Freshmen Get a Head Start on Thinking about Career Path
While college freshmen are just getting their feet wet in their first year on campus, South Carolina’s rookie student-athletes are already thinking about their future. South Carolina’s PREP Summer Bridge Program for freshman student-athletes recently hosted a Professionals in the Community Roundtable event at the Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center.
“The goal of the event it to expose the student-athletes to a wide variety of careers and professionals so they can begin to think about what they might want to do long-term,” said Jessica Gibson, Director of Enrichment Services at the Dodie Anderson Academic Enrichment Center. “We also want them to think about the experiences they will have here, in terms of internships or connecting with other professionals.”
“It opened my mind that there are many more opportunities and jobs than I thought there were,” said Kylee Stokes, a freshman on the volleyball team. “It really helped me focus on what I wanted to do in the future. One of the professionals told us to be fearless. That stuck with me because I’m one who can doubt some of my decisions. If you’re fearless, you can’t fail, and you will always be successful.”
The 18 professionals worked in fields ranging from news, banking, law enforcement, law, sales, athletics, career development, education, real estate and several medical professions. Many of the professionals were former student-athletes, including former Gamecocks Markeshia Grant (women’s basketball), Blake Taylor (baseball), Chay Malvasio (swimming and diving), Preston Thorne (football), and Claire (Studebaker) Miller (women’s soccer).
“I want them to know that there’s not one perfect path to success,” said Miller, who works as an orthopaedic physician’s assistant at Palmetto Health USC Orthopedics. “You can get to where you want to be in life through a lot of different avenues. I also want them to know that the Dodie Academic Center here has all the resources they’ll need to get them where they want to go. I remember being a freshman and just trying to get my feet underneath me and feel comfortable. Hopefully this gives them confidence to take the next step.”
“Listening to their stories really helped and gave me confidence in what I wanted to do.”
– Kylee Stokes
“The most important thing is to come in with the mindset that you want to better yourself as a student and as an athlete,” said Grant, who is a career development facilitator for Lexington School District 4 and also works part time as production assistant with ESPN. “They need to know they have all these resources in place, and if they stay the course, they can be successful.
Hearing from the former student-athletes resonated with the current Gamecocks.
“Since they were student-athletes, they’ve gone through it,” Stokes said. “Even though it’s hard, they came through it and came out successful. Listening to their stories really helped and gave me confidence in what I wanted to do.”
“It was great having people like Blake Taylor here because he played baseball,” said Will McGregor, a freshman on the baseball team. “It was great to have the opportunity to speak to him and hearing from former athletes to hear how they made connections to get where they are in the real world.”
“It’s important for them to see that as a student-athlete, you can do a variety of different things and have a variety of meaningful experiences and still have a meaningful career afterwards,” Gibson said.
It’s not uncommon for college students to change their majors, but Gibson noted it’s still important to start thinking about life after sports even before their college athletics career has started.
“They need to think about what they might want to do and know that there are a lot of different options out there,” Gibson said. “We want them to know that it’s OK to change their mind about their major. We were very particular in inviting the folks in here, knowing that many of them are doing things now that they didn’t necessarily study in college. There doesn’t have to be one linear path to a profession.”
“What stuck out was that your major doesn’t have to be what you end up doing the rest of your life,” McGregor said. “As long as you can get your degree, you can go out and continue to learn things out in the real world. Making connections and who you know is important.”
“Life will be different than it was as a high school student,” Grant said. “You have to change your work ethic. You have to have time management. This is a different level, and you have to prove yourself all over again. It’s going to be a challenge, but you’re going to have a lot of people around you who can help you.”
All South Carolina freshmen student-athletes are required to take the Summer Bridge Program course to help them make the transition from high school to college. The Gamecocks prepped for the roundtable event by taking the Game Plan Interest Inventory to get them on the right path for their specific academic and career interests.
“This was developed by former student-athletes for student-athletes,” Gibson said. “What they found is that student-athletes would take a lot of these inventory surveys, and it would often come back saying they needed to be a coach simply because they are so involved in athletics. This company wanted to develop a tool that would account for that significant portion of their life but also focus on how that can be used in other ways. This inventory divides them up into different interest categories and explains to them the types of qualities that fit with that interest. It also gives them ideas for academic majors and career paths.”
The student-athletes took those inventories earlier in the summer so they could see their results and discuss what those results meant, with the understanding that it was only a tool to help them learn more about themselves and not necessarily dictating their careers.
