Freshman Seminar Fall 17 FRB

Does anyone else feel discombobulated with their weighted book bangs? Or is it just me? Month of October started off pretty simple but as it was coming to an end I found myself heavily dipped in midterms and assignments.

October 31, I decided to go to the Starr Career Development Center for a career based blog post. At the Starr meeting called LinkedIn Profile Development Checklist I learned general information about the website and how it can help someone get to know more people. Even though I had a LinkedIn profile since 2016, I was unaware of making the best out of it. At the workshop meeting I learnt that with this app I can expand my network beyond first degree connections and personal contacts. I also learned that LinkedIn would allow me to search for passive jobs. Through the app the applier can research about their interviewer and support their recruitment efforts, also vice versa. The main speaker at the STARR meeting recommended to include both personal and professional interests on the LinkedIn profile. But he asked to make sure the professional interest should relate to my work field and inspired to include unique personal interests.

At the end of the meeting me, Emilia (my FRO mentor) and fellow classmates took our sweet time to find that good lighting and perfect angle to hide that double chin. Now I am missing high school days where the biggest struggle of life was to change out of gm cloths and get out of the locker room to make it to the second period in 4th floor without an elevator and being scared about the teacher locking the door .5 seconds before the bell rang. I believe for me to be realistic and logical and to avoid mistakes, all I need some ice cream and two weeks of sleep.

On October 31st, Tuesday, I attended a career workshop in the star career development center on how to set up a LinkedIn profile. As we all know, LinkedIn expands our social network and allows us to explore companies with available opportunities. So it is crucial that an appropriate profile is developed to share professional information about ourselves and to showcase our best work. I have always had a desire to learn how to build my networking in LinkedIn so I attended the workshop with my friends and at the meantime get a topic for my career blog while learning new thing.

Unfortunately, the workshop started with a technological problem of wifi disconnection and the presentation went on with only the PowerPoint. Despite the issue with network, the presentation was clear with all the slides listing out specific details and guidelines. We also received a hard copy of the checklist for future reference with detailed outlines of the important steps on how to create a LinkedIn profile. The workshop is tedious enough to provide information of what makes a professional profile photo, what to put down and not to put down under our experiences, how to build social network and how to write a good summary.

The speaker Gerald started out the presentation with an analogy of going to a restaurant. He talked of how before we try out a new food place we would go on yelp to search for reviews, pictures and comments then we will decide if the place is where we want our food. He went on explaining that our LinkedIn profile is a review of ourselves that anyone would judge us based on what is on there. The pictures of the restaurant are equivalent to our profile picture, and the content inside our account is the reviews and comments about ourselves. Through Gerald, I gained new insights about how we could be represented on social media especially in the professional work field.

On Tuesday, November 7th, Sunny and I attended the Starr Career Development Center’s Mastering the Job Interview: Basic workshop. We definitely found out about this workshop at the perfect time because we’re both currently looking for part-time jobs. I, personally, have little to no work experience; I’ve always had summer jobs like being a camp counselor and tutoring but I’ve never had a retail job or anything of that sort. I am now looking for retail sales job and definitely want to learn about how to properly prepare for an interview now and in the future, when I am applying for jobs in my desired career field. I went to the workshop to learn how to impress the interviewer, how to guarantee that I’ve showcased my best skills, and learn to properly communicate in an interview. According to the workshop and the experts who led the workshop, the preparation before an interview is just as important as what you do during the interview. I learned that you should do a lot of research about the actual company that you are interviewing for and learn exactly what they expect from employees so that you can highlight the skills that you have that might match up with what they look for. You should also prepare a list of at least four or five questions to ask the interviewer because doing so will demonstrate that you are actually interested in that specific job at that specific company. We also learned that body language is very important and something as simple as sitting up straight and maintaining eye-contact could separate you from all other candidates who have applied. I think the workshop was very insightful and helpful and will not only help me in the near-future but even when I’ve graduated and am preparing to enter a career path. Even though I haven’t decided what it is exactly that I wish to pursue, learning these interview skills now have given me ample time to master them, apply them (to smaller/ less serious interviews), and develop them so that I may use them to my advantage in the future.

On Oct. 19th, my friends and I went to a Starr Career Workshop. The workshop is the Spotlight Series: Careers in Start-ups. When we got there, we saw not only freshmen, but a lot of juniors and seniors there. We also found that the two instructors were twin brothers. This workshop might be very useful for them because they’re graduating and need start-ups. Of course this workshop is very useful for me because I learned a lot of things from the workshop. 

The most unforgettable knowledge I learned from the workshop is how to choose a company. The instructors said there were different stages of company: idea stage, validation stage, seed stage, and growth stage. If you want to get a high pay job right after you graduate, you should choose growth stage company. It’s the most stable stage. Also, if you want to get more potential in your company, you should choose seed stage company. It’s the stage that has more risks and the most opportunity. The instructors also told us about some foundational skills. For instance, writing emails is connected to communication, using excel is connected to data analysis, handling difficult people helps your customer service skill, technical fluency helps your social media marketing skill, and persuasion and value communication helps sales skill. Another important knowledge I learned is what kind of people a start-up company would need. A start-up company only needs two kinds of people: the product side people and the business side people. Product side people refers to the people who can create products, and business side people refers to the people who can find customers.

I do learn a lot of things from this workshop. It’s interesting because the instructors share their personal experiences. Hope I can attend more workshop like this.

“It says in the email that they won’t let you in if you’re too late,” my friend texted me. That’s all I needed to hear to sprint like a high school freshman from the train station to the conference room where the meeting was held. After grabbing the closest chair, I stayed in that position for thirty minutes listening to very lit music blasting very loudly by a nearby club/association until the instructor finally came.

Although I had created a resume over the past summer, mine was based off of what I Googled and I did not really have too much knowledge on making one. This workshop was the perfect opportunity for me to find out more since resumes are a crucial part for opportunities such as internships and jobs. Immediately after the instructor started the power point, I was interested in the abundance of information being presented to me. Even though learning about resumes may sound dull to some, she was very thorough with what she was presenting, and walked us through each step. After each step, there was a short quiz that tested whether we understood the what we had just learned.

I learned about which fonts were acceptable (ex. Times New Roman, Arial), acceptable lengths (one page), acceptable action verbs (ex. assisted, evaluated), and how to list experiences and interests. Although the meeting only lasted an hour or so, I learned so much useful information about resumes that I will definitely implement into my future ones, as well as go to the STARR center for assistance and review there after I completely revise my old one from the past summer. Despite the fact that I walked (in my case, sprinted) into this meeting knowing I would be learning and gaining knowledge, I was still taken aback by how I expanded my skills.

^ ft. friend who texted me 🙂 and ft. stranger

At first I really didn’t know what kind of career workshop to attend. Then I looked through the email about Starr Career Development and the only one that attracted me was the Dining Etiquette Workshop. Obviously this relates to food and I love food. I was also curious about the etiquette we have to know for eating. When I first got there it was really awkward to see everyone else dressed up formally and I didn’t because it didn’t mention about outfit when I looked at the workshop information online. I think most people at the workshop were higher grades and it was a little awkward to be one of the few freshmen, however everyone was very friendly. They even provided a small buffet for us for lunch.

I actually learned a lot from this workshop and I believe it would be really helpful to me later on. There are two types of style in Dining Etiquette, the American style and Continental style. The American style is where we keep switching the fork. It requires us to cut the food, rest the knife on the top of the plate and switch hand to eat. Whereas the Continental style requires less switching. We would keep both the knife and fork in our hands while we eat. When we are done eating, the finished signal is to place the fork face up and the knife parallel with the blade facing in. I also learned that when it comes to soup, we scoop the soup with the spoon outward, not inward. It is very weird to me but this is one typical thing that I remembered the most from the workshop. With all the utensils on the table, we use them in the order from outside to inside. There were a lot more that I learned, these were just a few of them. I believe it would be much easier for me to go to lunch or dinner interviews in the future in my career.

On Oct 26，I went to the Dining Etiquette Workshop. It was a nice workshop that introduced a lot of information about how to handle yourself during a breakfast or lunch interview.They also provided buffet.The food also attracted me to attend this workshop.  I really really enjoyed this workshop and I learned a lot form it. There was also something awkward happened to me. I didn’t wear formal attire.When I saw the email from Starr career center, I didn’t know about the attire requirement until I was there. Everybody looked so professional except my friend and me. Both of us were casual. I even hesitated to go inside when I saw their professional attires. But the overall experience was still wonderful.

Terri Thompson was a very professional as well as humorous instructor. She told us the right way to eat soup was to spoon your soup away from you in the bowl. It’s like the opposite way of how we usually eat the soup, but it’s what we should do while in a formal dinner. Actually, this was my first time to hear about it. It’s so weird when I eat soup in this way. She also talked about the differences between American style and the Continental style when you try to cut the food. In continental style, you don’t have to switch the place of fork but keep it in your left hand. While, in American style, you cut food first then switch the fork to right hand and start to eat. I personally preferred the American style because I feel it’s uncomfortable to eat with my left hand since I am not a left-hander. Moreover, she explained the resting position and finished position of forks. One of the most important things was to get away from alcohol. Good dining etiquette will enhance your chance of being hired.