How Facebook Helped Launch My Career

Graduating from Lehigh University was an exciting time in my life. I couldn’t wait to move past the dorm rooms, final exams and group projects and begin my journey as a young professional. By August, I was off to England to work as a teacher for youth girls lacrosse at a school outside of London. I was ecstatic to take an opportunity where I could go abroad for the first time in my life and continue to play and teach a sport that shaped a majority of my youth and college days. My experience in England was eye opening, but when it was all said and done, I came back to the U.S. a little lost as to what to do next.

5 Tips to Maximize Your Internship

When I took my first internship in publishing, I hoped to gain on-the-job training and valuable experience to put on my resume. A job offer was in the back of my mind. Even though I wanted to improve my prospects of employment in the future, the opportunity to gain skills was my main motivation. But for me (and all interns), these benefits are not a given; you only get as much out of an internship as you put in. To that end, here are five tips for how to maximize an internship you might pursue. Learn your industry. As a novice, the burden is on you to educate yourself in your field. As a working writer, I read everything from trade magazines to websites and blogs relating to issues about newspapers, publishers, the literary community, etc. (everything related to my field). It makes me more confident in my work to [...]

From Campus to Career: The Teach For America Debate (Part 3)

That’s right, I’m back for one more installment of the Teach For America series—first we took a look at the overall organization and all sides of the related controversy. Next, I talked to a former TFA teacher to get her take on her experience working for the organization. Now I’d like to share the perspective of Molly Burke, who studied sociology and education at Occidental College, where she also earned her MA in teaching.

From Campus to Career: The Teach For America Debate (Part 2)

In order to gain insight into the Teach For America debate, I talked with a friend who worked as a TFA teacher in a Los Angeles middle school for two years.

From Campus to Career: The Teach For America Debate (Part 1)

Teach For America is an extremely popular program with soon-to-be college grads. So what makes it so controversial?

Is Getting a Tattoo in College a Bad Idea?

The ankle butterfly. A Chinese symbol (which may or may not mean what you think it means). Everybody’s favorite barfly bulls-eye: the tramp stamp. You know you’ve thought about it. You’re 18, you’re out of the house and now that a tattoo is a legal option, it seems like a good one. That’s college. The world is laid out before you, waiting to be claimed. Surrounded by optimism, idealism and freedom, it’s easy to feel invincible. It’s a time when we begin making plans for the rest of our lives to define who we are and where we want to go. But the paradox of the college experience is that we are expected to know who we want to be before we really know. Society gives us the impression that at this age we should know, so we often convince ourselves that we do. We make choices that later on, [...]

Skillz

A recent USA Today article titled “Colleges not training students for careers that are growing” can be summed up nicely in with following illustration: I mean, if you really want to, read the article… © image by Nick Schwartz

Why College? Part 8 — Learning to Think

Higher education is not about money, not at the heart of it. Higher education is about learning to think, and while the ability to think is not as tangible as a cold, hard paycheck, saying “No way!” to college is saying “No way!” to a lifetime of both financial and cultural growth.

Plan C: Wake Up, Colleges!

This article is in response to “Plan B: Skip College” by Jacques Steinberg, which was published on May 14 in the New York Times. “Plan B” details many reasons why some high school students may be better off pursuing a vocational course or apprenticeship rather than a college degree. Included among these are the high cost of time and money that goes toward college education, the urgent need for workers in many fast growing industries like nursing and customer service that require specific skill sets but not a college degree, and the fact that some students are “unlikely to be successful pursuing a higher degree” or “may not be ready to do so” and would benefit from more “credible alternatives.” Professor Richard K. Vedder, an economist at Ohio University who advocates for the need for multiple pathways to college and career, likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers [...]

Mother’s Day, or: A Celebration of How Your Future Is Decided?

The apple often doesn’t fall far from the tree. We all know that adage. For better or for worse, our moms (and dads) make a big difference in our college and career success. What to do if your parents were not well-educated or high up on the professional ladder.