Senior Statement

Overview

As you finish your undergraduate degree, it is appropriate to reflect on your accomplishments, skills, and abilities. Knowing your strengths and passions will help you accomplish your goals, such as looking for a job after graduation or applying to graduate school. In the Math/CS 299 resume assignment, you were encouraged to identify your passions and skills and put them in the context of what is needed in businesses and the world. This assignment will allow you to revisit and build on that work by writing a short essay combining these topics.

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to

• Perform a self-assessment of you technical skills, professional interests, and career aspirations
• Articulate your appreciation for the wide range of applications of the mathematical sciences
• Refine a road-map for their career goals based on in-depth understanding of professional opportunities in the mathematical sciences

Background Work

One way to identify a purpose in your life is to look at the intersection of these sets, as indicated below. Read more about this process at the page Purpose Venn Diagram from Human Business.

A good exercise as you evaluate your academic career and contemplate your future is to consider the diagram above. Reflect on your abilities, skills, passions, and career possibilities. You may want to note answers to these questions for future reference.

What are you good at?

Reflect on the following questions about your knowledge, skills, abilities, and achievements. Focus on your time at Albion the past few years.

• Have you participated in any special departmental activities (thesis, off-campus study, competitions, etc)?
• Have you participated in any special college-wide activities, clubs, athletics, greek, etc?
• Have you performed any departmental related work (QSC, grader, lab assistant, etc)?
• What are some significant opportunities you have taken advantage of?
• How have you grown in your time at Albion?
• What new knowledge have you gained?
• What new skills have you mastered?
• What new abilities do you have?
• what were some of your biggest struggles, hard lessons of life, failures?
• How did you demonstrate persistence in overcoming obstacles or barriers?
• What was the biggest conflict you dealt with as a student at Albion? How did you resolve that conflict?
• Why did you choose your academic major(s) and minor(s)?
• What are you most proud of as an Albion student? What has been your biggest achievement so far?
• What is the significance of your academic choices and outcomes?
• What makes you unique? How do you use your uniqueness?
• What are my strengths? Are you putting those strengths to good use?
• What are your weaknesses? What are your growth areas?
• Who have you collaborated with and who has supported you along the way?
• Who are the most influential people in your life? Family, professors, coaches, friends, etc?
• Think about a person you admire. What qualities in that person appeal to you?
• How would your co-workers, friends, and family describe you?
• What motivates you?

What do you love?

Reflect on the following questions about your passions.

• What excites you?
• What are the top ten experiences in your life?
• What is the most interesting thing you have learned?
• If you won the lottery tomorrow, what would you do the rest of your life?
• What are you most grateful for in your time at Albion?
• What are you most frustrated with during your time at Albion?
• What has most inspired you during your time at Albion?
• How do you spend free time?
• What accomplishments are you most proud of?
• What activities make the time fly?
• When do you feel most alive?
• What will be your legacy?

What does the world need?

Take a few minutes and watch the following video, Pale Blue Dot from astronomer Carl Sagan. Reflect on your position in the universe.

Read the story What is the Meaning of Life from Robert Fulghum's book It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It. Reflect on the meaning of your life.

Reflect on the following questions about your position in the world.

• Think about one big problem facing the world today that calls for a solution. How might you apply your unique background to help solve that problem?
• What is the meaning of life? your life?
• What are your core values?

What can you do that will allow you to earn money?

Visit the Career Development office and learn about our resources and programs. They are in Ferguson suite 103 and open to all students! They look forward to working with you!

Reflect on the following questions about your future career.

• Think about one big problem facing the world today that calls for a solution. How might you apply your unique background to help solve that problem?
• What are your plans after graduation?
• What is your dream job?
• What do I want my career to look like in one year? five years? 10 years?
• What were your childhood dreams and aspirations?
• What are your goals as a professional?
• How do you define success?
• What aspects of a job you have had that makes you happiest?

What are your life goals?

Reflect on the following areas and how important each is to you:

• intrinsic: expertise, emotional intimacy, personal growth, health, helping others, adventure, spirituality
• extrinsic: physical appearance, social standing, status symbols, wealth, legacy

Reflect on the following questions about your goals.

• What have you have accomplished so far in your life, especially academically, including your soon accomplishment of a College degree?
• What goals did you set for yourself? Which of those goals were to please you or to please others?
• What goals did others set for you? Which of those goals were to please you or to please others?
• How did you achieve them?
• Who helped you along the way?
• What goals were not met?
• What do you learn from failures along the way?
• What are your biggest regrets?
• How do you create meaning and purpose?

Reflect on the following questions about your future goals. I encourage you to think about these from a SMART (specific, meaningful, adaptive, realistic, time-framed) perspective.

• What are your life goals?
• What skills, knowledge, or abilities do you still need to develop to reach your goals?.
• How do your personal goals and values integrate with your planned professional life?
• What is the meaning an purpose of life?

Goal planning

Reflect on the following questions about your future goals.

• What is the next step in your career? How will you make that happen?
• What are my biggest weaknesses professionally?
• How can I turn those into strengths or at least less problematic weaknesses?
• What actions are you planning to take to achieve your goals?
• What are milestones along the way?
• Who can you involve to help? Who is your support structure?
• Be prepared to fail and get back up along the way!

Mortality

You are not too old to ponder your mortality. Our time on Earth is short. Life expectancy in the USA was 78.7 years in 2018 and has been slowing increasing in the past 50 years. Thus, you might expect to live another 60 years. It will go by fast. Will you make the most of it?

Assignment

Content

Write a 500–1000 word essay about yourself based on your reflections from the previous section, include five paragraphs in the following topics:

1. Describe your background prior to Albion. Include relevant background about what prompted you to come to Albion and how that influenced your academic studies.
2. What is your favorite area of math or computer science? Explain.
3. Describe your time at Albion.
   What is/are your Major(s)/Minor(s)/Concentration(s)/Institute(s)?
   When did you realize that math/cs was of interest to you?
   What do you consider to be your biggest accomplishment as an undergraduate?
   Which faculty/staff member(s) has influenced you the most and why?
   What things or people helped you succeed at Albion?
   
4. Reflect on a time you failed. What did you learn from that experience?
5. What are your future career goals? What are your plans for achieving these goals (specific, meaningful, adaptive, realistic, time-framed)?

Mechanics

• Show your passion for your main academic area
• The length should be 500–1000 words
• The paper does not need to be written in LaTeX.
• Submit this as a pdf in an attachment to an email.
• Be informative and factual.
• Avoid cliches, being too wordy, vague, and generalities

Grading Rubric