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!

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)

So for my free write for this week I wanted to talk about something special to me. I mentioned in a previous blog that I had a disease that makes me gain weight, no matter how healthy I eat or how much I work out. I wanted to take some time spread some awareness about my Disease that not many know about and no one really likes to talk about.  The disease I have is called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). This is an endocrine disorder or in simple laymen terms a hormone imbalance. This makes it extremely difficult to lose weight, because my body doesn’t process food like everyone else. It also has a lot of other side effects as well and sometimes side effects from weight gain. Some women with PCOS can grow facial hair (and I am talking lady with a beard in a circus), your hair can fall out and get what’s known as male pattern baldness. But what seems to hit most women the hardest is it also makes conceiving a child extremely difficult if not nearly impossible.  One and four women have PCOS and most don’t even know they have it. It can affect your time of the month and either make you not have a period or constantly have a period. Either way neither of those option are fun. Most of the side effects I have said show on the outside, but it effects the inside too. You can get things like heart disease and diabetes, painful cysts on your ovaries, and so many other things. I really wanted to talk about this more because so many people just see a fat person and assume they are fat because they eat too much and they don’t know healthy food, or they don’t work out and they are just lazy. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to be the PC police and say stop fat shaming I’m just saying to be educated on what some fat people may be going through. This Disease has made me gain nearly 75 ponds in the last 3 years. But not only did I have to struggle with weight gain I also have to deal with that I may never have children of my own. And anyone who knows me knows this is very important to me and has been a dream of mine since I was a very young girl to have my own children. It’s because of this is why I decide to have weight loss surgery. I needed something else to help kick start my weight loss. Because nothing I did worked. Its has been 12 days today since I had my surgery and for the first time in over three years the scale is finally going down and not up. I’ve lost 14 pounds. And some people may think that weight loss surgery is the easy way out let me reassure you it is the furthers from easy. This is by far one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It is challenging mentally, emotionally, and physically. For the rest of my life the most food I can consume in a setting is no more than ¾ of a cup. The first month after surgery you feel like your starving, literally. You’re on a pure liquid diet for the first three weeks after surgery. Trust me there is only so much soup someone can eat before they lose their mind and want something else. And that leads to the emotional have you ever cried because you were so hungry but you couldn’t eat! Yea it’s hard and the pain after surgery is just crazy, I have never felt anything like it! But in the end it is worth it those 14 pounds I’ve lost and the possibility that I have helped increase my odds for having children is worth all the pain and tears.

Well thanks for stopping by

Tammie 

Interview Your Boss

I have two dream jobs at the university which is why I chose to intern here at ASU.  One being a provost or a Dean of student affairs and the other is an advisor. I know they are drastically different but in a way they have a lot of similarities mostly the interaction they have with students.  From my very first blog I have said I really like working with students. This to me is really a dream job so since I also am a student work here in the college I have always worked closely with adviser and picked their brain on how I could become one. Since I have for a while been talking to many advisers here in the college I wanted to go for the provost of the downtown campus. The Assistant Dean of Students and Down Phoenix Campus Dean of Students is Dr. Ronald Briggs and unfortunately I wasn’t able to meet with him recently. However over the summer in my previous student worker job I was able to work with him some and I actually had an opportunity to talk to him about how he got to where he is today. During the conversation I had with him we talked a lot about his education and what degrees he had why he chose them and how they helped in becoming an Assistant Dean of Students. We talked about While he was an under grad he was a student worker just like me he worked in housing, and said that was what really kick started his career in academia. Although we never got around to what his under graduate degree was he did say if you plan on going to graduate school, that your bachelor’s degree doesn’t really matter pre-say. It matter that you have it just not what you have it in.  He went on to discuss that he got his Masters in higher education and went on to get his Ed.D. He said to be any kind of Dean at a University you must have some sort of doctoral degree, and the Ed.D. is an education doctorate which the slight difference is the Ed.D. is a terminal degree. What that means that you can’t become a 10 year professor and do research. It is meant strictly for people who want to work in the administrative side of academics. At the time of our conversation I hadn’t made up my mind about what Master’s degree I wanted. Most people I talked to said I should just get M.Ed. but I wasn’t sold on it. What if for some reason I didn’t always want to work in education, my degree would be pointless and I wouldn’t be able to get a job. In the conversation I asked Dr. Briggs what he thought would be better for me and my journey. I told him I was thinking of the M.Ed. and the MPA. I explained to him that I wanted the MPA more because if for some reason I didn’t want to work in the academic setting any more I could get a job elsewhere with the MPA more so then the M.Ed. He said I was on the right track, that yes the M.Ed. is a good degree for working in higher ed but the MPA would allow me to work the same position as well as outside of the university setting as well. I asked him then if I would still be able to the Ed.D. from the MPA, he told me of another student within our college that got his MPA and is now working on his Ed.D, and has very similar aspirations as I do, so yes it was very possible. That conversation with Dr. Briggs is what made me decided to get my MPA and although some other things that I want to do have changed since that conversation it still made a huge impact on my education and what decision I have made about what degrees I want to pursue.  

Leadership in the work place

Leadership played a big role with my internship and with the people I work with. We all have to have leadership skills. My supervisor for my internship was also running a summer program called Young African Leaders which is a grant run project that was given to us by president Obama. So before that started my supervisor and I sat down and she gave me a task list. It was my job to get all of it done with little to no help from her. At times it really sucked because I had never done anything like this but at the same time it did teach me great leadership skills and really how to just take inactive and trust my gut feelings on things.  

As for everyone in the office, we all have to pretty much be leaders. No one really watches over us or tells us what to do. We all know that we have tasks that need to be completed and we have to get them done because if we don’t students could not get dropped from classes on time or added to class late. Or maybe some people may need help with finical aid. We deal with some many things in the office of student affairs that we have to be on top of our stuff all of the time. 

New Job

To keep my theme of good and exciting news going for this set of blog posts I wanted to share that upon my return to work I will be starting a new job as the receptionist for the School of Public Affairs. I am so excited for the new opportunity because I love serving our college and I am planning on getting my masters degree from here.