The Key to Self Development in University

Self development in university is one of the most important things you’ll get out of the whole experience. It’s a time when you grow, change, and really find yourself. But sometimes it can be so difficult figuring out just how to do this. With my graduation coming up spring of 2019, I’ve begun thinking about just how much I’ve grown and developed as a person and as a professional throughout the past 4+ years.

While I have learned so much from my degree, a lot of what I’ve learned has come from involvement, extracurriculars, and opportunities outside of the classroom.

So what exactly did I find key to my own self development in university? Although Self Development looks different for everyone, the below 4 lessons are what I have found to be most impactful for myself:

Student Involvement

I don’t care what negative connotations you have with student involvement, it is so beneficial to your future career. It’s truly where I gained some of the most important skills and knowledge about business.

I got involved in my faculty’s student association, the Commerce Students’ Association first by applying for a fundraising committee. Admittedly, I didn’t apply for a role on the committee because I have an extreme passion for the cause. Of course I had an interest in it, but I also knew it was a way to get my foot in the door to involvement in the association. From there, I went on to become the Vice-President of Marketing & Communications. Then, to manage a variety of sponsors who fund and support student events and opportunities in the faculty of business.

Through these 3 years+ of involvement, I made a huge network of friends. Some of these people have grown to become my closest friends, and others I know will continue to be friends/colleagues as our careers go on. By helping each other out with potential job opportunities, introducing each other to connections, or even as future business partners, who knows! What I do know, is that building your network while in university is essential to your future.

Getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable

Understanding what makes you feel uncomfortable, awkward, or shy is HUGE! It’s what shows you exactly what you need to work on so you can improve yourself.

I’ve never had an irrational fear of public speaking. I’ve always been fine with it. But it’s never been something I’m 100% comfortable with, despite it being sooo important in many fields, including my own.

Whatever your fears or weaknesses are, there are always opportunities to get better at them! In my experience in the business faculty, there is a ton of opportunities to put your education into practice with competitions. Through multiple case competitions, I’ve been able to develop my public speaking and presentation skills to a level I never could have imagined when starting out in my first year.

I joined a team where we spent 6+ months preparing weekly for a Western Canada business case competition called JDC West. This is a case competition in which teams from schools all across Western Canada compete. This also lead me to enter Canada and North America wide case competitions, where my teammates and I actually won a trip to New York to compete even further.

While this might make it sound like I’m a super-brainy competition geek, thats the furthest thing from the truth! I worked my way up from small competitions to bigger ones. Sometimes I was successful, and oftentimes I was not. BUT, each of those competitions taught me something. I met new people, and learned to work with people of different personalities and working styles. Again, helping me to build a strong network and new experiences.

Recognizing that all (work) experience is good experience

All too often we reject or ignore opportunities because we feel they aren’t relevant enough or won’t provide enough experience to us personally.

Since starting university, I have worked for 3 different companies in 3 totally different industries, allowing me gain experience in a variety of different roles and therefore gain a much better understanding of what I want to do. Lucky for me, my faculty offers a Co-op work program, where you work 3, 4-month work terms throughout your degree to develop relevant experience.

As a student, you can probably relate that we always get asked, “what do you want to do after graduation?”.  At one point I had absolutely no idea. But with so many different work experiences, I have a much better picture of what I’m good at, what I like, what I want to do, and where I see myself career-wise in the future. Had I not taken the opportunity to take part in this work program, my first job out of university could very well have been my first EVER job in my chosen field. How would I have known if it was something I liked!?

No matter how relevant or irrelevant to my chosen career path these jobs were, I still learned sooo many transferrable skills. You really learn so much in everything you do, which is why I don’t believe any experience can be bad experience.

Taking risks & trying things out

When I finally decided I would take a leap of faith and start a blog in spring of 2017 while still in university, I had absolutely no idea what it would look like a year and a half later. In fact, I didn’t really even know what I was starting. Fast forward to where I’m at with my blog today, and not only has it become a fulfilling hobby/mini side hustle, but I have gained a ton of relevant experience in my field of Marketing.

I now know how to manage a website, how to work with other businesses, personal branding, and the ins and outs of Influencer marketing which I had 0 clue about prior. I never even thought about how this would translate into my actual career path, but now I feel like I’ve gained a whole slew of knowledge from it. This is just an example of how something that seems so unrelated to your overall goals can actually have a huge impact!

With all of this, I’ve discovered that some of the most valuable lessons and self development comes  from experiences that you wouldn’t expect. For this reason, never limit yourself to thinking an opportunity or experience isn’t relevant. You can never be overeducated, too knowledgeable, or too experienced. University is the one time in your life where you can try new things, succeed, or fail. Why not take advantage of 4-5 years to build yourself up into the person you really want to be?