>> I am Dan Taylor and I am currently
Associate Director of Leadership
and Professional Development at Villanova
University and College of Arts and Sciences.
Professional Development is kind of the
process of guiding young people to learn
about themselves and about the world
around them so that they can begin to think
about how they might put themselves
to use in the professional world.
A typical day is getting in the
morning and checking e-mail obliviously
to see what...if I've received anything
overnight or, you know think about the
and review the plans I made, you know
the previous day, kind of set up my day.
If I'm teaching that day I
prepare for class a little bit,
if I'm not teaching it's typically other
things are involved in professional development
like developing data bases of internships
and potential job opportunities,
contacting some alumni who might be
interested in re-engaging with the university
and ultimately might be an integral part
in helping a student identify what a certain
career is all about so some outreach some work
on the web itself, just trying to develop
some contacts and develop some resources
that ultimately students can use and a
lot of meeting with students one on one.
So today I have three meetings already, just
one on one with students talking with them
about either plans that we've made in
the past or plans that we want to make
for their future depending on,
you know what they want to do.
Honestly, it's working with the kids,
both teaching the class as well as working
with the students themselves, one and one
and you see the lights go on in a kid's eyes
when they realize that there's
actually someone genuinely interested
in helping them figure out
what to do with their life.
Give them, I think really critical
guidance at a critical time in their lives,
trying to transition from, you know a dependent
into an independent adult professional.
Like I said I think the biggest
challenge of this job is
that there's 24 hours in
day, not you know a 100.
Honestly it's just there are a lot of students
that need guidance and just not enough hours
in a day, quite frankly to meet with as
many as you wanted to be able to help them
in as many ways as you'd like, so you do the
best you can with the number hours in the day,
that's really the biggest challenge, I think.
I don't think someone can inspire other people
towards personal and professional success
without having gone through
that journey themselves.
So you can be the smartest person in the
world, you can be most accomplished person
in the world, but I think unless you've done
the critical internal work of really focusing,
which I have for the last 25 years, actively
trying to continuously improve myself
as human being that's been my focus my
entire life, really since I can remember,
honestly even before I was an adult for
whatever reason I was just always focused
on being...trying to make the most and
the best of who I was as human being.
I think who has done a lot of
self-development work and a lot
of their own professional development
work has sort of been there and trodden
over that ground is in a position
to teach others how to do it.
So I came here in 1989 really
extensively to play football,
I was a scholarship football player here,
so it wasn't until later in my time here
and I was a finance major down in the business
school, it wasn't until later in my time
that I sort of woke up and realized
okay senior year's approaching,
I better kind of start thinking
about what I'm going to do
because I'm not going to
be a professional athlete.
I decided that to get serious and basically
just looked around and said all right I'm going
to join a club, I got to get involved somehow
and that's something I was in football,
so I joined this finance club here at Villanova.
That's how I going to find my first job,
one of the speakers that we brought in,
I ended up striking up a conversation, she
suggested I come downtown and interview,
again didn't have a lot of idea what I
wanted to do, but it seem like a decent job,
it was a wholesale banking business
job which was a great first job.
I ended up taking that job and then
from there it was just a series
of outperforming expectations,
working hard really, working hard,
being presented with opportunity as a
result, taking advantage of opportunity.
Now it sounds like I'm repeating myself,
but to commit to your own personal
and professional development in a
very serious and active proactive way.
I think as a result of that if you're
focused and actively, proactively focused
on your own personal and professional
development, you'll be led toward your passions
and the place in the world that's right for
you and, you know may or may not be this,
it may or may not be professional development
but, you know I kind of believing that,
you know you'll be led to
wherever you were meant to be.