ANDREA Have you heard the saying:

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?”

We’ve all had experiences where you can’t see the forest for the trees, and you
can’t
see what good could come of a difficult situation. At that time, it may have been
stressful or even embarrassing.
Later on, it’s easier to see what you’ve
learned and even how that experience has helped you handle other situations.
Going through challenges, learning from these experiences and becoming a stronger
person
because of these, is how we improve and develop.
Learning is about transformation and transformation only comes when you experience
something new
or encounter a challenging situation. This is especially true when it comes to
employability
development. Employers expect graduates to be able to do a job.
Experience is what provides you with the opportunity
to develop all the qualities needed to do a job.
You can use new experiences and challenges to add to your development, by enhancing
a skill
you already have or developing a new one. For example, let’s say you’ve been having
an awesome trip through Europe, you’ve hopped on a bus for the next city and 2
hours in,
you realise you’ve lost your passport. Ugly business.
You’ll need to solve this problem—yesterday. This is obviously going to be tricky
as there
are a number of steps to go through in order to be issued with a new passport.
It’s also pretty stressful and it may impact the rest of your planned trip.
You may freak out. Or not. You may not be able to think clearly or not.
But irrespective of how you react, working through this situation is an opportunity
to
develop lots of skills, including problem solving.
Even if, in hindsight, you can think of other ways you could have solved the
problem more
effectively. Or, you didn’t really achieve the outcome
you hoped for. New challenges and experiences don’t need
to be huge or dramatic in order to provide opportunities for development.
This is particularly the case for university students, who are often using non-
workplace
experiences to develop personally and professionally. For example, you may already
be confident
about your public speaking skills. But having to present at a student forum or
conference may help take your skills to a higher level.
The experience may also increase your confidence, not just with public speaking,
but in general.
You may react to these kinds of challenging situations in
three different ways.
Firstly, if you found the situation relatively easy to manage, then it has been a
great opportunity
for you to identify your strengths and enhance the skills that you already posses,
or build
on certain personal attributes. But, if you don’t think you managed well,
then this is your chance to identify areas for improvement and look for ways you
may
do things differently in the future. Finally, if you found the situation
challenging
but you managed to successfully work your way through it, then you are likely to
have
drawn on skills that you may not have realised you even had, or developed entirely
new ones.
Now let’s hear from some UQ students and graduates talking about their new
experiences
and the challenges that they have faced.
LUCY A challenging situation I had when I was
in Vietnam doing an intensive short course was
having to organise and plan my own interviews. What was
really challenging with that was having to organise the time I was going to see
this
guy for an interview, knowing what I was going to talk to him about and
understanding his business well
enough, knowing who else—who was with us on the trip that I could come—get to come
with me to support us, and fit that all into a certain
time frame, because we also had plenty of other things to do
that day. For me that was—had to be broken down into a process of, okay, I've got
to
e-mail him and make sure he's willing to do the interview.
I've got to work out what I'm going to ask, make sure he's okay
with these questions, read more about his business, organise the time, work out the
transport to get there, and then edit it after that.
BRENTON One of the challenges I had from some of these
activities I've been involved in was, example, with the job I've had at university.
I was
involved in a startup programme which was responsible for—well it was called the
'Student
Relations Team' and it's responsible for speaking to every new student that comes
to university.
So we call over ten thousand students every year and we follow up with those
students
throughout the semester and following their first semester. We also speak to
students
who perhaps haven't done as well as they could have, and various other projects
like that.
So the problem and the challenge that we face with that was it was a brand new
startup,
so we had never done it before. We didn't have any real guidance on how it was
going
to work. We were writing the computer programme as we were doing it and as we were
starting.
I was in the position as a supervisor within the group of all these brand new
employees
to somehow work through these constant problems that we will be experiencing.
Although, they generally be minor, they'd be numerous and we really just—took a
while
to iron out all the crinkles, in terms of starting up a new project—as
any project would have.
So that was a particular challenge with one of the jobs I've had.
ANDREA So, the take home message from these student
and graduates stories is that it is really important to be able to break down an
experience
and identify the things that happened to you and how they were challenging. This is
so
that you can realise that these difficult situations provided valuable learning and
development. On the surface, you may recognise that an experience helped you grow
in some
way but identifying exactly WHERE the growth happened—by thinking about the
challenges
and totally new experiences—is the first step in identifying the learning.
This is critical to the employability learning process.
So, what new challenges have you had lately that have made you stronger or have
helped
you to grow?