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!

ASU and Public Service

Since the organization that I did my internship at is Arizona State (ASU) it actually has a lot to do with public service. I mean if you think about it, they are offering a public service to anyone who qualifies and it’s called higher education. Especially with President Crows New American University model even more students have the opportunity to go to college. But ASU does a lot more than just offer education to students who otherwise might not have had the opportunity to go. The have research professors ho offer cutting edge research to a wide verity of fields of study which inevitably help the public in some way or another. They also donate money to a wide verity charitable causes and even offer countless scholarship to students as well. To me one of ASU core values is public services. However if we look deeper than just ASU and look at the college specifically where I interned Public Service and Community Solutions. With our numerous research centers that also offer consulting to the public. For instance Lodestar Center consults with Nonprofits from all over the country and I believe even some from other parts of the world. The college also offers one of a kind staff members specifically for students with in our college. Sometimes public doesn’t have to mean the general public it could just mean a population of people. When we think of public service organization like a nonprofit say Make A Wish it is not that they help everyone but that does not mean they aren’t doing a public service. Back to our one of a kind staff. The college our college has a staff member who specifically works with only our students on anything to do with money and college.  He is an amazing resource that not many students use. He can help point you in a direction of scholarships, how to sign up for government finical aid and so much more. So all around whether we look at the university as a whole or the college that I interned with specifically Public service is embedded in what it does to the core. 

Getting a Full Time Job Before You Graduate

So this blog is more like a question that I have for anyone reading and if you read this please leave a comment. I have been trying to get a full time job in the university since this summer. Keeping in mind most position want a bachelor’s degree, I am currently 179 day away from graduating. With that being said I have heard and seen may people get positions before graduating. Not so much in the university setting but other organizations that have the same requirements. No offense to any traditional students but I am 25 and have been working since I was 16. It’s not that I don’t have experience or the knowhow.  I have great reference but still haven’t had any luck with a full time position.

I guess the question I have for anyone reading this is, have you started working a full time position before you graduate? If so where at?  How old are you? What kind of work experience do you have? What were the requirements for the position? How do you think you got that job? My last question is, is this job something you actually want to do after your graduate or is this just a job in the mean time?

Yes I may be a little eager but I am just so close to graduation I can taste it. And I am ready for the next steps. Even if I don’t get a full time position before I graduate I know I will find something when I do. 

Update on new job.

So I have been at my new job in the School of Public Affairs (SPA) for just over 4 weeks now and it is going amazing. I love my new job and although it’s only a student worker position, I already have learned many new things and have so many more responsibilities.  I was a receptions before with Barrett, The Honors College and I hated it. So I was worried that I was going to be bored and never have anything to do. But it is the exact opposite. I work there 5 hours a day Monday through Friday which mean I cover the front desk during busy times. Multi-Tasking effort and skills are required. It might seem stressful I have to answer phones calls (and by the way the phone right pretty much none stop) Se up appointment greet everyone that walks in, remembering professors names and where they are located (which by the way I have always had bad memory and say mine is just like Dory’s from Finding Nemo).  Also do task that are randomly assigned to me by 3- 5 + people a day. Sometimes it is hard to keep track. But I love it and it keeps my busy. I love my bosses they are pretty epic not only because they buy me Starbucks almost every day but because they trust me to get task done and done right. I don’t have anyone hovering over me making sure I do it exactly how they want. They like and appreciate the work I put out. But the Starbucks is really nice to I’m not going to lie! At my old position which I loved originally I hated by the end of it and didn’t realize how much stress it was putting me under until I started this new position. Now please don’t take this the wrong way but by no means do I want to stay a receptionist, it’s just not what I want to do forever. However if my student worker position turned into full time I would take it in a heartbeat. I would get a pretty decent pay increase and get to work more than 20 hours a week.  But it’s also a great opportunity to have Grad School pretty much paid for. But as for now I see the student position as a great opportunity to network and grow and learn. Which is exactly what I am doing. So if any of you call in or drop in to see your advisors you are most likely going to be talking to me setting at the front desk don’t be afraid to say HI!