Breaking the binary: How context shifts students from panic to possibility
In my last year of high school in Ontario, as many students do, I applied to several universities. That was a couple of decades ago now, but I recall being...
Want to boost interest in skilled trades? Get parents on board
My dad was a pipefitter. (A fitter-welder if we’re getting technical). While I didn’t know exactly what that meant when I was a kid, he did tell me stories from...
Transfer pathways can alleviate student anxiety about career planning
A few years back, I was working on my master’s thesis, looking at the factors that influence student pathway choices. One of the many studies I read was Peter Dietsche’s...
Lessons learned in six months of running my own career practice
Sometime in my college recruiting days, I started dreaming about a side hustle where I could provide quality, objective information on post-secondary education and careers to students and their parents....
Three cheers for the gap year – a tool for career exploration
Back in 2016, Malia Obama announced that she had deferred her acceptance to Harvard in order take a gap year. The headlines were all over it, and did not shy...
‘Irrelevant’ summer jobs still equip students with valuable skills
SCENE: In a campus career centre, a stressed student meets with a career coach. STUDENT: I’m having a lot of trouble with my resume. COACH: What seems to be the...
How to plan a post-secondary career fair and escape in one piece
Have you ever talked to a bride in full-on wedding planning mode who did not utter some version of the phrase “I wish we had eloped”? Yeah, me neither. Successful...
Lifelong learning: more than a cliché
It was maybe a year ago when a fresh business grad came to meet with me to discuss job search strategy. One of his questions was, “I’ve enrolled in Six...
I used to tell kids to ‘follow your passion.’ I was wrong
I’ve been talking to kids about careers for a long time. I was a Liaison Officer with Skills Ontario, talking to students in Grades 7 to 12 about opportunities in...