I graduate in May. I’m supposed to have a job lined up before I graduate. I’ve been planning for this for several months now. At the top of my list of things to do was to redesign my portfolio, rewrite my resume, and meet with my advisors.

I’m still stuck on item one. Redesigning my portfolio has been a challenging experience, and at this point I am now on mockup #7 or 8. I’ve come to understand, though, that I’m not really stuck as much as I’m progressing through a very long stage of development. Along the way, I decided that my branding approach needed updating, and that prompted a phase of new logo development. I presented some of the analysis I did in a previous post here.

Finally at the end of my identity development, I’ve returned to website mockups, which is going well. However, I’m finding that it’s getting more difficult to think of this project as the golden ticket into a job. I’ve been assured that the job market for my kind of work is plentiful with opportunities, and despite the homework I’ve done on places I’m interested in moving to, I wonder if I’ll make the adjustment well. I’ve worked in a very open, independently-driven workplaces, and worry if I’d survive in a cubicle (though I slaved in one for a different line of work for two years).

While I have experience through freelancing, internships, and Tridea, I still wonder if I’ve done enough to prepare. MSU has plenty of resources to help me with my job search, and given that I complete my job hunt package of the new site and resume, I hope to secure a position somewhere within the next three months.

My main question floating in my head now is whether to adjust my plan to give myself a month or two off between graduation and starting work. What do you think?