Navigating your Life after University: An Interview With Jenna Sieben
With the Fall semester of school well underway, the feelings of striving for academic validation, midterm stress, and burnout are all very real. Additionally, like many other students, a thought that continues to be in the back of my mind is questioning my career, post-grad. There are many feelings that come up during this phase of life when it feels like every decision you make is going to impact your future. For me, these feelings are small punches in my gut or butterflies indicating nervousness or anxiety about upcoming life events. However, the moment you stop feeling uncomfortable means you’ve settled into that life and you aren’t continuing to grow.
To grasp a better understanding of the transition from University to the workforce, I interviewed Jenna Sieben, a newly graduated student working at ATB Financial. She shines a light on her expectations of post-grad life vs. reality.
Jenna is a Learning Experience Specialist, and graduated from the University of Alberta in April 2022 with a Bachelor of Commerce, majoring in Marketing. She was the Blog Writer in the 2021-2022 year and a General Member in WIB’s inaugural year. She is still very involved in the Women in Business team, now as a guest in our workshops. After realizing the effect that Women in Business has had on her and her growth, she has committed to staying involved in women’s personal and professional development, such as through various women's advancement groups in her career.
Jenna shared with me her past and present experiences, the feelings associated with the university transition, and her tips and tricks for leveraging this transition in your life.
Like Jenna, many of us are very involved in extracurricular activities and other experiences pertaining to our university life. “I found myself to be very busy in University, but I struggled a bit when I graduated because I didn’t have 5 courses and a club to occupy a lot of my time,” she said. “ I was working my 9-5 job but found myself bored when my work day was done. Sometimes it can be challenging to go outside of these lines to create hobbies and discover new things about ourselves, but finding ways to occupy ourselves outside of school and work is important. It might seem like you don’t have a lot of time while in school but building out hobbies and interests can help you fill time post-grad if you find yourself grasping for things to do after work like I was.”.
While she discussed the tough parts of graduating, she also talked about how positive she felt about the experience. She mentioned how accomplished she felt - having a degree that she had worked for the time had flown by so fast and she was proud of what she had achieved. Since graduating, she has been spending more time with her friends and family. She has time to go on trips and therefore, more space to learn about herself. Personally, when university gets extra stressful, these are the parts of post-grad that I specifically look forward to!
I spoke to Jenna about the multiple different feelings that can come up after graduation. Uncomfortable is a big one that Jenna mentioned, but uncomfortable doesn’t always mean bad. However, leaning into this feeling, growing, and learning is what can give you direction. Feeling uncomfortable though is what leads you to understand what is right for you and what is wrong for your growth. Another feeling Jenna felt was that of happiness. Although there is a lot of talk about the hardships of being in your career full-time, there is a sense of accomplishment for all the work you put into it. You now have all this time that you don’t have to spend studying. You can finally get into areas that you are passionate about and really interested in. This is the time when you feel that you are actually growing and working on yourself for yourself. After hearing Jenna talk about what made her post-grad feelings, I researched some feelings that are uncomfortable but also show that you are on the right path for yourself.
The biggest one in my research that I heavily related to, was the fear of failure. Going back to questioning the future of your degree and wondering if it is going to get you where you want to be if it is going to make you as successful as you envision. This fear doesn’t correlate with just the future, it could affect many different aspects of your present life as well. The fear of failure may lead to uncertainty, which can drive you away from pursuing new skills or creating new goals. However, as intimidating as this might feel, leaning towards it accelerates your personal growth.
When planning an interview with Jenna, a question that kept coming up was how our goals change throughout the years. I know some of the goals I had when I first started university are completely different than the goals I have created for myself now.
Jenna did not have extensive goals in university, and if you’re in the same boat right now, that is okay. Once Jenna graduated, she made more extensive goals and a plan of how to achieve them, and as a result, her version of success changed.
“My version of success in University was very performance-based and I realized that I tied my self-worth to the work that I produce. But now, I’ve reframed that thought to be that my work should be a reflection of who I am and the experiences that I bring to the table.”
Jenna mentioned that she finds that while deadlines and outcomes are important, she believes that people need to view others more holistically, rather than the ability to complete tasks. When Jenna looks back at her career in 20 years, she wants people to look at her character and the impact she’s made, rather than a list of roles she completed.
Jenna mentioned in our interview that sometimes she felt like she was a product of her work. This resonated with me so much because of how it factors directly into our lives as students. Many students define themselves based on their performances in their classes or the GPA they have at the end of their degree. However important this may be during school, those goals change thereafter. Something that was really important for me when I first started my degree was my GPA, while it is still very important to me, I have come to realize after talks with many recruiters and corporates, experience is really important as well. Having real work experience in a field you may potentially want to go into helps you apply those skills to your studies as well.
To conclude the interview, we asked Jenna to leave our readers with advice. Jenna added a short list of tangible items readers can do to set themselves up for an easier transition to a new chapter.
Become comfortable with networking. One of the biggest things I think you learn in Business school is the importance of connections. The importance of building your network this early in your life is very beneficial to your future and your career. Jenna mentioned what I think is a very important part of networking, “Surround yourself with people who you would like to be like because you are a product of your environment, and the people you surround yourself with will get you where you want to be”.
Have a growth mindset. Develop a personal development plan - you can find various versions online to suit what works best for you. These plans are great for seeing where you’re currently at, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there. You have to fully understand your setbacks and tailor your development plan to set yourself up for success.
Keep learning. For example, Jenna mentioned a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. It is about how passion and perseverance come together to create grit, and how ‘gritty’ individuals correlate with success.
Become comfortable with adapting. I, like many others, find change hard. However, learning to enjoy change is well worth the effort because it helps you expand your potential.
As we all continue to indulge in our university education, I hope we can all take away some inspiration or tangible items to focus on from this conversation with Jenna. We asked Jenna to leave our readers with some final words,
“Don’t stress about having it all figured out. You’re more prepared than you think you are, and you’ll figure out the details later”