Make November your month to BE MORE

November is a special month for me professionally and personally. Professionally, it's National Career Development Month which career centers all over the world are observing. Personally, several important family members have birthdays this month. My mother, Mary Tom Long, MD, would have been 94 on November 3. Although much smaller in stature (maybe 5 feet 5 inches?) than her much taller daughter (me, at almost 5'10"), from a young age, my mother was "a force to be reckoned with," as my friend Meg describes her. A woman before her time, she obtained her MD in 1941 when only a handful of females were in her classes at the Medical College of Virginia.

It was kind of fun for me growing up to hear about my various classmates whom she brought into this world. Our house became sex education central where neighborhood kids would gather around the kitchen table to ask my mother all kinds of questions. I would bow my head from embarrassment as my mother answered each adolescent's question, while my mother didn't mince words or gloss over what she wanted us to understand about our bodies. And, it was exciting to see my mother end her medical career as the Regional Health Director for Southwest Virginia, still a female in a man's world, but a woman at the top tier of state administrators at the time. Talk about a role model!

My mother was fortunate to know the career she wanted to pursue at a young age. When she was 5 (that would have been 1925!), she said she was going to be a physician, and she made it happen. She spent much of her young life in her hero, Dr. Jones' office because she was so prone to ear infections, as there were no antibiotics at that time to ward them off.

Unlike my Mom, are you one of the people like me, who came to college with no idea of the major or career  you want to pursue? Career Advisors can help you do some exploration of yourself or of careers and majors. To get started, call 540-231-6241 and we'll set up an appointment for you to meet with an advisor. I know you can do research on your own and even take an assessment on your own, but if you come see us,

we can help you explore MORE.

If you're happy with your major, but want to test out your chosen career, and maybe do some shadowing like my Mom shadowed Dr. Jones and other health professionals, our career advisors can point you to tools and resources where you can get the experience you seek prior to graduation. Again, I know you can use LinkedIn, Google or other resources online to find experiences, but

we can help you experience MORE.

Still another way we're here to assist you, is your preparation for after graduation. My mom applied to medical schools after 3 years of college. We can help you prepare for medical school interview questions like the one my Mom was asked by a Dean of a medical school:"Why does a pretty little girl like you want to go to medical school?" Are you applying to graduate or professional schools? Are you seeking a full-time position? We know you seek advice from faculty, parents, peers, and others through this process, and they are valuable resources. As you put your plan for your future to work,

we can help you achieve MORE, whatever your future plan looks like.

MORE. That's it. We help you

explore MORE, experience MORE, achieve MORE.

You just have to take the first step to come see us, so sometime years from now, your child writes about the amazing impact you had, like the way my mother touched so many people's lives.

We're here to help - let us help you be MORE.

Final word for this post goes to my Mom. Two of her sayings that have stuck with me (I think she must have read Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, although we never talked about what an influence that book had on me), and great advice for all of us:

Look for the good in others. 

If you can't say something nice about someone else, 

don't say anything at all.

Mary Tom Long, MD
November 3, 1920 - April 14, 2010