career advancement are you exploring?
- Why these plans make sense for you as an individual–that is, how they align with things you value and things you do well.
- Describe this advancement. Use your secondary and, especially, primary research (two interviews) to characterize it as fully as possible.
- What, if any, are the requisite educational experiences and/or degrees?
- What, if any, are desirable other educational experiences and/or degrees? In other words, what would be a “plus”?
- What are the technological or technical skills required?
- What prior experience is needed or desirable?
- What “soft skills” are needed or desirable?
- What do people in this advanced area of your career do?
- How can you actively lean your experience as you complete your MA toward this career option?
- Consider what courses you would like to take.
- Consider your options for completing tutorials, independent studies, an MA thesis, or an internship: would any of these help you push toward the career option you are exploring?
- Consider your “co-curricular” options: are there conferences at which you might seek to present a paper or make a presentation? Can you become involved in student government in such a way that it assists both you and your colleagues in working toward common career goals? How can you develop relationships with your professors that will serve you in advisory ways? What networking outside of the College and The Citadel might you engage in to help you pursue your goals?