Choosing Between Doing Something or Doing Nothing

Graduation can be a daunting and expectations of high wages and jobs dream to make the transition from conference room meeting room all the more difficult.

However, while this dream job May is not the first destination after graduation, "filler" work is not necessarily your only option. Volunteering is more and more respect between young graduates as a means to gain valuable experience which may be essential to obtain or move closer to their ideal.

Volunteering is not only to give "something for nothing." ProjectScotland (http://www.projectscotland.co.uk/volunteer) is a charity volunteer who is young in Scotland with investments in non-profit organizations. The charity can not provide payment for volunteering, but recognizes the financial challenge of volunteer time, helping volunteers discounts on travel services. They also hold film nights and days of activity as a way to get all volunteers to meet.

The association offers a wide range of courses covering the arts, marketing, publishing, conservation, among other areas, and also assigned a mentor for each volunteer guidance and support.

With careful planning, a volunteer placement can add value to a serious CV Take the example of Heather Graham, who made an investment with ProjectScotland as a collection of art cataloger and researcher for the Scottish Executive.

After graduating from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Heather started to job seek with very little success. It became clear that she needed more work experience before she could go on and apply for more permanent jobs in the art world. Volunteering at the Scottish Executive gave her the opportunity to do this by looking for and photographing all the artwork on the display in the Executive’s buildings. Heather then follows this up by researching and writing about the pieces of art and the various artists. With such a positive experience behind her, Heather now plans to concentrate on making up a portfolio of artwork in preparation for setting up her own exhibitions and selling her work.

Whilst many students and graduates dismiss volunteering as “work without pay”, in the long term, the donation of time for experience may prove to be an extremely valuable investment.

About author
Lindsey graduated from university in 2004 after taking two degrees to try and put off entering the real world for as long as possible. Her volunteering experience involves working with an eco-tourism project in South America for eight months and working on the university radio station and newspaper. Not to be melodramatic, but volunteering gave her a whole new take on life and she was never the same again (not least because she got an extremely dodgy bowl cut in Bolivia due to language misun