Thank You Note

Dear Amanda,

I just wanted to thank you for the amazing opportunity you gave to do my internship with you. I learned a lot of new things and on top of that it was exciting to learn how to plan events. I also wanted to thank you for this opportunity because it has broadened my horizons on what I want to do post-graduation. I know now I could and want to do more than just an adviser position although that is still something I want to do as well. I guess I just seen now how much I want to work with students in a new perspective. You have an amazing position within our college/university and see how hard you work and the impact you make on students lives on a daily basis, made me realize I would love to do something like your position in the future. So thank you again for allowing me this amazing opportunity

Sincerely,

Tammie 

Goal's Ever Changing

I think probably what I learned most from my internship is what I do and don’t want to do for my career, but also all the other possibilities of what I could do that’s more than just being an adviser. My internship taught me that I really do love working with the students hands on / in person. To me realizing there is more than just being an adviser is important. Sometimes I get very stuck on a goal and I end up missing out on other opportunities because I get so focused on the goal at hand I can’t see anything else. So if I had to pick on thing that was the most important thing I learned from my internship it would be that.

I had three main goals I wanted from my internship learn how to plan events (better) create an inactive or project for incoming students and make a difference in a one student’s life. Looking back at these goal I at least for sure know I accomplished one of these witch was learn how to plan an event (better). I don’t think I will find out if anything of what I did for my internship actually made a difference any one student’s life. All I know is that I can keep trying I think this goal is one that is a continuous goal rather than a hard line accomplished goal. And I never got the chance to create a project for incoming freshmen but I did get to teach ASU 101 so that was fun. 

My Internship

I think my overall experience with my internship was pretty good! I wish I would have gotten to do more. But even though I didn’t I still learned a lot from what I did do. However with that being said I really wish I would have had the time do my internship somewhere else; and explore other options of what I could do with my degree. I think sometimes we make our minds up on “what we want to be when we grow up” and it hinders us from everything that we could do and it limits us to our true potential. If I had one bit of advice for student looking to do their internship in the future is don’t put it off, and don’t be afraid to try something new. When reflecting back on my internship, I know I could have done so much more. I just recently saw an internship opportunity for working with Mayor Greg Stanton, but I didn’t have time to apply to it. I looked like so much fun and a great learning experience. So my second bit of advice is don’t over load yourself with work and school you have to find a happy medium. My biggest regret to my entire college experience was I didn’t make enough time to enjoy the student activities. I was all work and no play. You have to find time for it.m Because before you know it you will be in your last semester wondering where the time went. 

Final countdown of the semester!

With only a few days left to this semester I can’t believe it went by so fast. Senioritis kicked my butt this semester. I use to think I that people were just making stuff up when they said that so they had a reason to be lazy and try and be carefree. But now that I am in my senior year I know everyone wasn’t making it up! I am an honors student (an over achiever and proud of it). However all of that went out the window this semester. With a majority of my grades probably ending this semester will be C’s I am very disappointed. But even more so I am worried about grad school now. I have tried my hardest to keep my GPA since I have been here at ASU with nearly a 4.5 but after this semester it will drop drastically. I know most students might be grateful to just get C’s and pass but just getting by isn’t me style. With the MPA program here at ASU if you have a 3.5 or higher you don’t need to take you’re GRE. I am probably the worst test taker there is. I have extremely bad test anxiety and now with my GPS dropping I am worried I will have to take the GRE test. I will have one semester to improve my GPA but I am afraid it won’t be enough. I would have to get straight A’s for every class next semester in order to even make up a little bit of the damage that I did this semester. It’s funny how your senior year you just lose all motivation to do anything. I am sure it didn’t help the I piled on a ton of different stressers this semester, with surgery, moving the first month of school, Starting a new job and taking 19 credits a semester.  I think that life and circumstance just got the better of me this semester. I really hope I can pull off next semester and still get into the MPA program. 

If I Ran ASU

I think that there are many things ASU does well at. For instance they are great at not excluding lower economic status students so they are affordable and one of the most affordable universities. They are great at innovation and coming up with countless new ideas. We are the first university to offer a school of sustainability. Our foundation is great, we have some of the best faculty and associates out there. (Yes I maybe a little biased) but still all of these statements are true. I think a strength we have is the fact that the university has been around for so long. But something that I also think that is a strength of ASU is sports teams are so recognizable, well known, and likeable, I really think this is a crucial part of the university.  However if I were in charge I think there would be a few things I would change. For instance I know some staff that at one point loved their job but as of recent times it isn’t working out so great for them. They want something new. What I would change about this is I would not only have more position opening and I would hire from within but I would also have something in place for employees of ASU to somehow have a more open door policy with their employees but also have their supervisors check with them. Next I would try and have a more cohesiveness between tendered faculty member or faculty in general and staff members. I don’t like how everyone thinks that they are better than one another. We are all fighting for the same cause. Lastly I would get rid of title 9 which makes any ASU employee a mandatory reporter of sex crimes that happen on campus. Although I think it should be in place for some employees like actual staff and faculty and community assistants, normal student workers should have to report. I am sure there is probably more I would change but this is my three biggest things that came to my head. 

Career Services

Career Services

So with this blog I am just going to be completely honest. I didn’t read that we had to see career services for this blog. I have been so busy with trying to do a session B science class that is kicking my A** I completely forgot about the blogs until yesterday. Hint for anyone not in their senior year don’t wait until your senior year to take your science classes. Anyways since I didn’t get a chance to go to career services, I am going to talk about a meeting I had with MaryJo not to long ago. Since we are all in this class we should all know who she is. Back in the beginning of November there was a few different internship opportunities out there for students. One was one I really wanted to apply to at Mayor Stanton office, but never got around to it. The other one was McLeaps. Which just like myself everyone says they are interested in these internship opportunities but no one ever apply to them. She was saying that hardly anyone apply to these internships even though they are great opportunities for the student’s. So think of this as PSA (public service announcement) Don’t be afraid to apply to something just because you may get turned down. From the sounds of it, it would have to be pretty hard for you not to get picked. 

Freshmen Bowling Event

One of the events that planned for this year’s incoming freshmen. So every year the freshmen get together and get to go bowling.  It has been the same thing for many years In the College of Public Service and Community Solutions. And it wasn’t any different this time either. Unfortunately my intern supervisor didn’t want to shake things up and go somewhere new. So if the place was already preset in stone I wanted to shake it up any way I could. So I picked the date and time, the food, everything else but the location.  Luckily the menu changed from the year before so it was easy to convince my boss why I had to change things. I loved planning this event but it proved to be a bit difficult.

My supervisor wasn’t really ever in the office because she was in charge of a summer program our college was hosting. This seemed to be the hardest part of planning the event considering I needed her approval for pretty much everything. It was her business card that had to pay for everything so even if I had everything ready to go she had to pay for it. I loved the freedom to do pretty much what I wanted, it sucked when it came time for her approval. It was hard to get a hold of her, and get her signature on anything so it made things get pushed off to the very last minute.

However even though there were some hiccups with this event, I was unable to make it to it because I got sick the night before, but everyone told me it was a blast and the food choices were great! To me that was a job well done for me!