The Undergraduate Years

Many students start thinking about the possibility of a career when their interest is ignited by a high-school or undergraduate teacher or some other role model. This is the time to start meeting and talking with scientists and engineers in fields that interest you. These early contacts can be crucial in helping you to navigate the terrain of science and engineering as you move through your career. The undergraduate years are probably your best chance. Finding a job takes work; finding the job that you want takes hard work. Many recent science and engineering graduates are lucky enough to move into desirable employment immediately. But it's common to spend months or even more than a year in the job search. When looking for a position, do not simply rely on the want ads in the scientific journals—although this is definitely the place to begin. Think more broadly. Meetings and conferences are a good way to explore your disciplineand to meet numerous people in your field and talk to them about employment—either for a postdoctoral position or a longer-term, ''real" job. You might also have the opportunity to demonstrate your research and communication skills (an excellent way is to present a poster or paper) and even to interview for positions. Your personality and natural abilities should match with the kind of performance required in various careers. Some of those skills are technical, such as the ability to operate or design complex equipment. Others allow you to apply your technical skills: the ability to reason, to spot interesting problems, to formulate hypotheses, to test those hypotheses. These allied skills acquiredin graduate school are more powerful than many students recognise and can be applied to many other kinds of jobs and careers. A potential employer will assume that as a scientist or engineer, you have advanced technical skills. But some of them, including the analytic and problem-solving abilities that are central to what you do as a researcher, might remain invisible unless you are able to display them. That is, unless you also have such survival skills as communication.

4.3 Read the following words and phrases. Mind the reading rules:

survival, to acquire, hypothesis, desirable, immediately, to navigate, engineering, scientist, career, common, to require, to advance.

4.4 Find the Russian equivalents to the following:

to be ignited, crucial,undergraduate teacher, employment, to assume, skill, to be lucky, to reason, to spot,opportunity.

4.5 Find the pair of synonyms:

1. decisive a) desirable

2. to investigate b) to reason

3. to notice c) to rely on

4. attractive d) crucial

5. to examine e) to reason

6. to trust f) to explore

7. expertness g) to spot

8. to think logically h) to navigate

4.6. Find the sentences with these words and word – combinations in the text and translate them:

1. crucial 5. technical skills

2. desirable employment 6. assume

3. allied 7. the job search

4. survival 8. a longer – term job

4.7 Answer the following questions:

1. When do students begin thinking about their future career?

2. What contact can help you understand what to choose?

3. How much time can it take you to find a job

4. What are the ways of the job searching?

5. What should match with your personality and natural abilities?

6. What are technical skills?

4.8 Read and translate the dialogues. Pay attention to the italicised words and word – combinations. Act in pairs.