Entering my senior year at Bryn Mawr College, the prospect of immediate employment and the subsequent years of medical school taunt me as I prepare for the future. Rooted in this uncertainty are the pillars that lay the groundwork for career readiness at Bryn Mawr College: our professors, department heads, the Career & Civic Engagement Center (CCEC), Career Peers, major advisors, deans, and most intimidatingly, ourselves.
Bryn Mawr offers an array of mediums in which students can translate curiosity into opportunity. But how well do these resources serve students? Can a truly holistic education actually exist?
At Bryn Mawr College, career readiness is unique in its capacity to integrate the holistic liberal arts curriculum with one that is oriented towards career building. Although these goals may seem mutually exclusive, it is the dual responsibility of both faculty and ourselves, as students, to better integrate these two approaches into a sound foundation atop which students are ready to face the daunting job market.
Mina F. Abell, BMC ’27, in reflecting on her journey in Praxis, a program that sets students up with work experience for course credit, states, “Bryn Mawr doesn’t build a bridge between you and the employers. They just show you the bridge. They don’t walk you across it.” She emphasizes that most opportunities available to students are not field-specific. Opportunities tend to be catered more towards seniors and juniors in comparison to first and second years.
She adds, “I rarely get anything from the CCEC about specific internship opportunities, it’s always professors because that’s who these programs contact.” When asked whether there should be more sound communication between professors and the CCEC, Abell fears that professors are overburdened by their increasing administrative duties and are thus an insufficient stop-gap for students searching for internships. Thus, there needs to be a system of organized communication that directly connects students to field-specific internships.
More so, even current communication between department heads and major advisors can prove unreliable. Kasey Quiche, BMC ’27, recounting her major declaration process, states she was told she had completed her major application process by her department head. However, upon meeting with her major advisor she learned that she never actually completed the process. She said, “You thought you did everything correctly and then you go to who you’re supposed to go and then you find out that you weren’t really helped.”
Thus, the path towards a fulfilling career at Bryn Mawr can be vulnerable to misdirection and poorly informed advice.
On the student-to-student front, Career Peers, students who support career development through the CCEC, serve as an additional source in accessing mentorship for long-term professional development. While Career Peers seem more relatable to students than regular staff, sessions are limited in practice and specialization. Quiche adds that the platforms that market the Career Peers do not separate them by major or intended career path but rather make it more of a first-come-first-serve format. She argues that a more personalized format of engagement between the administration and the students can better guide the dialogue of career readiness across. She states, “If they knew that I was interviewing for a legal position then they could ask me what to expect more from that.”
Ultimately, however, the responsibility of career readiness falls not solely on faculty but also on student initiative. According to faculty of the CCEC including Dayna Levy, the Director of Career and Professional Development, Katie R. Krimmel, the dean of the CCEC, and Ellie Esmond, the Director of Civic Engagement, “[Success is] a collaborative process, supported by a broad community, where students explore, test ideas, and refine, or even change, their direction as they make informed decisions about their future.” Dayna Levy adds, “It’s not that career development is owned and helped by a small amount of people. It’s that everyone is accountable and [this] is expressed in different ways.” Inherent to this thought is the idea that career readiness is not rooted to a set timeline.
Katie R. Krimmel echoes this thought, stating, “We’re going to meet you wherever you are if that’s [as] a senior and you don’t know what to do and if you’re a freshman and know that you want to work at Google.” She adds, “[The] only thing that is predictable is that life and our situations will continue to change.”
When asked what students are doing to fully optimize the career-building tools available to them, Abell states, “They’re not utilizing all the resources that they can. Students believe that they can do it on their own and they don’t need help.” She highlights the lack of engagement exhibited by students whether it be in attending club activities or wider campus-led events. She notes that the lack of engagement could be blamed on the event design, and that events involving direct interactions with professionals within their intended fields are better attended. Generally, however, she reports, “There is time to ask questions but there is no time to get to know them and for them to get to know you.” Thus, in order to increase attendance within career-specific events, there needs to be a shift from the “showing and telling” to “deeply connecting and recognizing not just what you want to do in life, but why you want to do it”.
Abell and her colleagues have co-founded the Social Science Society at Bryn Mawr College in order to provide students in social sciences with more personalized and expansive field opportunities. She aims to use a combination of mixers and open-panel discussions in order to facilitate conversation.
A lower turnout, however, may not be the worst outcome. Katie R. Krimmel states, “our size is part of our superpower” and that the less-attended events have yielded more rewarding opportunities for deeper conversations. In addition, the CCEC found that online events were more productive at times in garnering conversation rather than more isolating in-person events. At large, career readiness at Bryn Mawr can be explained using the chicken or the egg analogy. The responsibility towards shaping our futures beyond Bryn Mawr is contingent upon both faculty and student initiative. Career building goes beyond simply getting a job; rather it involves deep self reflation and serves as an opportunity to learn more about yourself. Dayna Levy adds that career building at Bryn Mawr is a “lifelong service” and that there is no such thing as a “right time”. Thus, a step towards career enrichment is about acknowledging our student commitment to our futures and, in administrative faculty, better translating career readiness into conversation.
