The importance of being an Intern
November 27, 2006
Summer internships can be challenging, informative, and look great on your resume.
Ryan Dadey found out the hard way how important an internship is to getting a job after college.
“I thought if I had a high [grade point average] I’d be fine,” he says. Dadey graduated with honors and a 3.6 GPA from Ohio State University in 2005 with a marketing degree.
But interviewers asked Dadey why he did not have experience. Without previous marketing internships, they usually eliminated Dadey from consideration.
After working as an assistant manager at a Toledo mall store for more than a year, Dadey has decided to try college again. He is now taking accounting classes at the University of Toledo part time. Dadey believes there is a better job market in the accounting field.
“I’m going to do it right this time, do an internship and get a job I feel I’m qualified for,” he says confidently.
Geoff Humphreys, Director of the Office of Professional Experiences Programs at the University of Toledo, believes internships are essential for any career. OPEP helps Toledo students find internships for college credit.
“I’m a firm believer that all majors must do an internship,” he says.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Dear visitor, Happy New Year to you and thanks for dropping by. If you enjoyed reading this post, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Fall Skiing Lessons and other things to be aware of
November 27, 2006
Winter’s coming, but that’s not stopping some folks from hitting the slopes right now. Excerpts and lessons learned from a thanksgiving skiing roadtrip in Colorodo Springs. I know it sounds crazy… why not go to the southern beaches for a warm winter, but trust me nothing beats the thrill of skiing when its freezing.
Lesson # 1: To skiers and snowboarders out there: Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the spring skiing or boarding, sunscreen would be it. It’s a cliche and a bad techno-pop song, but if you’re heading to the mountains this winter, I highly recommend you take my advice. Put it everywhere. Rub it into your hairline, under your chin and on the inside (yup, the inside) of your ears. Bathe in it, if you can.
This was the first thing I learned during a recent ski trip to Colorado Springs in Denver for my recent Thanksgiving break. For those of you who aren’t die-hard skiers and snowboarders, let me explain: the mountains do have snow at other times of year besides Christmas, New Years and Presidents Day. Winter skiing and boarding can mean excellent road conditions, shorter lift lines, more comfortable clothing and cheaper everything.
While your friends are shivering on a beach that’s still a little too cold, you can spend your days off flying down uncrowded slopes on soft snow. But, I quickly discovered, there are a few important things to keep in mind before you hit the road.
Lesson Two: Know the Weather
My vacation got off to a bad start because my friends and I forgot to consult the National Weather Service until the evening before we were supposed to leave. Our travel route, of course, was directly in the path of an incoming storm. The highway patrol predicted that a portion of the road would be closed by midnight. We had to leave immediately, and I hadn’t even started my laundry.
College students and sperm donors
November 27, 2006
College students comprise 90 percent of American sperm donors. Why? They’re smart, cute and virile — everything a would-be mom wants.
Jeff Salkin was struggling to pay his bills when he saw an ad that seemed too good to be true: a clinic would pay him to masturbate.
“I was having a hard time coming up with enough money for food and rent. I found out selling sperm is pretty easy, and at 40 bucks a whack, it’s pretty lucrative too,” said the University of Oregon senior, whose name was changed to protect his privacy.
Salkin is one of thousands of college students nationwide who cover their expenses by selling DNA. Commercial sperm banks, which exploded in the early 1970s and now number more than 150, have clustered around universities where the “natural resources” are plentiful: intelligent people who need quick cash and have sperm to spare. By 1993, frozen sperm was a $164 million a year industry, and companies like California Cryobank were aggressively recruiting on the campuses of brand-name schools like Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
“At least 90 percent of our donors are college students,” said Melonee Evans, California Cryobank’s client relations manager. “Students are more eager to donate because they need the money and have more flexible schedules.”
Those who can make the time and the maximum donation, which usually means siring up to 10 children can net upward of $6,000 in one academic year.
“Most students do it because they really need the money,” said Geo Low, an employee at Berkeley, Calif.’s Reproductive Technologies, Inc. “And some think their genes are cool and want to spread them around.” According to Low about 15 students make “deposits” to her bank on an average day.
Students at top schools say they can hardly walk across campus without finding ads soliciting donations from the young, brainy and virile.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!What is college like for ADHD students?
November 27, 2006
ADHD PhD
Most of us don’t think of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder symptoms as making for success in college. What’s college like for ADHD students?
The tousled brown hair that weaves so mischievously around his head may hint at the way he feels inside. He is seven years old and has already had to repeat a grade. He has an imagination that puts other children’s to shame, but nothing seems to hold his attention for more than five minutes. He was recently diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
This description is familiar to some students who discover they have the disorder as they progress from elementary school to high school to college.
According to the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM-IV, a psychological reference book), some characteristics of students with ADHD are that they “may fail to give close attention to details or may make careless mistakes in schoolwork or other tasks…individuals often have difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities and find it hard to persist with tasks until completion.”
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!The Nicks of Hazard: Do you attract cops on the road?
November 27, 2006
Are you a cop magnet on the road? Alex Smith shares your pain. And he’s got some suggestions for you.
They’re out to get me. I know it. Every time I pull my car onto the open road, I find myself constantly looking over my shoulder. It doesn’t matter how smoothly I drive or how closely I adhere to the sacred rules of the road. Sooner or later, the flashing lights will be in the rearview, and I’ll be issued another ticket.
The thing is, I honestly am a good driver. I obey stop signs. I always recognize another motorist’s right of way. If I see an older person driving, I give them plenty of space, and won’t tailgate no matter how far below they speed limit they crawl. I am, by and large, the kind of driver you’d feel safe to ride with.
The Department of Motor Vehicles (a.k.a. “The Gestapo”) would disagree. My list of convictions reads like a criminal’s rap sheet and makes me out to some maniacal Mad Max wannabe. With only two points remaining on my soiled license , each driving decision must be carefully calculated. I am on the edge of losing my independence, and let me tell you, it’s not a good feeling.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Wall of shame, how to handle rejection letters
November 27, 2006
Badge of honor or scarlet letter? It’s all in how you take rejection letters.
It is our generation’s Vietnam Wall.
A long stretch of names and memories, the documentation of departed dreams and wrenching loss. We come to it alone or in groups, drawn by a sense of emptiness, a need to commiserate. We stand before it, adding our own mementos of pain, reaching out to touch the names that were once our hope.
Occasionally, the respectful silence is broken by a soul that can no longer contain its grief.
“God, man, Salomon Brothers rejected me, too!”
Our monument isn’t in Washington, D.C. Two years ago, it stood on the fourteenth floor of John Jay Hall on the Columbia University campus. It was called the Wall of Shame, and it was covered with polite denials from some of the best corporations, fellowships and graduate schools in the country.
Even today, our wall is a concrete sign that getting rejected is no longer some secret shame. It’s a symbol of our generation. Look around, if you don’t have a Friends haircut, a homepage, and a couple of rejection letters, how do you know who you are?
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!How to psych yourself for studying
November 27, 2006
Procrastination can only hurt you. Here, we offer a few tips on how you can beat the P-plague and tackle your tasks as the semester comes to a close.
Tick-tock…tick-tock… It’s exam time again. Whether this is your first final exam period or your last, how you approach the end of the term has consequences for your grades and for your health.
Maybe you’re sitting there thinking that you always wait until the last minute because that’s what a deadline is for. Or you might be of the philosophy that everything gets done at the last minute, that is one definition of the last minute. Perhaps you’ve convinced yourself that your best work is done with a pressing deadline.
Psychologists say you’re wrong.
They offer some compelling evidence. They say they’ve discovered some proven ways to keep you and your studying on track.
In two longitudinal studies, psychologists Dianne M. Tice and Roy F. Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University examined the performance, stress and health effects of procrastination on students and on the quality of students’ work.
They found that students who procrastinate reported lower stress levels and fewer illnesses as semesters began. But when papers came due and exams were scheduled toward the end of the semester, procrastinators reported higher stress levels and more illnesses indeed, they were physically sicker overall than students who didn’t procrastinate.
Procrastinators received lower grades on average than students who did not procrastinate on all assignments.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!
Recent Comments