my work immersion highlights essay

My Expectations In Work Immersion Essay For Students

Work immersion is an essential part of the learning experience, providing students with a unique opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge in a real-world context. As I prepare for my upcoming work immersion, I am filled with anticipation and expectations. This essay outlines my personal expectations, which include gaining practical skills, understanding workplace dynamics, enhancing my interpersonal skills, and preparing for future career opportunities.

Table of Contents

Essay On My Expectations In Work Immersion

Acquiring practical skills.

One of my primary expectations during this work immersion is acquiring practical skills. While classroom learning provides a strong foundation, it often lacks the hands-on experience necessary to fully understand the nuances of our chosen field. I hope to perform tasks that allow me to practice and improve the skills I have learned in class. This could range from technical abilities specific to my field of study, to more general skills such as time management or problem-solving.

Understanding Workplace Dynamics

Workplaces have their own unique cultures and dynamics that can greatly differ from the academic environment. During my immersion, I expect to gain a deeper understanding of these dynamics. This includes learning about hierarchies, communication protocols, decision-making processes, and teamwork. By observing and participating in these dynamics, I hope to become better prepared to navigate future professional environments.

Enhancing Interpersonal Skills

Interacting with colleagues, superiors, and clients requires a different set of interpersonal skills than interacting with classmates and teachers. I anticipate that my work immersion will give me the chance to develop these skills. Through collaboration and networking, I aim to improve my communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution abilities. These skills are invaluable in any professional setting, regardless of the specific industry or job role.

Preparing for Future Career Opportunities

Finally, I view my work immersion as an opportunity to prepare for future career opportunities. This involves not only honing my practical and interpersonal skills, but also building professional relationships and gaining industry insights. I expect to meet professionals who can provide guidance, offer career advice, and potentially open doors to future job opportunities. Moreover, by observing the industry first-hand, I can better understand its trends and challenges, which will be beneficial when making my career decisions.

In conclusion, my expectations for my work immersion are centered around learning and growth. I anticipate acquiring practical skills, understanding workplace dynamics, enhancing my interpersonal skills, and preparing for future career opportunities. While I recognize that challenges may arise, I am confident that this experience will equip me with valuable tools and insights as I embark on my career journey. Ultimately, I view this work immersion not merely as a requirement to fulfill, but as a stepping stone towards my professional development and success.

Hello! Welcome to my Blog StudyParagraphs.co. My name is Angelina. I am a college professor. I love reading writing for kids students. This blog is full with valuable knowledge for all class students. Thank you for reading my articles.

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• Career Advice
• Carpe Careers

Immerse Yourself With Intention

By  Laura N. Schram

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Most graduate students do not have the luxury of time to devote to lots of career exploration activities that aren’t directly relevant to their scholarly commitments (course work, dissertation writing, teaching and so on). The vast majority of graduate students can’t take time off to pursue an internship opportunity, and the few who are able to do so might take advantage of such an opportunity just once in their graduate careers. Yet, as Paula Di Rita Wishart noted in her previous “Carpe Careers” column on job experience , an internship is not the only way to explore your career interests in an experiential way and to make professional connections.

You can accomplish that by immersing yourself for a relatively short period of time in a new professional context. In immersives , as we call them at Rackham Graduate School, students spend a day or two learning more about the workplaces, projects, research and other opportunities involved in a specific career context. Immersives give students the chance to network with and visit an organization of interest to them, as well as to engage in its work.

For example, our immersive students conduct practice teaching for the university teaching and learning center, write short grant reviews at our state humanities council, participate in the local community foundation’s annual community meeting, or design a lesson plan for a university museum tour. Students typically participate in those experiences after they’ve narrowed their career interests a bit as a next step beyond informational interviewing. Or they use them as an opportunity to just dive in and explore something that piques their interest to see if it’s a good fit with their career values, interests and skills.

Similarly, after an exciting informational interview, you might want to engage in some kind of activity at an organization -- to participate in or even contribute to a community event, to provide advice or analysis on a specific project that intrigued you, or to attend a public advisory board meeting to see how an organization runs. You do not need a structured program to do this, and we frequently encourage students who have an organization they’ve already connected with in mind to design their own immersive.

That said, engaging in something like an immersive for several hours or even a day does not necessarily mean you’ll learn from the experience. Those of you who teach will know this from your experience as an instructor. You design a great active learning activity for your students, only to find when you assess their learning at the end of class that some of the students still didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t do the reading, they didn’t have some essential prior knowledge, they were distracted, or they were unmotivated and passively engaged in the activity. Whatever the reason, experience doesn’t always translate to learning.

For example, after spending a half day at a museum to learn more about museum research careers, one of our earliest immersive participants confided in me that she didn’t get the most out of the time she had there and felt it was a missed opportunity. What was missing?

As someone who has been shepherding students through these experiences for several years now, I would like to share four best practices I’ve learned to immerse yourself most productively so that you leave such experiences with greater career clarity and ideas about your next steps.

Engage Actively

If you want to go beyond the information you can gain from an informational interview, you need to do more than observe passively or ask questions. Students often fall back on shadowing to learn more about a job, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But what task can you complete during a brief shadowing experience to get a firsthand sense of the skills needed for this work? You should offer to take on a concrete assignment for a specific project or activity, such as analyzing data or text, designing something, conducting topic research, or facilitating a small piece of a larger event.

Meet a Need

Of course, in your own career development, your primary goal is to gain marketable experience and clarity on your professional goals. However, a successful immersive typically results when a student thinks beyond their own professional needs and designs a mutually beneficial experience with an organization or a professional mentor. In our most impactful immersives, a student identifies a need that an organization has and contributes her expertise to meet that need. Organizations will be much more likely to let you sit in on an important meeting, volunteer at an exciting event or have access to information on an emerging project if you can contribute to their organizational goals and needs. As you think about where you might want to explore and engage in a short-term professional experience, ask yourself, “What distinct skills can I contribute that will meet this organization’s needs?”

The student I mentioned earlier who didn’t get the most out of her museum visit confessed to me that she just didn’t prepare. She didn’t research the organizational mission, she didn’t read the staff biographical profiles online, she didn’t think about whom she wanted to meet with individually while she was there and she didn’t investigate what museum research typically involves. You don’t need to invest a ton of time in preparing -- remember, the goal here is to gain a bit of experience in a field that piques your interest yet not spend significant time away from your scholarly work. But you should set aside one hour to apply your well-honed research skills to prepare for the experience so that you make the most out of the short time you have at an organization. Prepare questions, research the organization’s mission and staff, and read at least one relevant article about the field or organization.

Reflect on What You Learned

Just as preparation before an experience will help you to get the most out of immersing yourself, reflection afterward is extremely important in identifying lessons learned and next steps. Perhaps the experience crystallized an important insight for you, or you discovered an important skill that is required for the work that you need to develop further. You may even have discovered that the organization was not a good fit for some reason, in which case it is valuable to think through why and what that means for your interests going forward. Pick up your journal or open up your individual development plan -- wherever you are tracking notes or thoughts on your own career development -- and set aside time to reflect on the following questions:

• What stands out to you from your experience, and why is that important for your career clarity?
• What benefits did you gain (values engaged, skills acquired, knowledge learned) as a result of this experience?
• What do you see as your next step(s)?

Even better, I’d encourage you to process these questions together with a graduate career counselor, a professional mentor or a trusted peer to integrate the experience into your broader career development.

Immersives are an excellent way to get a taste of a career area that intrigues you. If you apply these four best practices, you will set yourself up to get the most out of the experience and make progress in your career exploration process.

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Home » Colleges & Universities » Work Immersion for SHS Students: Sharing my story!

Work Immersion for SHS Students: Sharing my story!

Whether you like it or not, you will need to survive that SHS work immersion. For every student, it can be considered as the much-awaited activity before graduation.

It could be exciting YET frustrating at the same time. At least in my experience, that’s what happened. I’d like to share with you what exactly happened during this phase.

If you want to set your expectations, you’re on the right page!

What is work immersion?

Work Immersion is similar to what college students experience during their On-the-Job Training (OJT). In this experience, you will be hired as an actual employee with different tasks to accomplish.

You will not just discover new skills but most importantly, you will learn new social skills. You have to cooperate with your co-workers and adapt to  the new environment. In short, it will let you experience what a real job feels like.

Furthermore, this is a very crucial requirement for every graduating student of senior high. So, you are expected to experience a tiring and fun chapter of your life.

Explore Articles: Colleges and Universities

How did I start my work immersion?

I must admit that the first step, or finding a vacant position, could be the hardest stage of work immersion.

During the 1st week of March, I spent looking for companies that would accept SHS students. It was a mess! We didn’t know where to start, and HOW we would do it. Our professor came to the rescue and provided us options for the work immersion.

Our school offered us to handle everything for us. From documentation to hiring to finding the right company, they would do it. The second was to teach us independence by coordinating with everything. I wanted to challenge myself so I chose the latter.

So, I did team up with my other classmates who also chose the same option and started applying nonstop. It was very exhausting. We attended several interviews with the hopes of getting tired. Exhausted, hungry, and body fatigue, you name it!

As much as we wanted to continue with our choice, we then asked help for our school to find the best OJT place.

Shared File: Job Interview Course

Which organization accepted me for my work immersion?

My beloved alma mater! 🙂

Fast forward, I was able to enter Philippine School of Social Work (PSSW) and University Community Outreach Program (UNICORP) . The same group handled both departments so we served for the two organizations.

If you’re curious on what I did, here were the tasks:

• Date encoding. Lots of them!
• Sorting files. Get your organization skills keep going.
• Arranging exclusive books.
• Other admin tasks!

Yep! Obviously, your boss will not give your tasks involving technical work. You won’t need to solve problems or attend serious meetings.

Forget about big projects because you need to learn the foundation of working. During your work immersion, your tasks will start from what new hires do.

Here’s what I missed the most during this unforgettable experience…

The big bosses! 

I missed how they took care of us with love and care. During breaktime, they treated us with food. I didn’t feel like someone who just got hired for a short time.

They even advised us and shared a little secret about social work. Don’t you know social work profession really pays well? This is most applicable even when you work abroad. However, I’m not going to tell you how much their salary is.

If you’re a future social worker, you have to discover it yourself!

Unfortunately, the pandemic cut short our experience. It was supposed to be for the whole month, but lockdown happened. You see, I still feel VERY lucky to have experienced it.

I wonder how they do work immersion right now that work from home is prevalent. But, for sure, you will learn so much!

Watch these related videos on YouTube!

10 Tips for Work Immersion! (SHS)

Work Immersion

Melanie Alberto

I love writing articles as well as doing photography. As an aspiring journalist, I have a strong passion for these activities!

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