Taken from my goodbye email to students and colleagues at ITT Tech.
I would like to thank all the students and colleagues who have made my time here wonderful, challenging, special, funny, interesting, and memorable. I certainly learned a lot working with you all. Continue striving for your dreams, working hard to achieve, and following your passions!
I’m going to give you all my last bit of unsolicited advice before I go. Take it, leave it, etc. You no longer have to listen to me anymore (not that anyone who didn’t want to actually did) but you might find some of this useful.
- Your beginning doesn’t need to be your ending.
- Beware of the ‘crabs in a barrel’ that might want to bring you down so you can’t rise above them.
- Figure out what you really want with your life and career so you can make it happen.
- Don’t just have one career, have two, so you are better able to hustle through life’s curveballs. You can be a drafter and moonlight as a photographer. You never know when you might have to be a photographer who moonlights as a drafter.
- Work during school in your field so you can pay your dues early instead of after you graduate.
- Be good to your classmates because this is a small town. I’ve had a few grads lose out on jobs because old classmates told the hiring manager the truth about how they perform.
- Don’t be lazy with your homework. You are paying 40k+ to be here. Make it count. You don’t get a refund if you fail.
- If you think you can’t make the time now, then you won’t later and you will be working at the same job after graduation as you are now.
- Don’t be afraid to relocate to jump-start your career. You can make triple in places like Utah, North Dakota, Montana, etc. because they are hurting for workers. Come back in three years and you’ll have your pick of the jobs.
- Look for the doers, movers, hustlers, changers, and people who get it done because those are the people that you should be networking with at school. If they are leaders in school, they will be leaders on the job.
All right, that is my soap box and I will climb off of it! Good luck with the future and don’t forget to connect with me on LinkedIn.