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What’s in Your Backpack?
Dariush Daraee, Assistant Professor
ACSS Department, University Canada West
Every project you complete, every difficult conversation you navigate, every deadline you meet, they all add something to an invisible backpack you’re carrying. Tools, insights, hard-won lessons, quiet confidence.
The question is: do you actually know what’s inside?
Our lives move quickly. One assignment ends and the next appears in our inbox. In that speed, something important gets lost: understanding what the experience has actually taught us.
This is why I ask my students to pause before rushing ahead. Not for long, just long enough to notice what they’ve gained.
At first, you barely notice the weight of what you’re learning. Over time, it becomes the quiet foundation of your capability.
But here’s the thing: you need to know what’s in the backpack, and where it sits, or you won’t reach for it when you need it.
That’s where reflection comes in.
In project management we call this documenting lessons learned. Every discipline has their version, a way of capturing not just what they did, but why it mattered.
Reflection is the personal version of this.
It’s the process that turns activity into understanding and experience into judgment. Without it, even great experiences fade into background noise. With it, the same experience becomes reusable, transferable, part of your intellectual muscle memory.
I see this clearly in capstone projects each term.
Students finish their final presentation to the client. Months of research, team challenges, difficult conversations, late nights pulling it all together. When I ask what they learned, they often describe only the task they completed.
But when we slow down and reflect, deeper lessons start appearing:
• “I finally understand what it means to plan for the team, not just myself.”
• “I realized communication isn’t messaging, it’s alignment.”
• “I learned that when everything is unclear, someone still needs to move first.”
• “I now know what it’s like to speak to a real client, not just classmates.”
None of that appears in a grade. But all of it goes into the backpack.
Reflection is the tool that strengthens every other tool.
This is the difference between completing an assignment and building capability. Between having experiences and learning from them. Between being busy and becoming better.
Reflection is not about dwelling or overthinking. It’s about organizing what you’ve learned so you can access it later. Otherwise, the backpack becomes cluttered, full of good experience you never actually use.
Think about the last group project you finished, the presentation you just delivered, the day that felt particularly challenging. What did that teach you? Not just about the subject matter, but about how you work, how you communicate, how you handle pressure?
Those answers don’t come automatically. They come from pausing long enough to ask the question.
So before you rush to the next deadline, try this simple habit: Name one thing you learned about the work, and one thing you learned about yourself.
Put it in your backpack.
You’ll be surprised how far you carry it.
Soft skills:
The Superpowers to Advance Your Career
Carlos Kelency, Assistant Professor
ACSS Department, University Canada West
In my twenties, I worked in the communications department of a large energy company, and on some days, I used to have breakfast at a small place right next to my office. On one of these days, I was enjoying a nice and warm cup of espresso and minding my own business when the CEO of the company entered the coffee shop. Hiding was not exactly an option, as it was early and the place was empty.
He politely approached and asked if he could sit with me. I already had a few interactions with him here and there in the office, but I was never in this one-on-one situation.
So, I my mind, I quickly prepared a script of the projects that I was working on at that moment, the results that I was achieving, and the challenges. But what followed was a natural conversation, in which we talked about everything, from travelling to culture, except for the technical tasks I performed for the company.
The technical skills that I have worked so hard to develop during my four years of university and in my career so far were extremely helpful because, as I mentioned, I had previous interactions with him in professional situations. In these interactions, they really paid off. However, in that scenario, which, in some ways, remains professional-related, what mattered was one important soft skill: the ability to communicate – more specifically, the practice of active listening. I was prepared to face almost a job interview. Instead, I had to change my perspective to establish a dialogue based on exchanging our views of the world. If you think it was just small talk, it is important to note that, in some cultures, dialogue must be established before you even start discussing business.
Hard and soft skills go hand in hand. They are equally important. But you can certainly improve your chances of getting that job that you really want or the promotion that you have been dreaming of and working tirelessly to obtain with your technical abilities, when you polish your soft skills.
Here I highlight just a few of them that are important for employability, especially in a world surrounded by digital technologies:
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Active listening – In a reality in which we are connected 24/7, with messages coming from all different sources at the same time, attention is one of the most valuable gifts that we can offer someone. Being truly present in your professional interactions is not only a huge signal of respect, but also an effective way to understand our audience’s needs. This can lead to finding better solutions and results, based on their expectations and goals.
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Conflict resolution – Conflict does not necessarily mean to argue. Conflicts can arise from professional disagreements and different views when tackling a task or conducting a group project, for example. The more people involved, the more chances of conflict. The secret is not to avoid conflict, but to know how to manage it respectfully to achieve understanding. For example, if people are not getting their recommendations accepted in a group project, at least they should feel that they were listened to and considered.
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Teamwork – We are going to work with others at some point in our lives. It may be in a class assignment or in a real-world project. So, it is important to be open to ideas and perspectives different from ours, give room for people to contribute, be accountable (and ask for accountability), and know how to have difficult conversations. All those things are important skills that working in a team will demand. And if you are willing, you will develop them precisely by going through these situations.
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Presentation skills – We are always presenting our ideas. From the suggestion to improve a paragraph in a report to discuss how to make a project more profitable in front of the board of directors, we need to make ourselves clear, create trust and persuade our audience. So, how we present is as important as what we present. Developing our ability to communicate ideas with confidence and compellingly is one of the most relevant professional assets that we have, especially in a world where attention is gold, as we already mentioned.
If you want to build a solid, long and meaningful career, no matter the industry or field of your studies, soft skills are your superpowers. They can help you to establish productive relationships, highlight your hard skills and take your professional self-development to the next level.