Career Search

2006/n/Car-eer Sea-r-ch A senior English research project (also known as a Senior Disseration or Senior Thesis) designed to drive the said Graduating class to the brink of insanity. The process of the Career Search revolves around the chosen career you are going into or are planning on going into once you graduate from your alma mater. The process is very frustating and very confusing to an extent; it consists of an introduction, review of literature you find on your topic (usually five internet and print sources are required); a 'shadowing' experience (when you go off to a distant place, miss a day of important classtime, and possibly not even <i>find</i> anything on your topic), and an interviews section, along with a Works Cited (Bibliography) page. The researching portion for your Review of the Literature usually consists of a grueling six weeks (or two thirds of a nine-weeks) period, in which one will search desperately through several Department of Labor study books and useless webrings to try and find information on your career, only to come up empty handed. Once your Research of literature and whatnot is completed, you move on to do your 'Shadowing' experience, and your interviews. Your 'Shadowing' consists of a seven-eight hour experience where you pick someone in your chosen profession and literally follow them around all day (hence the term Shadowing). You're meant to try and learn something from this experience, however, such is not always the case, especially when you're set up to shadow someone in your career that doesn't even want you following them around. Interviews are simply periods when you sit down with a person, call them on the phone, or e-mail them to ask them questions; four of these types of Human Sources are required for your paper, but typically you may end up drawing duds on some of them and end up with two or three. All in all, the process takes up to twelve weeks of time, usually beginning in the second quarter of your first semester and wrapping up just in time for the pressure of your midterm examinations to swoop down upon you like a rabid beast and feast on your now dead, festering soul.