Taylor Your Life Spring 2021 Report
Taylor Your Life is a changemaking career development lab that teaches undergraduate students how to approach their future with the mindset and toolkit of a designer.
Taylor Your Life (TYL) is a 2 credit 14-week social impact career development lab for undergraduate students to “Taylor” their life course by applying methods and mindsets of design thinking (human centered design) to career development. In the TYL journey, students identify multiple life paths, clarify their interests, focus and target their search, prototype and test changemaking careers, learn how to market and brand themselves to stand out from the crowd, map their community to effectively join the network of movers and shakers in their field, and design a life that makes a positive difference in the world and is “TAYLORed” to their unique life and personality.
About the Spring 2021 Report
150 students enrolled in TYL sections in Spring 2021. Students reported that the course helped them to develop confidence and clarify their life path post-college:
“I have so much more direction in my life now than I did before. I feel much more confident in my skills, interests, and path. My greatest takeaways are that anyone can build a good life for themselves and that a lot of times we are too hard on ourselves when thinking about our futures and our accomplishments.”
“This course was actually incredibly helpful in developing my confidence in the professional world. I learned so much about how to explore different paths and I feel super prepared to use what I’ve learned out in the real world.”
“This class significantly de-stressed me! Going into the course, I was extremely scared about my future, but this class showed me plenty of new ways to navigate those anxieties”
“I thought this course gave me a great structure for how to work on the job search as a senior. I would recommend that all seniors take this course. My biggest takeaways were that I can reach out for informational interviews without being scared, and that I can approach building my life as a whole with my job being an aspect of that whole life.”
Key takeaways from student feedback post TYL for Spring 2021 include calls for:
- The continuation of online instruction
- Suggestions that class pace be adjusted to include more breaks
- Recommendation that more resources (i.e. links or handouts) be provided to help students figure out “job options, career paths, job requirements, salaries, a list of jobs that are categorized in terms of demand forecast, list of jobs that people can get with different majors, major hubs (cities) for various fields, etc.”
The TYL team will address these suggestions and make changes to the Fall 2021 curriculum as seen fit.
Click the button below to learn more about the Spring 2021 TYL sessions.
About Life Design at the Taylor Center
Created by Julia Lang, Taylor life design courses teach students to “TAYLOR” their life through the application of methods and mindsets of design thinking (human-centered design) to career development. Taylor Center life design instructors come from varied academic backgrounds and teach students from every school at Tulane. To learn more about the Taylor Center’s approach to life design education, read Julia Lang’s Ten Frameworks of Life Design Education.
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