Students formed a long line last Thursday as they awaited entrance to The Art of Envisioning event hosted by Winthrop’s Center for Career Development and Internships (CDI) in Richardson Ballroom. Due to the fact that so many students attended, an overflow room was established at “The Fishbowl” inside of the DiGiorgio Campus Center.
CDI took this as a chance to help students plan out their goals in a “real tangible way” for the new year. Associate Director for Employment Engagement and Internships, Michael Szeman said,“A lot of research shows that putting together vision boards, and using vision boards for goal setting actually helps in achieving goals. So we’re just getting students to start with goal setting, starting to practice that.”
With magazines and craft supplies sprawled across each table, students cut and glued away towards visualizing their futures. But, gathering these materials was a community effort. During the planning phase of the event, CDI put out an all-call to Winthrop faculty and staff who supplied a plethora of magazines for students to choose from and take home.
“Outside of that, we just pulled our resources as a department, snacks and just counseling services. They’re a big part of this event, too. … they’ve been collaborating on this event for a while.” Szeman said.
During her speech, Winthrop Counseling Services’ Staff Counselor and Outreach Coordinator, Jessica Hudgens said, “It’s actually really good for you in terms of mental health. Just setting the goals, right? Like, identifying that there is something that is worth it enough to you to set a goal, to then help you increase your confidence and increase self esteem right? Increases motivation to do all these sorts of things.”
While the DiGiorgio Student Union hosted the event last year, CDI was able to offer students a lens of career readiness, or any professional related goals they have.
“We decided to do this because we have core competencies that we try to cover within the Career Center. So there’s eight of them. And, one of them is career and self development. So that was kind of the motivation. We pick one for every month and try to hone in on it and this month, we were thinking, ‘okay’, we knew we wouldn’t do a vision board event at the beginning of the year, people want to set their goals. A couple other organizations are also doing that on campus. So we want to try to align that with career and self development.” Career Coach, Hailey Weil said.
At each of Winthrop’s CDI events, they make sure to implore students to use Handshake, a platform used by Winthrop’s CDI to announce events and make appointments which include career counseling, resume and cover letter reviews and more, all while simultaneously working as a job board for students.
“I heard about this event through Handshake. And they kept sending emails out. So that’s how I heard about it.” Portia Blackman said, “I think the idea of a vision board is pretty nice. I want to see what they’ve got out here in these magazines and I’m just curious to see how this goes.”
“The other cultural event options just weren’t as self -directed as this one … Honestly, this is something I wouldn’t probably do on my own time. Outside of this I would think about it but I wouldn’t actually sit down and do it so it kind of forces me to.” biology major, Marissa Cleveland said.
