NYU Wagner

Composing Your Career

Introduction and Using This Guide

Introduction

The Wagner School sees public service as work that matters, work of public importance - wherever it happens. What does it mean for work to "matter?" At one level, it means that the work of public service has an impact on others, that it touches issues of public concern, that it is motivated more by mission than by money. Public service work also "matters" at another level: those of us who choose public service want our work to "matter" in our lives. We choose public service careers because we want our work to reflect our values; we want careers that satisfy our need to be of service or to transform some part of the world.

Composing Your Career (CYC) is intended for those of us who know we want our work to matter but are still curious about how we will do that. It is a guide, a framework. It offers questions, not answers. It assumes, with a nod to Mary Catherine Bateson[1], that composing a career is a journey over time.

Key to Wagner's vision is that we will be a transformative experience for our students. We want to be a place that engages your active participation, that attracts students who want not just a credential but an education that continues to challenge and inform over time. We know that the students who get the most from Wagner are those who approach it actively, who create their education with us, not just accept what is given. This, then, is one approach to that possibility.

Using This Guide

This guide walks you through a series of guiding questions, lists resources and suggests next steps - all to help you develop your own personal strategic plan while you are in graduate school and for years to come.

While this guide is not something you must work your way through in a certain order, it might be helpful to start at the beginning, with the section called:

• Getting Started

Once you have a sense of the direction(s) in which you may be headed, we encourage you to be a SEER:

• Smart
• Experienced
• Engaged
• Reflective

Then, we encourage you to be thoughtful about how you present yourself to the world, particularly employers. For this purpose, we have included:

• Crafting Your Message

Reading through the whole guide at some relatively early stage in your studies may prove useful, but it is not absolutely necessary. The guide will work best for you if you think of it as a framework and not a manual. Make your own choices, using CYC as a jumping off point.

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[1] Bateson, Mary Catherine. Composing a Life. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.