The assignment has eight components. Here are some suggestions for each: • Career Plan – Each student must develop and submit his/her written career plan addressing the next twenty years. This plan should address goals, objectives, target positions, phases, milestones, target timing and timelines, and the like. Note that one’s career plans might need to be correlated against one’s life plan. For example, by what life age do you wish to achieve what career milestones? How might marriage, children, elderly parents, your own energy level, etc. affect your career plan? How might the different domains of your existence, such as career vs. family vs. leisure, compete for your resources of time, money, and energy? Your career plan should at least recognize and account for their reality since they run concurrently and in many ways, are interactive. • Career related issues list – Each student must identify, think through and make a list of career related issues, together with strategies to resolve them, or at least, cope with them. Examples include issues such as: self-esteem and self-image; balancing home and career; relating personal and work lives; personhood at work, e.g., how much “guff” to tolerate; reconciling race/ethnicity/gender/etc. at work; dealing with “isms”, racism, sexism, nepotism, favoritism, classism, etc., career self-sabotage; politics of the workplace; labor market changes and requirements; competition; work place behavior and etiquette; career transitions; ethics; recovery from setbacks; life stage as related to career stage; personal relationships and careers; mentorship; image and perception; etc. These are examples to stimulate student discussion and thinking and to which students will surely add others. • Career skills self-assessment – Based on the career plan, students must identity the skills necessary to achieve at least the first phase of their career plans. Students must then develop and complete a self-assessment of at least these first phase skills. • Career skills development plan – This activity calls for the identification of critical career skills as least through the second phase of the career plan, together with actions and means by which to develop these skills. • Cover letter and resume – Based on the career plan, self-assessment and development plan, students will develop an appropriate and acceptable resume and cover letter by which to pursue appropriate opportunities with appropriate prospective employers. For those whose immediate career plans exclude employment by others, the cover letter and resume should target someone from whom your plan requires support, such as a prospective investor or prospective board member. • Graduate study – Based on the career plan, the skills assessment and the skills development plan, each student must obtain and satisfactorily complete at least one approved application for graduate programs of higher education institutions appropriate to the career plan and the skills development plan. Bowie State may be included as a second application. For applications which do not require at least four/five essays, you must include all five of the following essays with your application. 1. Essay 1 – Write an autobiographical statement 2. Essay 2 – What are your short term and long-term career plans? Why those vs. others you have considered and rejected? 3. Describe a societal or organizational situation requiring leadership. How would you resolve it, using what you have learned from your academic studies and/or your career to date. 4. Describe an ethical dilemma, conflict, or failure in which you were involved. How did you deal with and resolve the situation? What did you learn from the situation and what would you do differently now?) 5. Describe your three most substantial accomplishments and why you view them as such