Careers support during Mental Health Awareness Week

We're here to set you on the path to
a successful career after leaving WUC

This month is one of the busiest ones for students across the country, with assignment deadlines and exams looming. In amongst all the deadlines and revision plans there will be some thoughts and questions about what will happen after the last exam.  Many students will have got something concrete organised, a graduate scheme place, harvest work or possibly even something exciting like working on an equine holiday camp in America! For these students the ‘what next’ thinking may well centre around how the transition from WUC will be, and possibly about the natural nerves about starting something new. For these students, the advice is definitely to ‘jump straight in’, having coped with the transition to WUC all those semesters ago, the next transition should be one that is exciting, challenging and one to look forward to.

Quite a few students will have plans that are still either vague or non existent, or whose plan is still ‘in the application cycle’ for a specific job or post graduate course. 
 

Mental Health Awareness Week runs
from 8th May to 12th May 2017

For these students the National Mental Health Awareness Week could be a good chance to consider some strategies to help balance the demands of finishing studies with the increasingly repetitive question that will be asked of ‘what are you going to do once you’ve finished?’. This much asked question, although asked with every good intention, can sometimes lead to rather unwanted additional concerns/worries about what is going to happen after the year is finished. With this in mind, here are some possible practical steps to take to help the competing demands on you, to keep your mental health as positive as possible at a very busy time:

• Eat and sleep as well as possible
• Plan your studying/revising as well as possible – studying/revising into the early hours doesn’t work long term!
• Give yourself time to ‘think’, write down any study/career option concerns that you know you need to address
• Plan when and how to address these – could an email to your tutor or careers adviser help you feel that the issue is starting to be addressed?
• Make time to relax!

The next month or so will make demands on your mental health, regardless of how emotionally resilient you are, or how concrete your plans are for after the end of the course! An important consideration to remember is that there will be several opportunities for you to consider and apply for after the last deadline. There is often a misconception that the first job after graduating needs to somehow be ‘it’, and for some it will be. But just as often, or more often, for many graduates the first job after graduation will just be a stepping stone at the start of a life long career. 

The skills you've gained at WUC will set you
up for an exciting, continuously-developing career.

The skills and knowledge gained at WUC will stand you in good stead for an evolving career, which needs to start somewhere. And hopefully one of the important lessons to remember from the last few years at WUC, is that you have learnt to ‘survive and thrive’ in a new environment, you can do this again after you have finished.  Regardless of how emotionally or mentally resilient you are feeling at the moment, there will be opportunities for you post Writtle, and don’t forget that as a graduate, you can get help from the careers advisory department for 3 years after you’ve finished!