Dr Emma Bolger

One of the modules I’m teaching this trimester at UWS is Career Development Theory, examining the theories that explain how and why people make career decisions. A career decision I often wonder about is “Why would someone choose to be a careers adviser?” I’m not being flippant; I see few reasons why the media representation of the role would influence anyone to become one. From the outside, it’s not a job that gets good press. There is a heck of a lot of bad-mouthing of the careers profession and its purpose, the occasional high-profile media story (nobody mention  Mary Poppins ) and then there’s the section in every celebrity life story ever: “They told me to/not to do it, the clueless adviser, and they were so, so wrong.” We know that high profile TV programmes boost the profile of certain careers.  CSI  led to a raft of wannabe forensic scientists.  Call the Midwife  and  One Born Every Minute  respectively give young people a dramatised and f...

I’m currently sitting at a table in my local Sainsbury’s café typing this blog post, while eating soup and keeping an eye on my son who is asleep next to me in his pram. This is pretty representative of how this particular mummy has been managing to maintain her own career around a baby-toddler since the start of term. I think he is a toddler now, if we go by the terms laid out in this guide . [In one of my other lives, I’ve been trying to convey to employability course students that using examples of competencies in your personal life makes it easier to find examples in work/academic reflective practice so I am trying it out in this blog post myself >>> Teaching by example ] PhD year 1 semester 1 ends on Friday and unlike many PhD researchers, I’m about to spend a month working as much as I can, rather than resting up over the festive season and reading interesting books. I suppose the perk is that I get to eat mince pies as I go. My husband is about to start four we...

A brief post to record thoughts on two issues I’ve been thinking about this week: -  What are the implications if a person thinks of themselves as a trainee or a learner rather than a student and where does an apprentice fit in amongst these titles?  -  What differences exist in experience and perception of a course of study between that which is embedded within a traineeship, internship or apprenticeship rather than as a standalone course? Where this stems from is that I was recently talking to a representative from one of the armed forces about apprenticeships and he–quite interestingly–told me, “most of our trainees are apprentices, they just don’t realise.” I’ve been thinking about the idea that someone might well be in formal or fairly structured learning without realising it, admitting to it or it being made public knowledge. Going off to be a student at 16, 17 or 18 perhaps even dependent on the subject, isn’t always the “coolest” thing to do.* ...