Writing Your Professional Development Plan

A professional development plan is your career plan, it describes where you want to be in five years and likely a decade.  Your development plan must be long term, and be flexible for when things don't work the way you wanted them to.  Probably more importantly it says how you want to get there, where you should focus your studies and what activities outside of classes can build progress in your career.  Some other things to consider that will shape your plan for the future would be your interests, talents, and skills.

I have created my own Professional Development Plan for an example:

Professional Development Plan

Goal(s): To deepen my knowledge of nanoscience and programming to sharpen my technical skills and network with key employers.

Objectives:

Stay on top of due dates

Review science articles

Practice coding

Attend career fairs

Relevance: I have created this plan to get noticed in the science world, plus learn skills such as problem solving.  And hopefully someday to use my knowledge of nanoscience and programming to be turned into a career.

Timeline: I would like to focus on this plan for a year.

Reflection: Creating this career plan was a lot harder than it would seem, but deciding on where I want to be in the future is never easy.