Greetings, Penn Staters. I hope that all the returning students have returned to campus with worthwhile summer experiences under their belts and that the new students (welcome!) are finding University Park to be a welcoming community.
During the last academic year, I started a series of blog posts titled “Dispatch From the Other Side” that is designed to provide some guidance for students interested in pursuing a career after graduation (in contrast to the students who plan to attend professional or graduate school). You can find those posts by searching on the blog. I hope some of last year’s readers are returning.
For those who are new this year, I’ll include a brief introduction. I am a Penn State College of the Liberal Arts alumnus. I graduated in 2010 with a B.A. in Political Science and two minors (Communication Arts & Sciences and Dispute Management and Conflict Resolution). After graduating, I immediately began work for a political non-profit in Washington, DC. I spent several months there before I left at the end of 2010 and started at a company in Virginia. I create web content and work as a business development specialist.
I am planning to structure this blog series this year just as I did last year, although I would welcome feedback and happily make adjustments. Tell me what types of information you would like to see and how you would like me to present it. I cannot guarantee that I will be able to answer all questions, but I am confident that I can track down answers from friends who have graduated from the College with different experiences than me. Don’t hesitate to ask questions (related to the post content or not) in the comments. You can also find me on Twitter, where I would be happy to read feedback and questions.
I don’t want this post to grow too lengthy, so I won’t introduce a new topic today, but I will invite you to review some of our old Dispatch posts and the comments. Did many of you attend the career fair? If you did and have questions about your experience, leave them in the comments. If you have a firm strategy for following up and building rapport with employers you met, I think it would be wonderful if you could share those in the comments so that others can learn from them.
Please also consider leaving ideas for future topics in the comments. It’s very useful for us writers to know just what our audience is seeking!