Internships and Career Resources

Well, I want to welcome everybody to the winter version of our career event for English majors and creative writing majors. We've got a good panel tonight. I'm sure there'll be more people popping in. But I did already open the chat, and there is one thing in there. It's the folder that contains our alums resumes for the evening. At some point, you'll want to take a look at that and reach out and ask questions to our panelists tonight to get some advice on how to organize resumes and maybe look at things that you can add to your own resume as far as skills and experiences and certifications and things like that. We'll circle back to that the alum contributions in a little bit. The first thing I wanted to do tonight was to talk a little bit about our department resources and see. I don't want that. I'm trying to share the department.

Can you see that? I see the department website.

Well, the first thing you're going to want to do is go to the English Department website, and you'll scroll down and click on Internships and Career Resources. You'll see we've got a bunch of different tabs for you to access here with different sets of information. One of the things that you might want to take a look at is the list of available internships. We divide this by majors as far as coordinators. My name is Rachel Smydra, and I coordinate the internships for English majors, and Annie Gilson, who's on Sabbatical the semester, handles the creative writing internships. If you're interested in doing something for the summer and you're a creative writing major, still just feel free to reach out to me until Annie's back on campus. We have quite a few partners that we have listed here. These are all organizations or companies, some are nonprofit. Obviously, some are for profit, that we've had students intern and have good experiences, which is why we have them listed here. We also keep these up to date in that we have current contacts, and we know that they have available positions. They're organized by tabs, and you'll be able to take a look at opportunities at Oakland. You'll be able to take a look at nonprofit organizations, and most of these are local. We also have opportunities, if you're interested in going into publishing. A couple of these are online. The dance books, I know is an online opportunity. IF that's something you're interested in doing a virtual experience, a virtual internship, you'll want to contact me and ask, are there any? I can let you know what's available. Then we also have some corporations and businesses and so forth that you can consider as well. The other things that you have to decide when you're thinking about doing an internship because you're going to hear a lot of people talk about this tonight is when to do this thing and whether or not to do it for credit. You have a couple of different options. If you decide to do it for credit, you register for English 4950, and you do it as a class, and you get four credits for it. It's a much more structured experience and that you have to work at least eight hours a week, 8-10 hours is what we require for the four-credit course. That means that you will have weekly check-ins and you'll write a paper. It's really coordinating the experience between OU and the organization. It's a lot more support and a lot more interaction with OU coordinator and the onsite mentor. You don't have to do that, though. You can find your own internship and do it. You don't have to do it for credit, and you can use our partners that we have listed on our list of available internships. It just takes you reaching out, and it really puts the onus more on you as far as finding the internship and organizing it and discussing how much you want to work and how long you want it to last. But there's definitely some flexibility with setting up your own internship and finding it. There's just a ton of different resources out there. But you're going to hear tonight how people have found that they gained experience through their internships. One of the things they maybe find out is that they're not really interested in that career path. But it does allow you access to cultural, organizational culture, and different types of roles and responsibilities, and that's just not something you can get without doing this type of experience. One of the other things that you can do is you can take a look at past navigating your next step videos. We record all of these, and we usually keep the last three on this tab. That might be something you want to do tonight because you're going to find out how valuable these insights are from our alums, and it might not be a bad idea to go back and take a look at on the last year or two of these informative sessions. I might help you with networking or something like that. There's a lot of good resources on our department page. People forget to look here. We do keep this updated. If you have any questions about the different types of internship options you have, you can reach out. Well, one of our guest panelists tonight is going to talk a little bit about a new internship opportunity at OU, and it's Christina Moore, and she is at CETL, which is the center for teaching and learning here at OU. So I'm going to turn it over to her and she's going to tell us a little bit about this new opportunity for our majors.

Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm actually an alum of the English Department as well. I earn my bachelor's in 07 and Master's in 09. I have good things to say about this program. Most of my career has been in teaching and in higher education in general here at OU. I work at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at OU. Our primary audience is faculty, but we focus on professional development, resources, anything to improve and create a great teaching and learning environment. In service of that, we have plenty of writing opportunities.

The sheet that Professor Smydra showed before has all of our information, but if I were to summarize what some of those opportunities are, they would be on the marketing writing side of things. We work really hard to get the word out about a lot of resources we have, great programs going on, events. That takes a very well organized and intentional way of crafting a message to meet the right people, and then figuring out how that sounds different in a newsletter versus a news brief versus social media posts. We have an opportunity there where you could sort of craft out a plan for that and execute it. We do have things on the multi-modal side of things as well. If you want to dabble in creating videos, we have a pretty large following on YouTube, so the things you may create can reach a wider audience. There are multiple opportunities that tap into your experiences as students at OU. I can also share the link to the document I'm referring to since we're all here. We try to gather student perspectives about what's going on in their classrooms, what helps them, what could be improved, and we communicate those stories through blog posts, through video interviews, and we're also exploring other ways to gather those perspectives. That's why you'll see that one of the opportunities that we've defined is being a storyteller of sorts. This might be telling your stories, telling stories of different types of students at OU. These are really important for faculty to be able to find and hear so that it helps inform the decisions they make in the classroom. This is a great opportunity for people who are interested in writing and crafting, writing for a specific audience, but also seeing the behind the scenes of how an organization plans things out, schedules things, recruits people, and also paying attention to things like web accessibility and the texts that you create. Some of these opportunities can work well if you really want to focus on the written word or can be about translating the written word into different modes of communication and text. That's overall how I would describe the opportunities. You'll see some direction as far as the parameters of these opportunities, but we're very flexible. I see all of these as concrete ideas and guides on where a strong writer could contribute to our center. This could be in as little as a few hours a week to a larger opportunity. If you wanted to, it could spread out over multiple semesters or just be for one semester. We are a teaching and learning center, so we want to also value this as a learning experience for you. We'll regularly check in, gather your inputs, see how this is as a learning experience for you. We want to try and give you a lot of agency, but also a lot of direction so that you don't feel like you have to figure everything out on your own. We can craft some of these projects to be pretty narrow and simple and short term, or we can try something a little more creative and bigger picture. That's how I would sum it up on my end. Anything else I should share, Professor Smydra?

If you could put your email address, your contact information in the chat. The nice thing about this opportunity, it's on campus. As Christina already said, a lot of flexibility, just some great hands-on experience, doing a variety of task, engaging with many people from different departments and many different types of events that you can be involved with. It's just a great opportunity. I hope you get a chance to take a look at the internship description and reach out if you're interested. Does anybody have any questions for Christina? Because I know she's going to jump off. Thanks a lot. Our next panelist is from the Career and Life Design Center, and it's Yejie Lee, and she's going to talk a little bit about the resources on campus over in North Foundation Hall. Take it away.

Thank you. Hi. Again, my name is Yejie Lee, and I'm a Career and Life Design Coach at the Career and Life Design Center. Yes, it is located in North Foundation Hall right next to the First Year Advising Center. If you're ever in the Oakland Center or if you're nearby our office, feel free to stop by. For resume cover letters, free headshots, help with Handshake or LinkedIn, you don't really have to make an appointment. Our office is pretty much open during all business hours. If you just wanted to walk in and ask some questions, we're always there to help you out. I hope you can take advantage of those services. For meeting, with a career and life design coach like myself, you want to go on Handshake and make those appointments. What we can offer in addition to all those services that I just mentioned, is really doing the mock interview. I can't emphasize this enough how important it is to be practicing interview just ahead of time. Those interview skills are the hardest to really develop and really master those skills. If you think about it, your resume, it can look really good on paper, but once they bring you in for that interview, that is really when you want to make the best impression. You want to be the best version of yourself. You could spend a year just preparing for an interview, coming in like every month, just talking about all these different experiences that you have at OU or outside of OU, inside your classrooms, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to talk about yourself. It's one of those things that I just love to do because I really get to see how students communicate verbally, and I get to give feedback on, "That was a good answer, but here is a better way to answer some of these questions," because you might think that you're doing a really great job or you think that you'll do a great job, but once you're there and once you're posed with these questions that you never really thought about, it trips you up if you are not prepared and you haven't practiced yet. I really hope that, for those of you who are looking for jobs or just never really had that interview practice, to come in for those appointments.

We also do preparation for career fairs. We also do career exploration. No matter which class standing you're in right now, you want to explore what that career path might look like going forward. That would mean us taking an inventory of yourself interest. What are you really interested in or passionate about? What do you care about? How does that work out in the real world or occupationally? We'll do assessments. Through these discussions, you'll just learn a lot more about yourself and get to reflect on what did I enjoy in the past, and what do I want to do more of. So you might have chosen English or creative writing as your major, but not sure how to apply some of these skills and knowledge into the world of work. Career exploration would be a good appointment for you to grab. Then also if you are hoping to get connected to employers, just even outside of applying for jobs, we can get you connected to different professionals that align with your interests. We can connect you to get an informational interview or just a warm intro. I can also help you find people on LinkedIn in that you can also feel like you know how to find those people and network with them. Lots of different ways to really go about learning different career paths and what you might want to do as a next step, because Rachel and Christina are saying, it takes time for you to really learn what fits you. All these experiences, the baby steps that you take through on-campus jobs, internships, student org involvement, classroom projects, all of those things you want to take into account. Once in a while, just take inventory of those things and say, this worked out for me, and this did not, what do I want that next step to look like? I love exploring different careers. That is just what I'm really passionate about. Although I wasn't a major in English, I majored in communication, which I feel like it's in the same field like it's flexible and open enough that you can really create your own career out of it. What I did I knew that I liked helping people. That was just like my natural ability. I love listening to people. I tried to get into the HR career and did some recruiting out there. Then realized that wasn't truly me. I dabbled in the automotive industry, working in the sales department, working with different engineers and all of that. That also gave me a good learning lesson of, well, what did I really enjoy? I again realized the best part about that was working with lots of different people, listening to their problems and just being a helper overall. Then again, I took another step back really to looking at my past experiences and said, okay, now I really need to do something where I can actually be a legitimate helper. I went into a counseling program, and that was it. I felt like this is what I've been meant to do, and I love helping out people and providing mental health support, but also guidance on careers. Lots of different paths and ways that you can really find your career. That's what we all the current life design coaches here at our office love to do. I hope that take advantage of our resources, whether you're a current student or an alum, or always welcoming everybody at any point. I will put my information in the chat so that you can reach out to me if you have any questions. But that's about it for me. If you have any questions, let me know.

Thank you, Yejie. I hope you get a chance to get over there as well. I have a ton of people flock in their senior year but if you can take advantage of their services much earlier than the last semester, it will pay off. I think that you realize that you don't have to have it all figured out. You're just really looking for that advice on how to take that next step and which direction to head. I hope that we reaffirm tonight that you don't have to have your whole life planned out. It's just you want to know your options, things that maybe you should be doing now that will set you up well after you graduate. That's really the emphasis tonight is to just recognize and be able to find all these different types of resources on campus and understand that you already have a network, you really just have to reach out and start using it. Thanks, Yejie. I appreciate it. Next, we're going to hear from Lexie Mulhern. She works at City Year. I'm not sure of your position, Lexie, so I'm going to let you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do.

Good deal. I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me be here. I'm a recruiter for City Year. I'm based in Milwaukee and I'm actually filling in for my co-worker, Robert today. At the end of when I finish giving the information, I'll drop his information, and then I'll drop mine as well if anyone has any Milwaukee specific questions. But I'm a recruiter for City Year now, but I also am an alum of City Year myself. I did my year of service in Milwaukee. I always tell people, I'm a recruiter for a reason, and it's because my year of service was genuinely one of the best years of my life. I feel like I am the leader in the community member that I am today because of my year of service. It's very easy for me to recommend it. It's something that I want for everybody. But City Year. We are a gap year job opportunity through Americore. What I mean by gap year, usually, people who work with us to be in our leadership cohorts, they do it as a gap year either between undergrad and grad school, or if you don't want to go to grad school, I did not. You can just do it as a gap year to, A, give yourself more time to figure out what is next for you because doubling down. You don't have to have everything figured out quite yet. Or maybe you want to spend it as a year doing something unique and doing something in your community. I feel like I've seen a lot over the past few months of people talking about, the importance of being in community and organizing. I think sometimes that's easy to say, but it's harder to know what that looks like in practice. I think City Year is a really good example, a very tangible example of what that looks like in practice. Option C, maybe you just want to take it as a gap year to pay off some loans, because we pay you a biweekly stipend, which Robert can get you more information on. But at the end of the year as well, aside from that stipend, we give you an additional $7,500 that you can use to put towards paying off any existing student loans, or you can take that with you to start paying for grad school. You can also do City Year for two gap years just depending on your personal timeline, which is what I did, because then at the end of that second year, you get an additional $7,500. If you do two years, you can get up to $15,000 to knock off year loans, which is a pretty decent amount. [LAUGHTER]

Made a dent in mylons for sure. But so yeah, speaking to more of that Americore aspect, I think more often people hear of Peace Corps instead of Americore and they're super similar. Peace Corps is just like international service, whereas Americore, as the name insinuates, it's like the domestic version of Peace Corps. Like starting in our own communities for a sort of thing. Yeah, at City Year, we specifically work in underfunded schools. It's not a teaching position, but it's more of like a tutor, a mentor. For y'all as, English and creative writing majors, y'all are definitely huge assets to our work. But at the end of the day, we take people from all majors because all of the different knowledge and skills that people have, whether that's mechanical engineering, computer science, data analytics, social work, English, history, all of those different skills sets fill in the gaps that our underfunded schools are experiencing. Yeah, it's not teaching, like I said, mentor or tutor sort of more so. Our end goal is to get students up to grade level so that they can be at a point to graduate high school. Yeah, like for some context, when I did this, I worked with fourth graders. I had fourth graders who just, like, were at kindergarten, pre-K reading levels, writing levels. This was also before the pandemic. When they weren't in school for a few years, you can imagine how things are now. But yeah, on top of that, they're going through really real things, like homelessness and like the foster care system. Then on top of that, they go to a school that doesn't get any funding for any resources. What that creates is this cycle of now all of a sudden, they're in 10th, 11th, 12th grade, and now they're at a risk of dropping out. Then statistically speaking, students who don't graduate high school are more likely to end up in the prison system. It's like this big heavy work that we do, but the thing of it is that I try to explain to people, the work that we do with a third grader now can potentially affect the trajectory of the rest of their lives. Heavy, but necessary, I would argue. Yeah, what else? Yeah, like speaking to more of the mentoring set of thing, because, yeah, of course, we're tutoring them. But how we do that effectively is through the mentorship approach, mentorship collectivist community approach. You'd be in the schools Monday through Thursday, with your team, with your students. Then on Friday, that's like an office day where everybody from your team or from your cohort comes back together and just continues the conversation around, like the work that we're doing. Maybe we also bring in people from the community who don't necessarily work in education. That the work that they do might impact the work that we do in our schools. Again, an example of that. Maybe we bring in somebody who works in gun violence. Because, as unfortunate as it is, every year, we have students who lose friends or family members to gun violence during the year. Of course, that affects, like how they show up and what have you. When we have these people come in and speak with us, not only can we not work with them that way for ourselves, but that way, we also know which resources exist, and where to go to get them in the event that our students and their families need those resources. I would even take that then further being that y'all are English and creative writing majors. Because then maybe, like, during these things, you now have more resources to be able to work with your students and maybe they can write like a little journal entry or a short story about their experiences as a way to express that more so. Because that might not necessarily fit into the average school day. But in the work that we do, it's like a different capacity. Maybe they could do that with y'all. What else? The benefits really quick. Of course, you get the stipend, you get the $7,500 Seal Education Award. Depending which city you go to, you get a free bus and a subway pass, you get free health insurance. You can get a grocery stipend, you can get a relocation bonus. I'm sure there's others. Those are the main ones. Then on top of that, you get access to a lot of grad school opportunities. Speaking to Milwaukee specifically, just because that's what I know the best. Marquette University here in Milwaukee, they have a grad school program called the Trinity Fellowship. One of the requirements to even qualifying in order to apply for this is that you do a year of service with Americore, AKA City Year. If you get accepted, it's basically free grad school, and they do have an English track. They have some communication tracks, but they also have 14 tracks in general. Maybe you wanted to major in English and creative writing as your undergrad, but you wanted to go a different direction with grad school. That's very much an option. Then another one that's unique to Milwaukee is the teaching fellowship. For any of y'all who are maybe interested in teaching, but you didn't necessarily major in it for undergrad. City Year Milwaukee has this teaching fellowship in which, like, during your second year of service, you would apply to it and you get your master's degree in your teaching certifications to then go on to be a teacher. Those are just two of many grad school benefits. I know so many people that have gotten free or heavily discounted grad school out of doing City Year. Definitely tap into that. Then the last thing that I'll say really quickly, I don't want to take up too much time. Just for anybody on here who is interested, maybe you're an underclassman, I will definitely just double down on, getting in touch with Robert Thork's e-mail in. For anybody who is a senior and might want to apply to work with us starting over the summer, we are currently accepting applications from now through the end of May, again, to start in the summer. But I will say, the sooner that you apply, the better, just because the longer you wait, the more competitive it can get and I also mentioned the aspect of you would be part of a leadership cohort. In Milwaukee, that's like 85 people. In Detroit, I think that's about the same amount of people. Because of such a large group of people that we're hiring each year, there's this unique position where, you can apply with a friend. If you have a friend who's in a similar boat as you might want to take a gap year, might not quite know what's next for them, you can apply to be in the same leadership cohort. Two, if you're moving to a different city, maybe that's Milwaukee. Maybe it's not. It just makes the process more fun if you're moving with a friend. I will drop my information for anyone who's interested in Milwaukee specifically or the Trinity Fellowship. Then I will also drop Robert's e-mail in the chat just for other general questions. But yeah, do a city here, do a gap here, you know what I mean?

All right, thanks, Lexie. What a great overview, and I like that it's a low stakes experience. If you're maybe interested in teaching or working in education in some way, some capacity. This is a great way to explore that and decide whether or not it's for you. It sounds like it's a gateway also to opportunities beyond that because the program is so well connected. I don't know if you get to pick your city, but I'm sure there's just a lot of information, so forth on the website, and I'm sure Lexie and Robert can answer any questions if you reach out and connect with them as well. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Before we move on to our Alms, I just want to see if you have any questions for Lexie and Yejie before we pivot a little bit and hear from four OU Alms who are going to tell us a little bit about their experiences after graduation.

You can always put questions in the chat or just jump in. We're happy to take any questions that you have to ask. We're going to hear from Natalie Noland first tonight. She is an alumn, and she's going to tell us a little bit about what she did after graduation and maybe what she wishes she knew then and what she knows now. She's going to tell us a little bit about networking and just offer you some really good suggestions on taking that next step.

Thanks. Hi, y'all. I'm Natalie. I graduated from Oakland in 2017. It feels recent, but when I say the year, I'm like, that was not that recent. But I graduated in 2017 with a major in English, of course, minors in Spanish and creative writing. Right now, I'm a technical editor for an environmental consulting group. Copy, editing, proof reading has been most of my career journey. That's what I'll share with you all today, English majors. I know someone else on here was saying they had a comms major, and that's pretty similar too, but those are both great majors if you want to be an editor. I love being right and correcting people, so editing is a lot of fun. Like I said, right now, I'm working as a technical editor. I've worked for an environmental consulting group. I've worked in literary publishing, I've worked in educational publishing, and in educational assessment editing. There's quite a few different things in the realm of editing, and there's a lot more that I haven't done too. Most companies need an editor. It's a pretty versatile skill to have. I want to talk about two experiences I had at Oakland that really shaped me, and they're so important to my time at ODU and my career today. The first of those is I worked at the Oakland University Writing Center in Kresge. I hope some of you all have been there. It's a great resource. Whether it's for class or if you guys are getting close to graduating and you need help with your resume, you need help with a cover letter. Guess what? Even after you graduate, even still go there, it's still free forever as long as you graduated from Oakland or are a student. It's a super great resource. I loved my time working there. I still have friends from my time there, and it really helped me in my career just in having that experience and also in the importance of connections to finding your next role. The other thing I want to talk about is the internship program that's already been mentioned, and I did have a really important to me, not important in that sense, but it was important to my career personally with Dzanc Books as an editorial intern. That was a remote internship. I think it's one that you mentioned already. I did it as part of the internship program, meaning I did it as one of my classes, which I would really recommend if you're going to be spending that amount of time on it, instead of doing it additional to your course load because I don't know if it's changed, but it was not paid when I was there. It's unpaid internship, but I learned so much. Michelle Dotter is now the editor in chief at Dzanc, but she was in charge of the intern program then and just a wealth of information. As soon as I graduated from Oakland, she gave me my very first paid job copy editing for Dzanc. That was awesome. I graduated in December, an off time to graduate. It was a semester early. I don't regret it, but I'm not sure I would do it that way today. I didn't graduate with the rest of my friends. I felt like I was alone figuring out my career. Having that connection of that internship was super valuable because while I was looking for all full-time work, that's what I was doing was those small copy editing projects on a freelance basis. From there, let's see. I haven't worked for Dzanc in a while, but they connected me with so many other people I still do freelance work for, and I still do that from time to time, but my next full-time role after that was a bilingual Spanish English copy editor and proofreader for ETS, an educational assessment company. They didn't do the Michigan deal. They didn't make those tests, but they made similar tests for other states. I was editing those assessments. Then a fun time during the pandemic, I substitute taught, which is a little different from my career, but, hey, English degree, you're pretty versatile. After that, I started working for McMillan, editing educational textbooks. That was in the STEM area, and then that directed me to my current role, which is an environmental consulting, so the overlap with STEM and all of that, as well as I live here in Austin, Texas, and in my community, I volunteer at the Austin Bat Refuge, which was great to say, Hey, look at this experience I have for an environmental consulting group, where I'm an English major. I didn't study biology, but a lot of the stuff that I'm editing is related to that. Take advantage of the internship programs, and then just, of course, making connections and the importance of all of that networking, which is not super fun as someone speaking from experience who is more introverted, but it is really helpful. My role at McMillan and ETS was just cold applying resumes, no connections, but at Eocene, the environmental consulting group I worked for, even in getting the internship with Dzanc. Those were ones that I had personal connections for that really helped me get into those roles. Talk to your professors, they know stuff about internships. They can shoot a letter of recommendation, all of that good stuff. Peter Marcus, one of my creative writing professors is who got me connected at Dzanc, and that's been so important in my career today. That's something I would recommend the networking, of course, and the internship program, and just keep keeping your options open, not, especially right now, not pigeonholing yourself for just one thing that if you think you maybe want to do one type of work, you be open to looking at others and across all interests. I never thought I would be editing for an environmental consulting group. I thought I would always be editing books. This is different, but I really love it.

I don't know if you can expand on this. Ashley answered it as well, but Elizabeth was interested in that editing internship at Dzanc. I'm not sure if you can talk just a minute about the application process for that.

I believe if it's the same as it was before, I don't remember the details of what documents you need to submit, but they do take maybe I want to say 15 per semester and in the summer, and that's 15 per editorial, and they might also have a marketing one. Like 15 or could be 30 or so people each semester. You definitely want to apply in advance. Their summer internship application is probably open now, and then the summer you'd apply for a fall internship with them. It is a little competitive. I definitely think that knowing someone who's had that internship before is a good connection. Peter Marcus in the creative writing department a lot of his books are published with Dzanc. I was one of his students and said, Hey, I'm thinking of applying for this internship. Do you know anyone there? He said, let me write you a recommendation, and when I actually inquired about applying, they said, Hey, our applications are closed already. I sent him an email and said, Hey, they're already closed, so don't worry about that recommendation. I'll get it next time, and he said, wait. Just an email. That's all he said in the email. Then another one. Let me talk to someone and then suddenly, I got the internship. That was awesome. I would recommend not procrastinating like I did, and applying before the deadline.

We lost you there. I'm not sure what happened. But there are deadlines for that, so you do want to make sure you go on that website. I put the link in the chat, and you'll want to make sure that you glance at that because I do think that they run those internships. I think Natalie just said that year round and maybe Ashley can speak to that as well. But it is a great opportunity. We've had several people from OU internship at Dzanc and they get glowing reviews about just the support and the experience and just the tangibles and intangibles that you walk away with. Thanks, Danilee. Appreciate it. Next, we're going to hear from Lea Herweyer. She's got a little bit of a different story. She's still on campus, so let's hear from her.

Hi, everyone. I am double along with the English Department. I have both my bachelors and my masters graduated in 2019 and 2021, like Natalie that feels like yesterday, but those years are adding up. My senior year, I did participate in the internship program. My internship was on campus in our athletics department, specifically working with their development associate, if you guys don't know what development is. That's the fund raising that we do on campus to get money for scholarships and programs that wouldn't necessarily be funded through tuition, but rather the generous philanthropic donations from people who just want to see students in OU succeed. From there, I had that internship, my senior year. I moved on to the masters, which in full transparency if you're thinking about this right now at undergrad, I was there with you. I decided to do the masters to not decide what I wanted to be when I grew up yet, because that was a scary decision, and I wanted to put it off. That was a blessing. I loved my experience in the graduate program. But at that point, I really wanted to get into the book industry. Specifically, the book sales and marketing I had started working at Barnes & Noble, working with some of the higher ups. I was lucky that the area manager who's technically part of corporate, was working out of one of the stores that I worked at. I was trying to then move onto that corporate track. However, retail can get you down, and I realized that it wasn't necessarily the industry that I wanted to be in. I really missed being on campus, and working with students in some capacity and I fell into a job at Macomb Community College in their student life and leadership, where I worked with student leaders there in student organizations, and I gave leadership seminars, worked with volunteers and their food pantry. Then the position that I'm currently in right now at Oakland opened up. It's the Stewardship coordinator. It was something that I had had my eye on for a while, if you don't know what stewardship is, which most people do not. It's the thank you after the gift so I get to be the warm fuzzies and not ask people for money, which is immediately what people think when I say, I work in development and fund raising. Oh, you have to ask people for money. No, I get to say thank you and share gratitude and impact. This job, my English degree is really helping with. It involves a lot of writing, both short messages of gratitude and some longer impact pieces, lot of critical thinking and media literacy. I also get a lot of face time in front of our vice president. I work with the university president, and I'm just a coordinator at the moment so it's a lot of front facing to higher ups within the university. I've worked with every single dean on campus and quite a few members of the cabinet. I think the biggest takeaway I've gotten from my career so far is that just say yes to opportunities when they come because each of them is going to help you decide what your next step should be at Barnes & Noble, if I didn't say yes to something, I wouldn't have realized that that wasn't the path I should be taking and wasn't the right fit for me. I landed in this job strangely, someone had invited me to go to student philanthropy committee meeting which was my undergraduate, which is where I heard someone speak from athletics and made me interested in an internship. I asked him about it and I got the internship. While I was there, I got to specifically work in donor suites that President Pescovitz was having guests at I was like, making sure that they were happy and felt comfortable and knew what they were doing. That experience allowed me to get this position that I'm in right now. Because I have so much face time with our vice president, our assistant vice presidents, that they're taking a personal interest in helping my career go to the next level, with getting projects that maybe get me out of my comfort zone, and maybe I will start asking people for money soon, which is not at all where I thought I would be when I was reading Sylvia Plath and Edith Wharton. I think something that I just got recently as I think about my next steps in my career, one of the leadership members here told me to stop projecting fear onto yourself I had to sit with that for a really long time then I would like to pass that on to you guys to just sit there and hold space for that. Overall skills that I know I continuously work on and that I think everyone should work on. First and foremost is learning how to write a cover letter. Please use your resources with career and life design and the writing center. I've had the privilege of sitting on a hiring committee, and I have colleagues here who've had me read over cover letters to help them. You would not believe that people who cannot write a cover letter, and it's scary. Know how much of an impact you can make by just writing an amazing cover letter. Though still please learn your interview skills. Then the other thing is, if you see someone doing something that you're interested in, whether it's on LinkedIn just around you at where you're taking your internship or anywhere like that, ask them for a conversation. Most people love to talk about themselves so they will want to share their story, they will want to impart wisdom on you. Sometimes it is who you know that can help you out and having those connections are super important to getting to the next step and understanding what you do or don't want to do. I know I'm a fast talker, so that's all of the notes I had.

Thanks, Lea. I know Yejie mentioned that as well of those informational interviews. It's just a great way to not necessarily get your foot in the door, but just to get some access to somebody who can provide you with guidance, maybe be a mentor for you. Now or in the future. It's just constantly trying to build that network, your resources that you never know how things are going to circle around in life, and you never know when you can call on that connection, and it can really be pivotal. Just some great advice. Let's hear from Ashley Gordon.

Hi, everyone.

I'm sitting here listening to my fellow alumni, and I'm thinking I was going to say that. There's going to be some overlap. But what I think is really important about that is that when you're hearing overlap, it means that you aren't alone, that other people also have this experience. I'm going to tell you about my career journey, and then some recommendations that I have for you as students who are trying to figure out their next steps. Then at the end, I'll also share all of my information so that if you want to connect with me, you're more than welcome too. The first thing I want to share is that my career journey was like a mess. If you don't know what you're going to do, when you're graduating, That's okay because I didn't know what I was going to do. Like, a quick history of Ashley is that my senior year, I studied abroad in France and decided I was going to add on a French major. I graduated a year later than anticipated because I added this French major, and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I went back to France, and I taught English through an assistant program called the Teaching Assistant Program in France. Came home, totally lost. Nobody wanted to hire me. I was overqualified for the jobs that I applied for, was underqualified for the jobs that I wanted so I ended up being a substitute teacher like, you, Natalie. It's really good income. It's certainly a great way to decide whether or not you want to teach. If you think that you don't want to teach, but you feel like maybe you could, and you really aren't sure, do some substitute teaching. That will really teach you whether or not you want to be in the classroom. Got to the end of that year, took the LSAT, because my father really wanted me to be a lawyer, even though I didn't really want to. At the same time, since I spent the money on that, I was like, I'm going to go ahead and apply to go back to France through that teaching assistant program again because I at least know I liked that. I got into that program, and I did pretty well on the LSAT, but I was like, screw it, I don't want to be a lawyer so I went back to France. Then, as I was in France, for that school year, I was like, what am I going to do with my life? I guess I'll just go to grad school. Who needs to have a professional career? I don't know what I want. Similar to Lea, like, I'm just going to defer all of that scary stuff. I'm just going to go and get this masters. I ended up getting my masters in French, so very different. That Masters was in Madison, Wisconsin. In Madison, Wisconsin, there's a really large healthcare software company that many of you probably have interacted with but don't even know it. If you have a MI chart. That company is called Epic. I had a lot of friends that worked there and made a lot of fun of them for being sellouts. But I ended up working at Epic, too, so I was also a sellout. It's totally okay to become a sellout. The most important thing is that every single thing you do is teaching you something about yourself what you like and what you don't like. As a quick side note, in that French program, I was required to do an internship. It was the first internship that I ever did. I did not do an internship when I was a student at Oakland, and I do regret it to this day. I saw that the Blue Care Network internship is still on the list of available internships. That's the one that I wished I had done, and I have never forgotten that I really wished I had done that. What's funny is that when I was doing my French Masters program, my internship was in the exact same thing as what I would have done for the Blue Care Network, and I didn't like it. That internship taught me, I actually really don't want to be in communications. I don't want to be in marketing. That's not my space. That's not the area that makes me happiest. I actually thought from doing that internship that maybe I wanted to be a translator. When it was all said and done, I fell into this technical writing job at Epic. I went in with absolutely no experience. It's a company that hires a lot of people straight out of college and then they teach you everything that you need to know on the job. It just turned out that I really liked technical writing. It just worked. I really like grammar. I know I'm in the minority here, but grammar is awesome. It's so fun. If you are interested in just how the English language works, if you find that you are really liking the English classes or maybe you've taken like I don't know if the poetry class is still being offered, but I took that when I was freshman, and I loved it. Like the semantics. The use of words. That stuff is really why I love being a technical writer because my job is to take these really complex pieces of software development and explain them in plain English to people who don't necessarily have that background where they're going to understand what a developer did. I don't have any developer experience. I do not know how to read any coding languages, but I learned a lot on the job. I actually find myself right now in a position where I'm considering going and trying to learn some more technical skills and maybe even learn a coding language or two based on what I want to do with my career. But I spent four years working at Epic, and I really loved it. I ended up leaving Epic and going to another technical writing job. I really enjoyed that, too. It was within my field, but it was a completely different opportunity. I learned a lot of skills. Then in January, I got laid off. I wasn't expecting that at all, especially because they had just promoted me two weeks prior. I've been spending the last six weeks applying to jobs, doing a lot of networking, a lot of informational interviews. A lot of the things that you hear people talking about right now. Now is a great time to be doing that. Don't wait until you're laid off from a job. That being said, one of the things that I've been doing as a technical writer over the last four years was I got incredibly involved in a professional society and that gave me a ton of connections, which actually led to some interviews. I'm happy to say that this week I accepted an offer and thank you so much. That offer came from a recruiter who headhunted me, who I had never talked to in my entire life. None of it makes sense. A lot of it is luck. The most that you can do is try to follow what you think is the right move for you and if you don't know what the right move is for you, my recommendation is just pick something that sounds like you might not hate it, and give it a try. It's a lot like when you're a writer, and you have the white page in front of you. The very, very scary, white page. How do I even put any content on this? Where do I even begin? Usually, at least the advice that I give for the white page is just put something on it. Doesn't even have to be good. Doesn't even have to be full sentences. Just put something on it. That will usually result in a cascade that leads you to what you really want your reading to look like for whatever the project is that you're working on. As you can hopefully see from my story, mine is a very non-traditional, it's not even an arc. It's like a who even knows where this is going. It's still really worked out. I did things that taught me what I didn't want to do. I did things that taught me what I really want to do, and I'm still learning and I'm still figuring it out. I graduated in 2012. I've been around the block a couple of times at this point. I'm still just now going, oh, my God, like, my life just exploded in front of me. What do I even do? If you're feeling like I don't even know where I'm going with this with my life, with this English degree, that is okay. You're going to figure it out. You're going to pick something. It's gonna lead to something else. What you are going through right now and the concerns that you have and the anxieties and the struggle, it's training yourself. You are going to be so strong as a result of how you're feeling right now. It is going to put you in a great position later. If you're not feeling like that, that is awesome. If you know exactly what you want to do, go get an informational interview with somebody who does that. I know that my fellow alumni have already mentioned this, but I'm going to mention it again, because I was literally just doing this the past two weeks. I was finding people who worked at different software companies who were writers at a level that I wanted to be at, and I was connecting with them and having these meetings and saying, I really want to get to these levels of technical skill that you have. How do I get there? If you aren't sure how to conduct an informational interview, a couple of things you can do. Number 1, you can go online and you can read about it. You can absolutely search on Google, tons of great resources to tell you about how to do an informational interview. Number two, you can reach out to me, and I'll be happy to talk to you about what it was like for me when I was doing informational interviews, how I conducted those, how I reached out to people. I'm a very extroverted person, but I know that a lot of us in the English department are more introverted, and I understand that it can be really scary and a little bit paralyzing to have to reach out to all these people or have to talk to people like that. But I promise that, at least in my case, I really felt empowered when I walked away from those. My last piece of advice definitely do an internship. If you can't do an internship, volunteer somewhere. I volunteer for an animal rescue here in Chicago, and that is on my resume every single time that I submit it. It has nothing to do with technical writing but you'd be surprised how many times people mentioned that animal rescue experience that's on my resume. You can always spin those experiences into relevant experience for a job. I foster dogs. What does that tell me? What does that teach me as a usable skill? Well, I have to communicate over email with the coordinators. I have to care for a living creature. I have to think critically about whether I need to handle a problem this way or handle a problem that way. I also sit on the Associate Board for this animal rescue, which means that I do some fundraising. Fundraising is an amazing way to get experience that you can put on your resume. Lea was talking about her experience with fundraising, lots of project management skills, lots of learning how to work with other people. The last thing that I'll say about getting an internship is that it's not just about years of experience because there are a lot of companies that say they want you to have experience, but how do you get experience? If they won't hire you, etc. An internship does give you that. But one of the things that an internship also gives you is specifically experience with tools. That, I think is the even bigger step to get over to get hired somewhere. It is a problem that I was running into in my job search this past month. People wanted me to have certain experiences with tools. My eight years of career never had me actually touch those tools. The companies that I worked for never used them. Now, I'm trying to convince people that they should hire me, even though I don't have experience with that tool because I can learn it really quickly. A lot of companies right now, they really want people to just have experience with the tool already. We're not going to go down the rabbit hole of whether there's merit in that, because I obviously disagree with all of those companies. However, think about it not just from the point of view of getting that work experience but the tools that you're going to use. That can be accessible tools like Microsoft Office. Sure, you know how to type things into a spreadsheet. But if you are doing cool spreadsheet things for your internship, that gives you a leg up over other people. If you would like to talk to me more, I definitely don't want to keep talking because we also have another alumna to speak. But if you would like to connect with me and talk more, I would love to hear about your current situation and talk about the steps that you want to be taking and give you some support. I dropped all of my information in the chat. Please feel free to send me an email or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Wow. Tons of great information, just some really good takeaways. I liked how you mentioned volunteering. I don't think we've emphasized that enough tonight that you can network and just gain some valuable skills and experience volunteering at different organizations because typically, volunteers get a ton of responsibility. They're often not paid, but you can jump into a lot of different shoes, low stakes, so those are just some great opportunities. The other good reminder for all of us is that we love to read and we love to write. The thought of entering the tech world is pretty scary, but there's a ton of different opportunities in those types of fields as well. We've had several alums end up in automotive, different engineering firms and things like that. Those are things that we typically don't think we want to access or enter or explore, but our skills fit in those types of arenas as well. I think Ashley, just reminded us of that tonight that those are things that you don't push those away. There may be areas that you can find fulfillment. If you like to write and you love language, you love grammar, those may be good context for you to explore. Thank you. I'm glad you found an opportunity.

Thank you.

Deanna, let's hear.

Wonderful. Can you hear me okay? Perfect. Thank you for having me. I actually went to school with Ashley, so I graduated in 2016, I believe. I have a bit of I would say, maybe unconventional story, so I can share where I am and how I got there. To me in my head, if I had path it out, I wouldn't think that the whole arc connects. But I was working while I was in school. I actually had an internship at a company that I heard about through a family friend. I had been interested in a little bit of coding in my early years, just as a side interest and ended up in just doing a lot of grunt work for some coding, basically. That's where I started very early in while I was also going to school. Through that, I ended up getting a connection to the marketing departments. They had a need for someone to help over there. I got pulled into the marketing departments. That's where my whole career started. My job morphed over time. It went from just basically a little bit of a marketing intern to now I'm working at Apple in marketing operations. What that looks like and how English was really good for me was, it helped me understand how to take all of this information and either boil it down to its barest parts or take these complex ideas and communicate them like what Ashley was saying to other people who may not have the same type of experience. How do I take really complex marketing processes through a lot of technical stuff, but try to explain it to somebody in a different department, like, I need their buy in, I need their help, but they don't know all of the background that I have, they don't know all the ins and outs of all the clicks of all the software. How do I take that information into a way that's going to give them understand what's happening, ask them for what I need, communicate all that stuff? It's really a lot about communication. Also about another thing that's been really helpful in my career is being able to step back and think critically about what people are asking me for. You might have people in your job being like, we have to do, blah. We have to do this thing and it's this big project, and we have to do this. Being able to step back and say, hang on a second. Why are we doing this? What information are we wanting at the end of it? What does the outcome look like? That's all stuff that I learned through reading books in my classes. Taking these sometimes esoteric, sometimes poetic, sometimes very strange, sometimes really dry texts, and being like where did they come from? What types of stories? What's underneath all of this stuff? Being able to open all of those up has really taught me how to think critically about the stuff I'm doing at work. It might not look like it perfectly translates to English, but that has absolutely equipped me with the skills to be able to navigate the corporate world, whether it's communicating to other people, having really professional, well written emails, building relationships, being able to translate very technical information into a way that other people can digest, that kind of thing. The company I worked for where I started the marketing department, I morphed from being just a little bit of a marketing intern to by the time I left the company, there were about 50 people working in the marketing department. I started when there were four or five people in it. The company morphed and then my job morphed over time because I just scooted around with responsibilities. Then I moved to Austin, actually. Natalie and I are basically neighbors. Hello to a Fellow Austin. I ended up working for a furniture manufacturer. That doesn't sound very glamorous, but when you go to department stores and you look at little picture frames, and there's that little photo of the cute couple in the picture frame. It was the company that did that. They designed the frames, and then also put the photos into that, as well as, lots of furniture, lighting, that kind of thing. But they needed a marketing person. They needed someone to be able to write newsletters, write website copy, work on their socials. All that stuff came right back to my communication skills with English as well, because I had to be able to pitch things and write in a professional manner and explain to the average web visitor what the value propositions were. Then to Ashley's point, I really love what she said about learning the tools. The first job that I mentioned where the marketing role morphed over time, I learned a piece of software called Eloqua. The short version is it's a marketing platform. You can run your emails, your contact database, a bunch of automation stuff through one piece of software. In learning that just through my job, it was just the tool I had to use. I ended up then getting a job later with Oracle, a couple of years ago, where I became a consultant for that tool because I've been using it for so long. I've been using it for 10 years. I was able to take that and use that tool to then further my career because I was an expert in that particular tool. Then now I'm at Apple doing a similar job. I just started there back in October. It's in marketing operation. It's a lot of technical stuff, a lot of how do I take what the marketers want to do and make the whole system work around it? It's a little bit of an unconventional path, but I agree with so much here. It's just saying yes and also figuring out what's in front of you and don't get discouraged if your very first job out of college or your very next role doesn't look like the most perfect version of what you had in your head. It doesn't mean that A, you might not get there someday because you maybe will get there. You might find out along the way that actually you didn't want to do that at all. I briefly had flirted with a business degree for a minute, and I figured out very quickly I did not want to do that. All of this experience is just going to help you figure out, what do you want to do? What do you like? Then you can adjust from there. If you find out, well, I really like this part of the job. Like at Oracle, I found out I don't really like consulting. I love teaching people, I love training people, but the actual consulting part of it in terms of all the administrative side was not my favorite. I scooted back into marketing proper. I would just say, tools are really valuable. Don't be afraid if the thing you start at doesn't magically look like what you hoped, because you might get there. I know a ton of people who graduated from college who don't have careers that necessarily match what they graduated in, but they still have amazing fulfilling careers as they go. It might look a little bit different, but that doesn't mean it won't be great. Doesn't mean you won't get to where you want to go eventually. The other thing is listening to all of you, I very much should not take advantage of the types of things on campus that I wish I would have. I would have loved to have done an internship through the school. There's a lot of things that I know, a lot of tools and resources available, but I think I was too shy to ask about or it required me to go to some office in a different part of campus that I've never been to, and I was worried about what am I going to say when I get there? I think I was just too afraid to ask about that stuff. If you can hop over or push through that fear a little bit to talk to people about maybe doing informational interviews or going to the Career Development Center, which sounds amazing. I think I was there before that existed. Or even talking to your professors. I built some really amazing relationships with a couple of my professors who ended up writing me recommendation letters for jobs and other things I was interested in. Those can be really powerful. They're there to be on your side. They want you to succeed, and they're there to use as a wealth of knowledge as well. I'll also echo the volunteering thing, if there's something specifically that you like. I ended up in the spot of marketing and writing a little bit. There's lots of organizations that just would love to have somebody who would volunteer for that. If you can find even a couple hours a week, it doesn't have to be a full time unpaid job. It's just like if you can give a little bit of time, there's lots of ways you can apply that stuff that you're looking to do for people who really need it, and then you can use it on your resume, you can build connections that way.

I recommend that as well. If you have a passion, go like, a hobby or a cause you're really passionate about, if you reach out to organizations that do that, they probably need people to do writing or social media or marketing or communications, like something in there. Then you can just use that as experience for your resume. I would just say, I would also echo the room of just using your time, your work experience, your internships, your schooling, your volunteer time as ways to just keep building your skills. It sounds really overwhelming, there's a lot going on, and you've got a lot of a big life ahead of you, but I will echo, you're not alone. It's very normal to feel overwhelmed to not know where you're going. But I believe in all of you, and you've got a lot of amazing opportunities and people here who are excited to work with you to set you up for success. Don't be afraid to reach out. It's a little scary at first. But the first time you do it is going to be the most difficult, and then after that it's going to be a little easier. That's what I would say, I'll also drop my info in there. Happy to talk to any of you about career stuff, marketing, post school life, any of that, so happy to chat about any of that.

Great advice. Thank you. If you can find that energy and time to take that small stuff that we've all been talking about tonight, just find one thing to do. Maybe reach out to the Life and Design Center or reach out to the alums who came on to talk with you tonight and share their stories. You did hear a lot of repetition, and that's just because you find out after you graduate that you do. You twist and you turn and you move and you pivot, and you figure out what you like to do and what you don't like to do, and you discover ways to use your skills that you didn't think possible. The more open minded you are about seeking those positions, talking with people, the more it will pay up in the long run. You have a very nurturing community at OU, and I do think people don't realize that until they're gone. hopefully, you heard people emphasize that tonight that stop and look around. There's just tons of resources just on campus. Well, does anybody have any questions for our panel tonight?

If people are feeling a little bit shy about questions. One thing I would love to encourage any of you to do right now is just share, who are you? Where are you at in your undergraduate career right now. Right now, you're all just gray boxes with names. Nice screen. But I would love to hear a little bit about, are you freshman, sophomore, junior senior? Do you have an internship that you're planning to do or one that you're interested in doing? We just love to hear a little bit about what's going on for all of you right now.

I'm an adult coming back to school. I worked in massage therapy for over a decade. I'm always like the oldest person in my classes. Which I've actually learned to see that as a positive, which is awesome. But my question is, I actually am going to be doing a marketing internship this summer. Do you have any advice?

A marketing internship this summer, you said?

Yeah.

I would say continue to echo what people have said here, but definitely take as much time as you can to learn things, so learn a tool that they're using. If you admire the way that somebody does something. I literally just did this the other day with a Cohort group where he had the best way of saying something really diplomatically at structuring like things he was working on. I was like, how did you learn to do that? I really love the way that you blah, blah. How did you learn that? That's another way or if you see something you're interested in, but maybe you can't get on the project or, it's where you want to go. If you have somebody can connect you to say, hey, can I get you a cup of coffee? I would love to hear more about bless or how did you get into that spot? Because I would love to head there in my career. How did you get there? Just keep asking questions. Then just use the time to learn what they're offering you.

I also think it's very important. I think it's important for you to sit down really early in this internship and let them know that you want a lot of responsibility. You want to learn new skills, you want to really have takeaways from this experience. A lot of that can come through that connection with your mentor, but you have to express it. If you don't articulate what you want from the experience, then sometimes it can get lost in translation. I think you really need to have that conversation with your mentor, that's really important.

Good point.

I was just going to say, one thing to add on to that is I know that sometimes these internships can be a little bit, not glamorous. Maybe it's very, grunt work, or it's like a lot of stuff you have to do, and it's like, not that exciting, and it doesn't look like the dream job, or it doesn't feel like it's impacting anything. If you can get through that, but also work on building the relationships with the people around you. Like I've gotten jobs through other coworkers before that I've had in the past life or past bosses who have loved me and then written recommendations or later. I would say, like just know that sometimes the unglamorous stuff is like a building block to something more exciting and more where you want to head in your career. Even if it's just boring work, just build those relationships and ask questions. What I would say.

When you start your internship, it's hopefully, very likely that they'll have a pretty structured onboarding process for you. One thing that they should be doing is having you set up time to talk with certain people that they feel are important for you to talk with. That might be certain product manager or certain team member, and they want you to set up 15 minutes. Even if they do that, you can still do this suggestion that I'm about to give you. But if they don't do that, ask your direct manager. Who are the people that I should be talking to? Like, who would you say are the right people to connect with so I can better understand how their team interacts with marketing. You can ask that at the beginning. You can always grab 15 minutes with people three weeks in, four weeks and five weeks in. There is no time limit on when you're allowed to make a connection. You can always say, hey, Jeff, I am grabbing 15 minutes off of your calendar, would love to talk with you more about XYZ project that you're working on. Then, similar to what Professor Smydra was saying if you see projects that you're interested in, see what you can do to get on those projects. In my previous role, I established an internship program, and I had two interns that I hired and worked with for three months. One of my goals was getting their hands dirty. I wanted them to be doing actual technical writing things because it's the only way to learn. One of those interns, in particular, she ended up getting hired on as our second full time writer. Then she started taking initiative, which companies love to see that. Most companies, good companies, like to see that you are taking initiative. You don't want to overload yourself, but you want to fight for yourself because I mean, other people will there are good people in Corporate America. But what they generally say is like, if you don't fight for yourself, no one will. You want to take your education into your own hands. If you see something interesting, ask about it. Now is a great time to be doing those informational interviews with people at other places who are marketing professionals. Ask them. What are your recommendations? How can I get the most out of this internship? The last thing I'll say is, you can really leverage the search functionality on Linked in. You can search for people who have a title of marketing. We're alumni from Oakland. You can really dive pretty deep and then reach out to those people, send a connection request. Always add a note whenever it's available, and say, Hi, I'm a fellow Golden Grizzly. I have an internship this summer. I would love to learn more about how you got to where you're at would love to connect if you have time for a 30 minute informational interview.

Natalie had something to add to, want to make sure we don't forget.

Yeah, I don't want to go on too long, but just know echoing what everyone said, and especially what Professor Smydra was saying, this is the chance for you, to if they say, these are your set tasks. But are you interested in this? Are you interested in this say yes to everything? If they say, we've got this other project going on, would you like to be involved? Say yes. They probably see a lot of interns, and it's always helpful to have that on your resume, but if you want to make that connection, this is a great place where you can fail, and you can take those big risks in maybe going super overboard on the project and something that you think, Oh, well, this 50 50 could be hit or miss, this is the time to do it because the consequences are just that you learn and that's it, you're not going to get fired. Just for taking those risks in the sense of where it's something that you're trying out and you're learning and I'm losing my train of thought here, but do you know what I mean? It's okay to fail, and this is an internship is a really great place to do that and to take that risk to make that impact and have those people remember you.

Thank you, everybody. Yeah. It's funny. I didn't think I would ever apply to a marketing internship, but here I am. Hopefully it goes well.

We've got our fingers crossed for you. I think that's the end of our event tonight. I wanted to thank everybody for participating. What an informative night. Just tons of great information. Reminders about resources on campus, and you've got a network right here on screen tonight, so reach out to people. Thanks for joining.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.

Description. Really reading through the job description to capture some of those keywords and qualifications and making sure your resume is, close to perfection before you submit a resume and we like to provide coaching in between, helping students understand how to follow up with employers and not just about clicking a button and applying for this job and expecting to hear an answer from them, it's also about making those meaningful connections on either Linked in or if there's any networking event that you can go to where the employer that you want to be hired from is present, so making those connections and utilizing your network to elevate your job search and application process to find the right job for you. Another thing about Big Interview is, again, the interview practice tool, so you can record yourself, and the AI tool will analyze your recording, talk to you about how many ms you have, what's your pace like. What's your background lighting like? All these different things that sometimes a human eye might miss out on and it will also give you feedback about some of the power words you should be using for certain questions. We can customize the questions, however, we think would be appropriate for you or you can also just go through questions that are already generated per industry or per job, so let's say if you wanted to apply for an English professor job, there's probably a practice set out there a big interview where you can go through some questions to prepare yourself for an interview like that. Those are helping students feel empowered to practice on their own, utilizing AI, and honing those skills to really land a job that you want to get. We're excited to be utilizing these tools and introducing them to our students but of course, there's nothing more important than actually connecting with an actual person or professional with experience, and can give you a little bit more perspective, we always encourage students to come in and meet with us at least once so that we can know who you are and how we can help you out personally to provide you with the best coaching we can give you. These are some things that we love to do apart from hosting these workshops and events. There are a lot of other things that are coming up at the Current Life Design Center, such as the on-campus job fair that's going to happen, we'll also be doing a major minor Expo this week. A lot of things happening so if you want to be part of that, just reach out to us and we can make sure we are bringing you in back to campus. Thanks. Any questions? Let me know.

Thank you, Age. Does anybody have any questions? Well, if you get a chance, stop by the center, they have just a ton of valuable resources, and it'll be worth your while, for sure. We are moving on, we always like to invite somebody from the community and tonight we have another who's centering in on I'm giving you some information about her organization, and we're going to hear from Audra Pin tonight, she works as the executive director of the experience and Pontiac. She's hosted a couple of different interns for us and just does an amazing job running the center, and I'm sure she'll have some good advice for you tonight as well.

We want to just also say Audra was herself an English intern who then went on to become the executive director at the art experience. I just had to plug that, it is true, yes. Annie, you were my internship coordinator and I was an English grad or student in graduating in 2012, but English was my second major, I first graduated in 2002 with an art history degree and I went back to school thinking I would be a teacher and decided that I didn't want to choose teaching young people or older people and I liked all ages of people and I just stuck with my English degree. At that time, you needed to have a little bit more of a basic degree to be able to get a teaching certificate, and teaching was always my fallback thing but English managed to just be my I don't know, I fell in love with it, I'm a self-proclaimed word nerd and I saw the art experience as an internship opportunity, and I on a day where I actually was fired by email [LAUGHTER] from a translation company, so that was really interesting and just some universe message but the first day that I walked in the studio, I knew I was home. I guess, like that first day, I had saved the website, there was a bunch of art therapists who were working and I think there's just all of these different skills that really hole from the English degree and there's a way that there is a synthesis that can happen across different platforms and you can read between the lines in a certain way and see where people need more help, or there's a communication thing that needs to happen. Our community art and Art Therapy studio, the Art Experience, was founded like 30 years ago by art therapy students, and we welcome the entire community to our facility and that means people of all ages, people of all artistic abilities, people of all abilities. Those with cognitive or physical disabilities are welcome in our space, and we adapt to meet their needs and people from all different backgrounds too, so being able to hold space for people's experiences in all different ways is something I think that English majors are not to be biased or anything. [LAUGHTER]. Good at because you can read between the lines, and you're shown, you've explored all of these different narratives from all different cultures and perspectives and things like that and what's really amazing, I think too, is that you can use these skills in all different ways when I was an intern, I was able to fix the website and do a lot of content stuff and marketing for the studio and then we managed to get some email, this was the first time that everybody was using their own Gmail account and not just one email address, so I know UG was talking if I said that correctly, I'm sorry but how these AI or corporations are going through, two hundreds of resumes, that were very Luddite over at the art experience.

It was a big deal to move to Gmail in 2015. We have to raise funds for a non-profit organization. There's grant writing. That was one of my real interests when I first started at the studio. For those of you who might be interested in that, it's challenging, I found it to be challenging to not know a whole bunch about the organization in order to be able to write about it. There's a lot of history that goes with it, but if you're given the task of doing other things you'll be able to pick it up and understand it for where it is that you are interested in going. Along with the grant writing, it is writing year end appeals and different fund raising campaign literature. There is marketing and social media stuff. As I talk about all of this, these are all things that I would love to have people helping me do. If you're interested, please reach out. I know for me, when I was looking at resumes as I was preparing my thoughts or whatever for this evening's event here, I know I'm looking at detail on a resume, and that words aren't misspelled, especially if I'm looking for someone who's writing content for a website and things like that. Also, I've had some very interesting resumes because I'm the one who looks at them all. Please also don't make it seven pages, and tell me your four month long jobs. I would recommend not doing that. I don't know. I guess that's really, I would love to have you guys in the studio, if not, just to see it and make something. Bring a friend. We have this program called Open Studio. It's six bucks. You can use all of our art materials in the studio and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday nights, and Sunday afternoons. It's a nice way to get out of your regular day to day stuff and just be adventurous and create something.

I can't recommend this highly enough because the art experience is so fun, you guys. You can just go there, you can make things. I was on the board for so many years ago, but yeah, it's lovely. Obviously, Audra is lovely. Anybody who's interested and especially remember, non-profits are big. If you get experience in a non-profit, that is transferable to so many different fields. Again, this is one of our people. This is a really friendly place to begin if you have not done a lot on the job market and you're interested in doing so. Thank you so much, Audra.

You're welcome. The only other thing too is that when I'm looking for an internship who is working more directly with me instead of an art therapy intern or an art studio intern, I'm looking for a writing sample. I don't have anything specific to that I ask for other than a writing sample. That's part of the, I guess, the game, too, to see what it is that you're sending me. Just to get to know your point.

Wow. That's important. What you write can help you with your next job. It's so important. Well, thank you again. That was terrific. I'm just going in order that they responded to me. Brian Bishop, who is a clinical mental health counselor, graduated from the OU English Step program in 2002, taught as an English teacher for 15 years, came back, got an MA in 2008, and then I think you went to Wayne State, Brian, is that right for your psych?

Yeah, that's correct.

Well, please take it away.

Well, thank you very much, Annie, and thank you for hosting this event this evening. I have had several wonderful experiences at OU specifically with the English Department obviously. As an undergrad, I went through the step program, the secondary teacher education program. At that time, that involved obviously many courses in the English Department along with courses through the College of Ed, and it culminated in a year long internship. I was placed at Lake Oregon High School in Northern Oakland County where I student taught for a year and I was fortunate at the end of that year that there was a couple of retirements in the department that I was student teaching in, and I was fortunate to be hired by that same district the next year. My year long internship was maybe the best interview experience that I could have had, so to speak. I taught in that building for 15 years, had a fantastic experience. I think probably five or six years into my teaching career, I decided to return to OU and began working on a master's in English. Hands down, that was the most extraordinary experience I think I will ever have. Because I was able to return to spend time with some of the professors that I'd worked with as an undergrad and be in a completely different environment, where I was with classmates of really pretty amazing caliber. As a English teacher, I'd always thought about myself as more of a blue collar English teacher than a white collar because I wasn't an advanced English student when I was going through high school myself. Really enjoyed the masters program because I was with some really accomplished and successful graduate students who were with me and I just really loved what the English department had to offer there. Earned my master's through OU and finished teaching about 15 years and decided that either I teach for another 15 or maybe I shift my career a bit. I took a risk once I turned 40 and returned to school this time at Wayne State and earned a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. I resigned from my teaching role and have been working as a mental health counselor for children, teens, and adults ever since then. My early English education has taken me on a bit of a circuitous route, but I can't imagine that it would have brought me to any other place, I think. This is where I'm supposed to be, I believe.

What was also really fun is, Brian, we knew each other when you were doing your master's here. Then I was at the bookstore, Barnes and Noble up in Rochester Hills, and there you were. You were actually just out of love, also working a couple days, I think, a week. We just happened to run into each other, and I was just like, oh, my God, because you were just such a delight to be within the classroom. Then you were just glowing with your excitement about your new career. I just wanted to bring you in because we don't usually bring a whole lot of teachers because everyone knows that you can be a teacher, but I thought that your experience was really instructive that you can take the work that you did as an English student and walk right into a program and then walk right into a new job.

Thank you. I will say that if you're at all interested in mental health eventually to work in at some point in your career, that the stories that we tell ourselves, literally the narratives that we as individuals craft about our lives and experiences that we have had, those are very instrumental in terms of whether and how a person maybe seeks mental health care or how a person like one of you as students decides to maybe pursue an advanced degree in psychology or counseling later on in your careers and being mindful of how a story impacts how we think about development. I mean, we read about characters, but characters in many ways represent actual real people or can, and we very much have our own stories, and they shape our mental health both positively and some cases negatively. There's a lot of overlap, I will say, between composition, literature, the ability to analyze and think critically and then express yourself well in writing, both in the language arts, but then also in other areas of the social sciences, in this case, mental health care.

It's such a big field. It's getting bigger and bigger and more important. I think it's a really smart pairing. Again, it's interesting because Audra also does this pairing at the art experience, which works with folks. Again, is also very narrative driven, I would think. So interesting. Were you done, Brian?

Sure, unless anybody has any questions, I'm happy to field, otherwise. Yeah.

We'll do the questions at the end. I'm going to move to Kiana Gabriel, who is a project manager and graduated from OU in 2021. I forgot to write down the title of your workplace, Kiana. You can pinch hit that.

I work at Star seven, which is a language service company, but I don't really have an extensive work background since I graduated just a couple of years ago. I'll just I guess, touch on how I got into the workforce after I graduated.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my English degree after graduating, and I double majored, so I also have a bachelor's in German language and literature, which is how I got into the language sphere things. But I threw handshake, I actually found the company that I work at now, which was a good resource for me, I know. Everyone uses it very much, but it's definitely worth making an account and looking around on. I had someone actually reach out to me from STAR7 and encourage me to apply there, which is how our team likes to recruit for new positions because we hire a lot of when they are open positions. For entry level, a lot of fresh graduates, and they like OU graduates specifically. That's how I got started, and they specifically told me that they like hiring English majors, but also language majors. I had I guess, the best of both of what they were looking for because of just like the soft skills that come with being an English major, I think can apply to a lot of different fields. It's been a really good experience, just gaining general experience in the workforce and learning how things work. I was really nervous when I got into things because I had no idea. After the interview process, really what I was walking into because I had never worked in a professional setting before, but, they felt that my skill set and my background would allow me to basically learn everything that I needed to, so they weren't worried about that and then they had all of the training. I was nervous about it, but everything is going really well, and I've switched department since I started. Now I work a little bit in the HR sphere as well. I actually do some hiring for our company. We work with a lot of language professionals. I have a little bit of experience on the interviewer and interviewee. In general, I'd say just things that looking back on it were helpful for me was probably keeping an open mind and I didn't know what job titles or spheres to look for. Again, really the skills can be transferable to a lot of things, so keep an open mind when looking maybe at what positions are near you or what companies and how you could apply your skills to the job listings. Then, I think, from my experience, interviewing and also interviewing both internal team members and the contractors and some things we work for. When we interview a lot of fresh graduates, it's okay to be nervous on the interview. We know that I was nervous. I know a lot of the people I interview are probably nervous, and it's not a bad thing. Just take your time. Slow down, try to be a little bit thoughtful and precise, if you need to take a moment to think about something, to answer a question. That's totally fine. If you need to ask the interviewer to maybe repeat a question or clarify, it's a good sign, and it's better to clarify and make sure that you've answered things or that you didn't miss something, than just nervously slide past something. Hopefully that's a little helpful. That's probably what I was most nervous about when applying to places.

That is so helpful because you are pointing to how useful it is to participate in class. To practice your oral communication skills. It's not something that's just to suck up to your teachers, she says. [LAUGHTER] Great. Thank you so much, Kiana. I'm going to turn now to Daniel Towner Brengel. Please let me know if I didn't pronounce that right.

You got it. [LAUGHTER]

Thank you. Who's the Director of Academic Success at Macomb Community College. Daniel graduated from OU with a BA in 2015, and then with an MA in 2017. Welcome.

Thanks, Annie. I also just want to thank the OU English Department for inviting me back. It's great to see some familiar faces. It's funny because Rachel and I are actually working on a research project together now. Then we get to see each other to work on that tomorrow. I'll get to see her again then. But I have so many great memories of my time at OU, both studying there and also working there. For a while, I was driving by OU on my way to work every day, and it was just such a feeling of melancholy I was like Oh I wish I was back. But to tell you, I would just echo what folks have said so far about being flexible and keeping an open mind and finding ways that your skills can transfer into areas that you might not expect. I guess I could say I'm the poster child of changing my mind and changing courses. I was originally going into musical theater when I was a young adult, and then I joined the workforce. Ended up eventually going back to school to get what I thought was going to be secondary Ed with a double major in music at OU. That changed too. I ended up graduating with a BA in English with a minor in German, a minor in music, and teaching English as a second language certificate. It took me 13 years to get my bachelors, but I did it. Upon graduating, I was in a situation where I had to figure out what I was going to do because the plan all along in that portion of my life had been to teach in junior high and high school, but since I didn't end up finishing up the step program, I had to think of something else. That's why I got the TSL certification, and thankfully, I had some great professors and advisors who gave me suggestions about what I should do, since I wasn't going to have that teaching certificate, and how my opportunities might have been not what I thought they were going to be. I was able to get some jobs right out with my bachelors where I was teaching. I think Kiana, actually, I worked for your company when it had a different name. I worked for Tech World Solutions. Isn't that the same company?

That's what our name used to be [OVERLAPPING]. After I joined they got acquired by a larger company.

Yeah, so I was one of those language professionals then. I was one of the English teachers who then mostly taught experts who were working in the automotive industry here in the Metro Detroit area. I would go to their offices or their homes and tutor, pretty much, which was a great way to use the skills I developed as a student employee when I was at OU, because I worked at the OU writing center. Also around that time, the folks that I was learning with from Oakland were advising me that it would be a good idea to go right in to get my Masters right away so that I would have better opportunities for teaching, I did that. I worked a few freelance jobs and worked at Tech World, and also did a graduate assistantship at Oakland in the Linguistics Department while I got my master's degree in Linguistics. That led to a job at OU as an adjunct instructor teaching ESL, and Linguistics, and Education, which was amazing, and I had some colleagues at Oakland who also got me some connections at Macomb Community College, where I started teaching there as well. If you are someone who's going to be going into the adjunct gig, I just want to tell you to be ready to work seven days a week because that's what you're going to be doing. But then also be ready to maybe have to find other work during the summer. Because the first year or two of adjuncting was pretty steady, but then I started developing this pattern of losing all my teaching contracts every summer. Not losing, but not getting them, like others with more seniority or who were full-time faculty would get the teaching positions. Luckily, I eventually got a full-time position at Oakland, and I continued teaching ESL at Oakland in a full-time role until COVID. COVID changed everything, as we all know, and I had to do another career pivot as a result of COVID. Now I am in Learning Center Administration. I was coordinator of the Writing Center at Madonna University for almost two years in between there, while I was still teaching as an adjunct at Oakland and Madonna, and then now being at, I can't even remember where I work anymore, being at Macomb Community College.

It's definitely not where I saw myself. I was thinking that I was going to be going into finding a way to a full-time faculty trap. That might be in my future still. I still want to get a PhD at some point, but I never would have seen myself as being in charge of a multi campus department, I think I have 95 employees now. I have to deal with budgets and interviews and supervising full timers and part timers and serving on committees with other administrators at McComb. I keep wanting to say Oakland. Because this is an Oakland group. Grant writing, also writing lots of rationales, talking with vendors. These are things I never really would have seen in my future, but having the foundation as an English major, it helps with problem solving and being argumentative in a good way. But then also a bridge builder. I see myself as a bridge builder between administration and faculty because I've been on both sides of the table or whatever metaphor you want to use there. I guess, to say it at the end, it would just be to keep your options open and to be adaptable because you never know where life is going to take you.

That is fascinating, Daniel. Thank you so much. I just learned a whole lot that I did not know until this presentation, so that was terrific. Now we are going to Suzanne Honda. Suzanne graduated with creative writing as her major in 2017. She is now program development coordinator for Inside Out literary arts.

Thanks, Annie. Thank you, everybody. For having me. It's so fascinating to hear career paths. I remember being in University, and it was whelming. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now, know that, on the other end of this, we all came out. We all found jobs. The jobs keep happening. We keep building our skills. I won't dwell too much on this, but I actually, when I went to OU, I was a bit of an older student, and I was teaching as a preschool teacher, which I think was super important in that it helped me build a lot of skills that were transferable into my English degree, as well as the role that I have right now, which is really learning how to synthesize big ideas and to small digestible bits, and I think that that's something as I was listening to everyone. I kept thinking, that is what I do all day right now. What I learned from also, like writing all of those essays, reading all of those books, when you have to summarize things and come back and say, what's the big picture? What's the small picture? That might feel at times tedious, but actually, I use it all of the time because it's a communication skill. It's something that I'll back up and tell you that my job right now is creating community partnerships? Inside out literary arts, we're based in Wayne States campus, but we work with Detroit Public Schools, Oak Park School, River Rouge, mostly community schools surrounding Detroit. We teach poetry in those schools. But I also work with our community partners. I teach I've taught everyone from 8-years-old to 88-years-old. A lot of that has been, again, those like how do I synthesize ideas? How do I take texts, and curriculums and make them adaptable for a variety of different people, ages, demographics, personalities, characteristics. But I started at this job as just a contract writer. I was just getting paid one day a week to go into an elementary school and just teach poetry, which felt like a dream to me. Then I continued working my way through the organization. I got a fellowship and so they hired me on for a two year contract as a fellow, which those grant writing skills, again, they come into play, being able to talk about who you are, what you find interesting, being able to know when to use the big buzzwords and when to just be authentically yourself. A lot of that comes with practice. But that I found was my English background, my creative writing background was so helpful and just like, how do I talk about this thing? I have all these ideas, but how do I articulate them? Again, how do I synthesize all of this? I got that fellowship. They paid me to be an artist and a teacher. Then I got hired in full time at the nonprofit, permanent non contractors, permanent staff. Now what I do is I helped spearhead a program in partnership with the Detroit Zoo. We had teens going to the zoo and other locations all around the city, writing nature poetry. I wrote the curriculum for that for an eight week course. That was between the two organizations. I've created a intergenerational curriculum with the Hand Center downtown, which works with older adults. All of these things, they feel to me like the big projects that I loved doing when I was in college, which was like, I get to dream, I get to have these ideas. I get to pull all of these things, all these research pieces. I get to read all these books and these articles and put them all together and mix them around. I loved doing that. I was definitely, like, this is so fun. Bring on the research projects, bring on the big capstone piece, and my Inter nerd is showing. But it really has served me again, like in throughout my career, being able to take many disparate things. I think that's one of the beauties of being an English major, too, is with language being your vehicle, you can take and process things and then turn them around and present them to other people. Whether that's in marketing, whether that is as a teacher, whether you're doing it in a grant, whether you're just writing an email or like, I part of my job also is contracting out other people and writing up contracts, and how do I, build in this language? All of that came from just writing a lot and reading a lot and thinking a lot. I know those can feel sort of, like nebulous skills, but really they're so necessary. I think to bounce, and I apologize. I don't remember who said this, but to bounce off of what somebody else said, like really just talking, building bridges, understanding how to read interactions with people, those things, like participating in class, if you have workshops, if you're in the creative writing department, or if you're in the English department and you're just presenting or what have you having a discussion about a novel that you read or a piece of work that you read, those open conversations are also really important in my work that when you're working on a team, I have a pretty small team of people that I work with. There's like 12 of us. Having those communication skills and interpersonal skills are, like they're so important and so necessary because a lot of English jobs that we don't exist just in a spreadsheet. We have to work with other people. We have to talk with other people, even if we're working on a spreadsheet, we're still working with people in the room. We have different big brain energy. I feel very lucky to have been at OU and to be back here with you all.

That was lovely. We have time for questions to Audra, Brian, Kiana, Daniel, and Suzanne. Does anybody want to ask anything? Remember that that too, asking questions helps to build your skill set. On the other hand, of course, everyone was so articulate, and it may be that you're just absorbing all this information and don't at this point, have questions for it for anyone on that, but if you.

But I was saying just joined the creative writing. I just changed my [inaudible 00:39:23] writing. I'm really curious on what was something you guys are really looking for because most of my experience is not really in the writing field. Much of it is in sales and other things like that. Things that will actually give me, for any of you guys on the call, talking on what it would be. What can make my resume stand out as far as that?

You were cutting in and out a little bit, Caitlin. I'm wondering if you would be willing to write that up in the chat so that we can better address your question. In the meantime, I will read aloud Talya. I don't know if I pronounced that right, if not, my apologies, but Talya said, how do you deal with knowing that you have the skills talked about, but lack the experience the job market is looking for? I can jump in here. I had some really wise advice from a former professor at OU actually, who said, just say yes, until you have to start saying no, by which I mean, I would say, be open and try things that you might think fall outside of your skill set. Like working as a preschool teacher. That was sort of my friend was like, this place down the road is hiring and I really needed a job. But I think that having like, because a lot of these skills are so transferable, there's room for you to build other skills as well, and then you just keep building your toolkit. Every job that you go to, even if you only stay somewhere for six months, you might stay there for six months and learn how to work. Social media really well. You might learn like, how timetables work. You might learn something that's very trade specific, that you never know how the jobs you have are going to influence you, but I really believe that nothing is wasted, even if it's just personal growth of, like, I know that I can't work in this type of environment or I know that I need this sort of flexibility in my life. I would say, don't get discouraged, even though it is discouraging, you know it's impossible, but stay open. You never know what roads where they're going to lead. I just add that you need to apply. You shouldn't not apply because you don't feel that you have recognized skills. A number of I've been doing this event for a long time, and a lot of students said, just I'm sorry, alumni. They said, well, I just thought, Well, I'll try this. Then once if you can get an interview as an English major, you will be persuasive. They will just say, oh, my God, this person knows so many things, and as Kiana said, then they'll just train me. Even though I might be nervous, even though I don't know how to do this specific job. They will suss out that you have a lot of these skills, and they will help you to fit the job. Can I add one more suggestion to that as well? My other thing that I would add is, don't discredit or forget about non-employment experience. About a year or so ago, I hired a recent graduate from OU as a writing tutor who didn't have any writing tutoring experience. Because they had experience in a group editing atmosphere. I think they were involved with the student newspaper. This individual was able to demonstrate in their resume and in the interview that they did have the skills I was looking for, even though they had never worked as a tutor. That's wonderful. Everyone has experiences that they can draw, for example, in retail, et cetera. Those things really do make a difference. Caitlin says she is currently a philosophy major and a creative writing minor. I am looking to transition to being a writer. I want to know what would make my resume stand out as my experience is in sales and retail. Obviously, you are going to have a standout resume once you graduate with a degree. But does anyone want to pick this up? I think one thing I would say, Caitlin, is that if you want to be a writer, it might be a very good idea. I think I heard you say that you were thinking about changing majors. I think it's useful. I think Suzanne's noding, so I'm going to pass this over to Suzanne. I don't want to take up all this space, but I'm also a writer. I feel this particular struggle, and I would say that my advice to you, and I feel like Audra mentioned this before, is, first of all, have a couple of good writing samples. But also, I know OU has a student like a lit Mag. I know that they've got to have a newspaper. I didn't have anything to do with the newspaper when I was there. I don't know what that process looks like. But I would say, If you want writing samples, If you want to build those skills as a writer and have them on your resume, that's one of those things that Daniel is talking about that might fall outside of necessarily, like paid employment. But you could look into getting published, or you could look into and it can be it can start with just like a campus publication, but just having places where your has been recognized and accepted. That will give you that credibility that you're looking for, so that when you put that on your resume, then someone can be like, tell me a little bit about this. I see that you've got these interesting articles you've published. I see that you've you worked on this project, and you know, you were doing it while you were also working, at Cold Stone. Tell me about that. What was that balance like, or why did you go in this direction? What are your interests, here? That would be my advice. Yeah, that is so smart. I will just add that Caitlin, as a creative writing major, for example, we have a class that is devoted to publishing a literary journal, where you become one of the editors. That's something that you can immediately go, I am an editor, at the Oakland Arts Review, which is one of the top reviews, undergraduate literary journals in the country now. That's a great thing. Then you can also for example, in workshops, I ask students to submit to literary journals as part of the class, and that's something that will help you to get experience in exactly what you crave and want to have to demonstrate that you are a writer. You are a writer, but you have to start to sort of put out feelers out in the world and start to build your community, which Suzanne did in our writing classes, right? Which my current students do all the time. They network together. They create outside workshops, and these are all things that are really important. As Suzanne said, literary journals also take interns to be readers. Students from our program have gone on to intern at Zanc, for example, which is a small press in Ann Arbor. There's lots of ways that we can help you to build up your writing portfolio. Again, that's something that we do in our classes, which is part of again, why you might want to check out, maybe doing a double major, for example. I think that's a really smart thing. But at any rate, I'll yield the mic to anyone else who wants to add.

I'll just add that I actually have never gotten a job with a resume. It's always been somebody I've met who's hey, I got this opportunity, that sounds great. I think in those creative roles, there is no real title that you can make as your goal maybe. I know I was surrounded by computer science majors and engineers and they knew from birth that they were going to be these types of people. I had just so many different interests and all of that stuff. I've worked in museums as a presenter. My first job out of college with my art history degree was a marketing, sales associate at a new community for new homes and single family homes. I taught English as a foreign language for a little bit too after I had lived in Germany for a year and came back and I loved my German teacher in Germany. I can be an American ambassador for people who are living here. The art experience came around. Then when I was an executive director, that's a great title I guess, that can be it. But because I had worked at that building company, I am familiar with blueprints. The art experience is building a brand new studio from the ground up and so I understand all these blueprints now and had no idea I could at one point apply that. I worked at Lush, the handmade cosmetic place. When I came into the studio was like okay guys, we need to rotate our paint around, so we're not using all the new ones first. We're using the old ones first, get rid of those the inventory stuff. Now, I guess it took like 14, 15 years from my first degree to collect all of that experience and have it be a thing, I guess, a recognizable thing that other people had when they were younger. I don't, it was a real dicy time, and just, what am I? Who am I? Kind of stuff, but it's out there, so don't give up.

That was a terrific response. Anyone else want to add? You look like you want to say something, Daniel.

No. I'm good. Thank you.

Anybody else? Courtney asked, I know Handshake is a good resource, but does anyone have any other sites that they recommend for this type of field? Both Rachel and I immediately said, internships, because that is I think a great way of building a network here where you live and you have to realize that. Every class you're in is part of your network building experience and I don't mean to do this in a cynical way. I just mean to realize that your fellow classmates are your friends who might be able to go oh, I have something that would be a good fit for you. You have to be open. Everyone has recommended that to be open. You don't want to you don't know where you'll go, as people have said. You just have to do a little surfing. You have to trust yourself. You have to believe that you have a lot of great skills that the workforce needs. You want to trust yourself. You want to talk to people. Whenever somebody says oh, you can email me if you have a question. You do that. That's me being a little bit crazy. I know it works better in person than it does on Zoom, but anyway it's just my trademark. Excited because you do that. Go ahead, Suzanne.

I don't want to interrupt you Annie, just at some point. Go ahead. I just wanted to note that social media is your friend, too. Obviously it's 2024, my organization recently hired on a new position and the way that they announced it is we announced it on our social media. Obviously, we had links to an actual place to submit your resume. We had rounds of interviews and all of those things, but I think particularly in Audra, I don't know if maybe you have found this as well. But if you're interested in working in like an arts organization or a nonprofit, or something like that. A lot of times things are smaller operations, and so the worry that the word is getting out, it may not be getting out in those same big It may be on handshake, it may not be. I think look in the unexpected places too, and be willing. I'm thinking back on my internship. I interned with the Zinc at OU. I also interned at the Baldwin Center in Pontiac, and that was a really cool experience. Those were both really short. But I think don't be afraid of the oh well, it's only, like an eight week internship or a six month internship, because I still am in contact with the editor at the Zinc. In fact, I've gotten other jobs of being Beta readers for different books and stuff like that, just from that, six month virtual internship that happened. Again, just keep an open mind and look all over the place. Don't shut anything down before you're asking the questions and being curious about it.

That's so wonderful. Thank you. I just want to add, social media is a way to find jobs and to link up with people, to network, to become friends, to learn. But it's also just a job to people. English and creative writing majors end up getting because that stuff takes a lot of time and energy to run, and people like me, don't want to do that. I used to for briefly, I ran our creative writing social media site, and I was like I am done with this. I'm addicted enough to social media. I don't want to do it for a living and so people hire people to do that. I can connect Anybody who's interested in that's I do social media. Oh my God, then you can do it. Kiana has given some more responses to yeah and. All this is really great information. The job fairs. You would for sure go to handshake. You would for sure walk yourself right into the career center, sit down with the counselors, talk to them, go to the job fairs, go to Kiana's stall and say, Hi. It's so informative that several people, a lot of our people here tonight have overlapped in different jobs. That tells you that OU has a great reputation and that is something you can build on. Brian.

Just a thought to throw out, and I'm not sure if any of the other individuals on the panel here have experienced informational interviews, which I think can be very powerful. If you as a student who are aware of an organization or a company that really intrigues you, even if there are no jobs posted, there can be a lot to be gained by reaching out to someone who seems to be accessible at that company and asking if there's someone at the organization that you could interview to learn more about what that industry is like, what their career path has been? Because we, as more mature or older adults, we love talking about ourselves and what we've done. As a teacher, I had students reach out to me and ask to interview me for various courses or things they were doing. As a therapist now, I've had students at OU at Wayne State reach out to me, and I have reached out to other professionals to say, can I talk with you about what you're doing? Because I want to learn more about this. I don't think that anybody has ever said no to those requests. You're not doing it to try to get a job, but it can be great, Annie talked about building the network. It can be not only a great way to build a network but to leave a lasting impression so that when a job becomes available, that person that you had maybe sat down with 14 months ago was like God, who is that young lady that came in and asked me all those questions? I think I have her name somewhere in an email, and they might reach out to you. A personal connection is huge in that way. Just a plug for informational interviewing.

I'm so glad you brought that up because I've heard of other folks doing this, and it seems like the coolest thing, and it makes me just want to go out and do it to everyone because it's so interesting. But, yeah, so students, holy crap. People love to talk to you and tell you what they're doing and it makes them feel good, so never feel like it's wrong to reach out and ask. Because the only thing that will happen that's negative is that they might not email you back. That's because people are busy, not because they're dissing you. Just remember that if you have reached out to someone and they haven't gotten back to you, maybe send a very polite follow-up email two weeks later. That way, and then they'll be like, my God, this person really has their ducks in a row. They are not just leaving this thread unpolled. This is all strategy that you need to implement, and that you, again, most important thing of all, trust yourself, reach out, take a moment, think, ask questions. Even if someone brushes you off and says, well, I don't have time for that. But they say something, then just say, well, thank you so much because that insight you gave me is really helpful. Whatever it was, because people like to feel like they did well. This is why all your goofy professors are always like, ask me questions. Anybody else?

One quick last one. I'll add as far as job search places and finding out about job opportunities is going specific into list serves and trade type things. Thinking about the writing centers field, if you go on to the IWCA website, the International Writing Centers organization, they have a job posting. It's not always the most updated, but it's got postings. Then, if you want to keep digging deeper into things like that, find out the niches that are your areas. Find out about those professional organizations and get either a membership with them or list serves. List serves are free, you don't have to pay for a membership. Then, of course, your email gets spammed, but there's going to be job opportunities in those emails.

That is such a great insight. If you would just put that website or the title of the writing center, just because every time you can find, I think Rachel had put up I don't remember what it was called, but it was the Public Society of America, the Detroit chapter. Another thing that you can do, for example, is become a member of the Sigma group, which is the English Honor Society, and they have a big presence throughout the country, and you can become a member of them and then start to network within that database. It's basically all the really happy, geeky, nerdy, English and creative writing people. They go to those things. Some of our students have also gotten published through Sigma Honor Society. They have gotten scholarships, they have won contests, so it's worth the $47, one- time payment membership for life because then you're part of the Sigma society. It's not really a society, it's an honor society through Oakland, but you're then part of this larger community too. It's for sure worth it. All these weird groups that sound off-putting because you don't know what their names mean, just use your research skills and explore what they are because you don't know where it'll take you. That goes back to what everyone is saying about keep an open mind. Use your curiosity and your ability to dive deeper than a surface website to find out what's going on with these different organizations. This is so helpful. Anybody else have any more questions? Please feel free. I'm going to put my email again in the chat. Please feel free to write me, if you have any questions after this event is over, I am always here. Rachel is always here to answer questions, to be a cheerleader, to help you connect to internship opportunities. People that we know who might be doing the same work that you're hoping to do because Rachel and I have been here for a long time. We know people, as these folks have all attested. Reach out to us because all we can do is tell you what we know, but we want to, so never be shy. Don't waver and feel like, they don't want to hear from me. We want to hear from you, we're here for you. Both ways here and listening. Rachel, anything else that you can think of?

No, I think we covered everything.

If you're processing and you come upon thoughts, shoot us emails, and we can continue this conversation later. Thank you, everyone. Thank you panel, you guys were amazing.

Welcome to our Winner 2024 Career Event. Tonight we have a couple of alumni for you to listen to and hear their stories. We have somebody from the Career and Life Design Center, and then we have Jeffrey Granat from Oakland County, who will share some information about transferable skills and networking and things like that for you to think over. We'll start with Yejie. Go ahead.

Hi. Would I be able to share my screen?

You should be able to now.

Awesome. Well, hi everyone. My name is Yejie, and I'm the current life design coach. I work for the College of Arts and Science, and I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I have a lot to say about what we can offer for you in terms of our services, but I'll try to keep it pretty brief and very high level. At the current Life Science Center, there are many ways that you can interact with us. The career coaches that will work with the College of Arts and Science are designated for you. We have coaches for per college. That's something that we can specialize in and help you out along the way. Of course, the career coaching that you get with us is for life, once you enter OU and until you feel like you're ready to spread your wings. Even when you spread your wings, you're welcome to come back just so that we can connect. Like the alumni that are here today, I think it's wonderful that we are still able to connect with all of you. We love what you're doing out there and having you contribute back to us and help the students get some insight into what it's like to be out there. Another thing that I just want to emphasize is that career is a lifelong journey. That you don't have to always know what you want to do right now. Even as a college student, even if you have picked a major in English or creative writing, you don't have to have it all figured out. I think alumni here can also probably speak to that too. I can also speak for you guys too. I chose a major and I'm doing something that's pretty much different from what I thought I would be doing back then. Having that in mind I think will help you ease some of that anxiety. The career studio, I would love for everyone to just come by and get their resume and cover letter reviewed by one of our career ambassadors who will be able to just walk you through that process. Our current hours are from Monday through Friday, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. We can also help you out with Handshake, LinkedIn, headshots. The headshots are free. Not a service that a lot of people know about. You can also request for workshops on these services, and that's the QR Code that you can use to request a workshop. When you're making an appointment with a professional staff like myself, you can meet us virtually or in person. We are actually open all year round. If you are around the area and you want to meet us in the summer, when times are a little bit slow and you have time to work on your resume or you want to practice your interviews, you're always welcome to come back. We offer services from mock interview, job internship search, career exploration, career fair preparation, LinkedIn and networking, and we can also review your personal statements, if you're applying for a grad school. Handshake, I have to talk about because there's just so many things that we do through Handshake. There are not only hundreds of on campus jobs you can look into, but a lot of 20,000 plus internship opportunities. There are 92,000 job postings and 5,000 student and alumni attendees are engaging in recruitment and networking opportunities through Handshake. On Handshake, you'll see that there is a resource section where you'll be able to find a lot of resume guides and cover letter guides. Also resume samples that are like career or English majors for creative major. For any major, you'll be able to find a resume sample you can look into and refer back to. I think the interviewing guide is also really helpful. You can make appointments on Handshake. If you go to the appointments section, you'll be able to find a career coach that you want to meet with. You can also register for events on Handshake. Always looking out for opportunities to network and connect with other people is a great way for you to explore and make the most useful time out of your time at OU. I really highly recommend that you attend an event once a month if that's possible. You can also apply for jobs on Handshake. That's pretty easy to do once you have resume uploaded. There are other resources that we can show you too. Once you come into our career studio, we'll introduce you to Big Interview, where you can scan your resume and get that feedback. We're living in a world where a lot of things are just digitally reviewed. Big Interview will help us really give you the feedback based on the industry trends, give you recommendations based on how your resume will be read by an ATS system, like an automatic tracking system. Making sure that you're utilizing key words that are going to be important for you to apply for a certain job. Then we also do assessments. You can do a focus OU assessment which will really help you assess your academic strengths, career readiness and work and stress, which are all important for you to figure out in order for you to not only choose a major, but also your career. These are just some of the resume tips that I would just leave as a last note. A lot of things you probably know by now, but just make sure that you're editing and getting it reviewed by somebody. Making sure that resumes are kept to 1-2 pages in length. Keep the style and verb tense, all of that consistent. I think it's important that you are making your resume visually appealing, because a lot of times resume is the first impression of you from the employer. You don't have to use any I statements, and always make sure that you are putting the orders, important information first. Prioritize whatever you think is the most important and relevant thing. For example, if you are applying for a job that will require certain skills, you may put the skill section above your experience. Again, the resume guide is really helpful and it's on Handshake. Make sure that you're scanning your resume with Big Interview. The Current Life Design Center is located at North Foundation Hall, Room 103. You can scan this QR code and we can get connected if you are interested in working with us, we also have job opportunities too at our office for career ambassadors. Keep that in mind, and that is about it for me.

Thanks, Yejie. A lot of good information there. Make sure you reach out to the center to take advantage of all those services. Now we're going to hear from Jeff Granat, and he works with Oakland County. You can tell us a little bit about your title and your responsibilities and so forth and then maybe you can give us some information about how our students can seek the skills that they need and opportunities and things like that. Any advice you can offer will be very useful, I'm sure.

Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me. Hi, everyone. My name is Jeffrey Granat. I'm a recruiter at Oakland County Government in Waterford. I've been here for a little over two years. Previously, I worked in workforce development for 15.5 years, doing career service activities, helping people figure out what they want to do. Helping with resumes, cover letters, stuff of that nature. This type of work is very important to me. Anytime I can work with the different schools and help job seekers, students figure out what they want to do and help them move forward, I'm all about it because I know how important it is. I remember when I was in school and I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was a little nervous about asking for help. I try to give back as much as I can to encourage people. Now, there are some people that know what they want to do and then there's other individuals that don't know what they want to do and that's okay, because you may change your mind quite a bit over time. If you know what you want to do, then in your job search, you need to make sure that you're being very targeted in what you're doing and make sure that you show how you add value. When you apply for a job, you need to show in your resume or your application how you're going to add value moving forward and how you've added value in the past. The employer wants to see how you're going to make the money or how you've saved the money or resolve problems. They don't want to see a laundry list of every duty that you've ever done. They want to see how you're going to provide solutions to the problems that they may have. You need to research the employer, research the job posting, and then make sure that you show how you can do what they're asking for. Now in another regard, if you're not sure what you want to do, no worries. Don't put pressure on yourself to figure out what you want to do. There's a lot of resources available. First, you can do research. There's a lot of books, there's a lot of websites out there. There's a lot of people out there that are willing to help. Feel free to ask questions of people, whether it be at colleges, you can take advantage of people like me. There's a website called LinkedIn, which is a great networking site. Start building relationships with people, reach out to people, ask them questions. Now, there will be some people willing to help, and then other people who may be a little bit less willing to help, don't be discouraged. It's not because they don't want to help, some people just don't know how to help so just don't be discouraged. Keep trying and keep pushing forward. Let's see here. It's a long journey, a long process but it is exciting because you have the opportunity to talk to people, learn about what you want to learn about, and figure out what you want to do. There may be some family members or friends that tell you what you may want to do but here's the thing, they're not going to be the people doing that job every day. You're going to be the person doing that job. You have to think about what's important to you, what values that are important to you, and what you want in a job/career. It may be that you want something temporary for a couple years to get your feet wet and then move into something else and that's okay too. Now, currently, I work at Oakland County Government. I've worked in government. I've been here for two years, excuse me for one second. My son is being noisy. I'm so sorry. Working in government, currently at Oakland County, we've got over 20 different departments. I talk to people about the different departments. I talk to them about the different job opportunities, and I help people learn about whether that opportunity is for them. A big part of my role is educating people and then helping them decide whether the role is for them. I'm not going to sell somebody on a role that's not their cup of tea, because if they end up leaving, that's not a win win for anybody. It's in my best interest to help educate people on a career that they want or a job that they want, and help them make the best decision for themselves. Any questions?

Jeffrey, thank you so much. That was terrific. If anyone does have questions right now, please shoot them out right away. Otherwise, we'll move on to our alumni and we'll save all the questions for alumni afterward. Anybody have a question for Jeffrey Granat?

I have. I'm actually a resident of Waterford and I recently applied to a couple different jobs to work within the Waterford Government Utility billing clerk just for an example, just to get myself into that role. For creatives, is there something within the Oakland County job opportunities that would relate to someone who is good with their words or good with writing?

Absolutely. Yes, you know what? I got so excited what I was talking about that I forgot to mention that. Currently, right now, we add new opportunities each week but we've got a communications and marketing assistant position. This is an entry level-ish type position where you work on different marketing and communication type activities. We have a variety of job opportunities in these different departments. We add new opportunities regularly. We do have a department of public communications that post job opportunities regularly. They've got close to 20 people in their department and they've got digital positions that are available. Sometimes they've got some of the more communication opportunities available and we recently just posted more of a management type opportunity for a creative operations officer position. It just varies from time to time. At Oakland County, we got close to 5,000 employees, so a lot of the roles are more of specialist type roles. But what I would tell somebody is you should branch out and leave your options open. You don't want to become too much of a specialist because as time goes on, and if some areas become obsolete, you don't want to have cornered yourself so that you don't have options for yourself. Being a strong communicator will never go obsolete. Being strong digitally will never become obsolete. It's just certain technologies might go out of style. But as long as you're keeping up on the different technologies that are available, your skills will always be needed. Just like somebody with numbers. Guess what? You're never going out of style because we're always going to need somebody to handle money. That's never going away.

Jeffrey, I just want to add, because I think that your point about the communication and marketing assistant role is a terrific one. I will also say that I've had several creative writers and English majors land development assistant roles. So those are the words that you want to zero in on because those are writing related, analysis related, they need communication skills both oral and written. If there are any other key words, Jeffrey, that would be great for students to know.

Public relations journalism, stuff like that. A good place to get your feet wet, to be frank with you, isn't a nonprofit organization because they have people wear many hats. You can get a good start there sometimes as an intern, and then you can get hired on that gets your feet wet and you can develop and then later on you can move to a different organization, or you can start off in the corporate world. But I feel a great place to develop is in a nonprofit organization because you have to do more with less. It helps you really appreciate and really get creative with your skills and abilities.

Have you ever run into anyone who's volunteered with 826 Michigan, for example, since we're talking about nonprofits.

We have had students volunteer with them successfully in the past. They are a great organization. But I think Jeffrey's point is exactly right, that these nonprofits are a terrific way of getting a very broad span of skills. Sorry, Jeffrey, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No problem. Because you can do more. There are certain areas that you do an internship or a job and you just get, I wouldn't even say stuck, but you have to work in a certain role and that's all you do. But for somebody that wants to do a little bit of everything, nonprofit gives you that exposure. They may even let you stretch beyond what the role may be. As challenging as that may be, that helps get you to the next step in all instances. But I was working in that nonprofit and I got a lot more opportunities than I may have gotten otherwise, they're there for the taking.

That's a great point. Anybody else have questions? Well, thank you so much, Jeffrey. You are just so generous and so helpful. I know the students, especially Vanessa, really appreciated that. I don't know if you mind putting your email in the chat.

Absolutely, no problem.

Thank you. That way, Vanessa, if you do want to do some networking, reach out to Jeffrey after the event. That will probably help you in your job search. Thank you again. Let's go to our alumni. I want to start off with Chanel Hermiz. Chanel is a content project coordinator at Pro Quest. That's correct, Chanel?

No. Technical writer.

Technical writer. Even better because technical writing is actually one of the jobs that I tell people to go look for. Please, go ahead.

I'm currently a legal technical writer for a company called Credit Acceptance. They're based in Michigan, but I work fully remote, which is my preference. I really enjoy remote work. I'd say don't be scared of it. I was a little nervous about it when I graduated because I graduated in 2020. It was when like everything shut down and I didn't really know what to do, but I've only had remote jobs since I graduated and I really liked it. That's something you can definitely look out for and even bring up in interviews as if you want a hybrid schedule, just something to look out for. It's pretty cool. didn't really know what tech writing was that much when I graduated from OU, I have a double major in English and Communications, but I wasn't too familiar with it. I honestly took a random job, it didn't really involve much writing. I was helping people set up websites, which is really unusual for me. But I was able to talk to my manager at the time and tell them that I liked writing. I was put on a couple of special projects where I could do copywriting for new clients and, that was really cool and it wasn't immediately in my job description. But I was able to just talk through it and say like, if there are any opportunities to write, let me know. I'm glad I did that, because that experience actually helped me get my next job, which was at Flagstar Bank as a business procedure writer and that was my entryway into technical writing. There's a whole lot you can do with tech writing. There's policy writing and procedures. Sometimes you can even create jobs for specific processes. You can even write car manuals and stuff if you wanted to do that. Not the most exciting, but it's pretty cool to be able to write it all unlike the corporate sphere. I do legal technical writing. I'm reading a lot of regulations and such and making sure that we're compliant. It's not exhilarating, but it's pretty cool. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to find a corporate job or one with any flexibility in which I could write. They are definitely out there. I'd also say apply for jobs that you think you're unqualified for. My current job wanted eight years of legal experience and eight years of decorating experience. I had a year solid of tech writing experience in a professional environment. Aim high, we can get there. It does help to have a writing portfolio even if it doesn't have any type of tech writing in it or proposal writing or whatever you're looking into just to show that you can write. Because that's obviously a skill that you can apply. I'm sure you know, if you're in these programs, I don't know.

That is terrific, Chanel. Thank you so much, and my apologies for having misread.

It's fine.

But I love the fact that you talked your way into this job. Basically they want to hear that you have the skill to talk and to communicate. As soon as they hear you guys in action, things that you practice all the time in your English classes, they are going, this person, because this person knows how to communicate. Thank you again. I just wanted to footnote one thing, Chanel, which is that for some of the car companies, if you are writing these manuals, you also can write screenplays because they film the manuals now. There's a lot of things. They've gone paperless and gone to video, and so that's a reason to go, I have a screenwriting class and then they will see that as job experience. Just as an FYI Chanel, maybe you want to come back and take a screenwriting class.

Maybe you might see me.

I would love that. Next we're going to Katy, who is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Writer and Walsh, and Katy was very kind. You will explain the two different versions of your resumes because I love that you did that because that is so cool. Folks need to realize that they can spin the work that they've done in a number of different ways, so go ahead, take it away.

I submitted the two different resumes. Anytime you're making a resume, it's good to customize it for the job that you're applying for. This is for two reasons. One, to prioritize for the job, and two, if it's being run through a computer, which is very likely it's going to look for a lot of the keywords that were in the job description. That way you can prioritize accordingly. Like if this one wants communication skills, you can make sure to list that first. For my more fun one, it was an application to discord a digital communications platform. It's mostly for gaming, but people use it for a lot of other group talks nowadays and voice chat and stuff. They're more of like a nerdy start-up the fun culture. I took a more fun angle with the resume to get their attention. I didn't hear much feedback from that, but it wasn't important. The other one I did a bit more professional, so it's like much more straightforward. I was applying to a law firm at the time for the role that I'm in now, so I still made sure to include like a little bit of color because like that's just the person I am. I'm a creative sort. I was applying for a creative position, but then I still kept everything very by the book. I like to prioritize my skills because there's just a lot of skills that you pick up through different hobbies, different careers. Whatever jobs that you've been in, you've probably accumulated something that's going to be useful. I think one of the biggest things I would say is all the skills that you've picked up doing hobbies are just as relevant as anything you've done in the career space. I do a lot of gaming for fun, so I'll run D and D campaigns. I'll organize online groups to play. That's given me a lot of experience that I can say on my resume of I'm good at planning events. I'm good at organizing groups. I'm good at remote communication. Like in reality, what I'm doing is messaging my friend in Washington asking if he wants to play games, and coordinating with a bunch of other people. But that's still relevant. Like if and if I go on social media and I promote this tournament that I'm running or something, that's event planning, that's marketing, and all of that ends up being relevant. In regards to networking, literally network with everybody. That's not just going to a place and handing out a business card. That's you meet somebody at a zoom call like this. You meet somebody at a critique group at the library. You meet somebody doing video games online that you happen to share professional stuff with. Like that friend in Washington, I ended up being a professional reference for him because he did our website for my online gaming community. I was able to be like, this is my experience working with this person. He could be like, oh yeah, this is the person who basically did the marketing for our volunteer project, which again, is just a gaming community online. But the way that we handled it, you could still pull professional skills out of that as to how it can be applied in a different environment. When I graduated, I started at a publishing company for magazines. They're really boring magazines, They're business to business. It was like the Roofing Contractor magazine that goes out to roofers in the area and talks about roofing industry things and roofing equipment and stuff like that. But what I did was I was managing their website. I was posting their content online. I was tweaking some of the print stuff to be more relevant to an online audience. That was very Englishy skills of knowing the audience that you're applying your content to doing a little bit of editing, shortening stuff up. Because like if it's for the web, it's got to be a little snappier than if it's a magazine imprint. I stayed there for a while but every time there was an opportunity for something interesting, much like Chanel is doing where I was like,I like doing graphics, were an opportunity to do graphics. Then I started getting a few projects that were relevant to that and that was really cool. Then we had our SEO person leave. SEO is search engine optimization. It's anytime you're rephrasing something so that way it can be picked up by Google a little bit better. Our SEO person left. I was like I find this interesting and as an English major, I'm really good at rephrasing things and figuring out alternate ways of saying stuff, pulling out what somebody is looking for. When you see like search queries or something, you're like what's this person actually looking for? How can I add that into a headline for this article so that they'll find it when they search that. SEO is where I settled. That was not something that I had ever conceived of when I was in college because we weren't really gaming Google that much at the time, but now it's like a huge thing and I feel like my ability to work with words and play around with them and identify the key areas and the headlines and stuff like that was really relevant to both my degree and then what became my career. Eventually I moved on. Now I'm at a law firm. I do a much more like many hats roll, like what Jeffrey was talking about earlier because it's a small firm, so there's less than 20 people there, they're very specialized. What my firm does is they only take medical malpractice cases involving birth injury, which also sounds very complicated. Basically, if something happens at birth and a child gets basically permanent brain injury, we advocate for those children and we make sure they get lifetime care. But because of that very niche thing, our website has really focused content. My like research skills from college were super relevant because I was going through academic articles and then we produced content. I was writing for that as well. Another use of the English degree and also a huge benefit from working at the writing center. I was familiar with all of the medical research and stuff from helping with nursing papers, being familiar with that language. Then also being able to take that academic language and make it into a more processable language for the random person who's googling it to in the morning. Then some of the other stuff that I do at that job is I work with a couple co workers, we do social media content. We've been interviewing our staff to figure out like what's a little snippet we can put on TikTok to get to know us? What's something we can put on YouTube that would be a little bit longer? Like learning those social media platforms was another thing that I did for fun, but then later became relevant to my job. Literally, anything you're doing for fun, even if it's sprawling on TikTok, can be applied to a job situation. My current job is wearing many hats. I really enjoy the lots of different creative outlets there because we get to conceptualize a lot of different projects, we have to figure out a lot of ways to try and reach our intended audience. Especially for my firm, because it's so niche. We got to figure out like, who are we looking for? We're looking for young parents who have gone through this thing that is very dramatic and involving medical stuff. How can we reach them? How can we reach them in a sympathetic way? Being able to frame that language and also provide information has been absolutely key with my English degree of knowing how to both read information and then reprocess it, spit it out in a way that is both persuasive and empathetic. All of those rhetorical things that you want to hear in any promotional content. That was my career journey.

That was so cool. I just loved hearing about how you two were able to do creative thinking, pulling in your hobbies as well as your experiences in the job. Then just jumping on that SEO, I didn't even know that that was a job search engine.

It's so interesting because SEO people end up coming from tons of different areas. You get a lot of like interdisciplinary stuff. Like you'll get somebody who was in history who fell into it. Or you'll get somebody who was like super scientific programming sort that fell into it. Then it just overlaps a lot of areas. It's really interesting.

This is the thing to emphasize again and again with the English and Creative Writing degree is that it is so adaptable, it is so flexible. You can go into so many different things. I mean, you mentioned having worked at the writing center and you helped nursing students with their papers, and that exposed you to that language, and so you were able to adapt to medical writing? I did the same thing after college. I had just a BA and I ended up being the editor for a urologist. This guy had a lot of med students who had to publish. It's the same thing once you're out there and you're just going. You make these connections as you said, so Katy, I'm going to stop talking now so that we can go to Adam. Adam is the Global Commercial Council at Drive Automotive, and so please take it away.

Sure. Thanks. First of all, thanks to Professor Gilson for setting this up. I think this is great for students. Thanks for all the students for being here and the students who are listening to this thing. I appreciate it. The quick bio is yeah, the lead counsel for a big automotive division. I've been an elected official. I was a partner at one of the big law firms in Michigan. But the bio, that's all the boring stuff and we can get to that. I'll tell you the most important things. One of the things I learned at OU is don't, bury the headline. The most important thing that I can tell you is that in all my jobs I've been out of OU for a while. I think I'm the old guy on this panel. But in every single day, in every single one of my jobs, I am using the skills that I picked up at Oakland University that is not an overstatement. That is not a joke. I can put to really specific things. First off, I was a double major, English and political science English particularly. It doesn't matter whether I am talking to the Division president, whether I was talking to a judge, whether I was talking to a jury, whether I was talking to constituents trying to get their vote, whether I was talking to fellow law firm partners. In all of those circumstances, every single day, you're crafting a narrative. A non fiction narrative. But you're telling a story with the facts that exist in a way that is compelling, that convinces people to join your cause, that they want to join that team, that they want to collaborate, that they can see your point of view, even if they disagree with it every single day, and that's the skills that you pick up in an English major, by far every single day, particularly writing. There's another part of OU that really helped me and so I'm a student body president at the time when I was 20 years old, and that was a phenomenal experience. At 20, you get, you know, I think we had a budget of like a couple million bucks. You've got a staff I think we charged like we paid people eight bucks an hour. We had like a staff of eight students. But you've got to listen to your constituents. You were elected. What are their concerns? What are their worries? How are you going to address them? You've got a lot of [inaudible 00:37:49]. They gave us a lot of room to go and develop programs and services that we're going to benefit students. You've got to go execute that, and you've got to rally a bunch of different people from a bunch of different backgrounds, all to a common cause every single day. That is exactly what I'm doing in all of my roles. Please don't miss here. That doesn't mean you have to run for student body president this spring. I'd love it if you did that. That's great. I can't say enough good things about it. OU has a ridiculous number of student organizations. It did when I was there. It still does. There are so many opportunities to try new things and to spread your wings and to experiment and to take chances in an environment that's low risk. When I was student vice president, like I made mistakes. I made mistakes all the time. But the consequences weren't that bad at the end of the day. Being the lead attorney for a $3 billion international global division, the consequences are a little worse today. You got this environment to try different things in a really, really safe way. I can't advocate that enough. I was just on campus actually a couple of weeks ago for an event, and I saw all the signs in the Oakland Center for all the things that are happening around campus, and I was jealous of you guys. I really was to be able to have and be able to try so many different things all in one place. I would say, don't pass that up, because this is your chance to find out what makes you to tick, what gets you excited to get up at 6:30 in the morning or whatever it is? What gets you really fired up, and what are your passions? Because that is going to be your compass all through your life, and no matter what you do, I don't care what your job is. I don't care what your background is. Your trajectory is not going to be a straight line. That is not how this works. There are going to be twists and turns and meandering and you want to be able to predict it. I certainly couldn't, and that's true of all of us. But you use that compass of what your passions are. I didn't know exactly what I want to do. When I was at OU, I thought I'd like politics because I love the student government thing. But I wasn't sure, and I had friends who were really, really young who had run for the State House and won the State Senate, but once you're turned out, they hadn't had a job yet, and so it was really them. I really wanted to go build some more skills just in case I didn't like politics. I went to law school. I love law school. Went to the University of Michigan. It was a great experience. Still want to try politics. But also again, I wanted that substantive background in practicing law just in case it didn't work out. Always have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D and a plan E. That's what I did. I joined one of the big firms in downtown Honigman. That's where I first got introduced to automotive. I loved it, but I still have this in the back of my head, I still want to try politics. But again, I wanted to do it in sort of a risk free way. I joined and ran for City Council in Rochester Hills. I absolutely love it. Great, great experience, and it was a microcosm of what government is. You really feel like you're helping the community. There's not a lot of games that you hear about when you turn on, you pick your local news station. I mean, you're talking to your constituents, you're hearing their needs. You want to help them out and try to do some good, and then I was appointed to a vacancy on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. What the heck is a board of Commissioners? Think it this way. It's the legislative body for Oakland County. It's like the Congress of the county, essentially, is what that is. There were 21 county commissioners at the time. That was a very different experience. Again I'm really glad that I tried all these seven things because for the very first time in my life it was partisan. You got to put an R or a D next to your name. I have never had that before. Not city council, certainly not at OU. You're just a person trying to do some good, and it begins and ends there. Once you introduce partisanship into play, it really, really changes that dynamic in a way. I mean, listen, I was a Pol Sci major, but I didn't appreciate it until I did it, and this is not a speech saying that politics is bad and terrible. I have a lot of respect for nearly every single politician you can name, maybe with a few exceptions, but the vast majority of people I have ever met are really, really trying to do the right thing on both sides of the aisle. But it does. You've got to be wired a certain way, and I don't think I was wired that way to continue down that path and because you had a lot of retired State legislators and Board of Commissioners who were turn limited out. It was a microcosm of Lansing and a little bit of Congress. The same dynamic on a really tiny scale, and so I decided I didn't want to go through politics. But one of the things I did love doing was I was acting as an outside general counsel for automotive suppliers. I was doing it at Net private practice was like, God, this is really cool. Because I'm not just a lawyer who goes to court, who waits to get a phone call from a client, who says there's some fire. You got to put it out when I'm a business person in there as a general counsel, I'm not just putting out fires. I'm preventing fires to begin with. I'm building a better house so that the house isn't going to burn down when there is a fire some day, and that strategy, that partnership, and that's what I realize, that's what I really loved about student government. Actually it wasn't politics at all. It was definitely not politics. It was this idea of getting a team together of diverse backgrounds and railing around a common cause and accomplishing an objective. That's what I loved. That's really what made me tick. I didn't figure out until I was 40 years old though. That goes back to my point, these things meander. A good friend told me about a position at an automotive company, joined at 40. That was my mid life crisis. It is by far one of the best things that I have ever done were acquired by private equity, actually one of the largest private equity funds. A little over a year ago. It's fascinating because I work all over the world. On my team I've got an attorney in Shanghai, in Germany, and Mexico City, and Brazil. You want to talk about diverse backgrounds. Every single one of those countries have different assumptions, different cultures they bring to the table, and it's cool because I'm not a Chinese lawyer or a German lawyer, or Mexican. I've got to go in and learn enough to be dangerous. You know what? I don't know anything about Argentina law, but we're just sued there. I got to figure this out today and that is the fountain of youth. I mean, I feel some days out every day, but some days I feel like I'm 20 years younger because every single day I'm learning something new about the world that I have never learned before. We have a business in Moscow, and so trying to figure out what do you do? You've got to simultaneously comply with EU, US and Russian law all at the same time. It's fascinating. You hire these local attorneys and you learn and that has been one of the greatest gifts I've got. But I never could have predicted this when I was at OU that man, those skills I use every single day. I talked a lot. I'm going to pause and let other people speak, but I really appreciate the time.

Oh my God, Adam, that was really exciting and so cool. Because what you're emphasizing is that deep thematic connection in every English and creative writing class, which is cooperation and empathy. Because that you have to utilize those skills to make the connections, to bring people aboard, and to work with people with diverse backgrounds. That was just really rousing, and by the way, I loved following your career because I am a Rochester Hills citizen. I was just so ecstatic when you became a council member here. That was really fun for me, but, you know, life goes on, so. I would like to now turn to who did I have next? Kyle Minton. Kyle is the recruiting manager for the Tech Group. I think that's right.

Yeah, that is correct. Tech group also one of Adam's constituents so hi, Adam.

Tech Group was a former client too, back in the day. I think Larry there.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You do you know that's funny.

Right.

It's a small world, networking guys, It's so important. Yeah. I graduated OU in 2012. My single mom was a teacher, so I wasn't really exposed to a lot of jobs and I was I'm right or I'm going to be a teacher, that's why I got the English degree. I was going to be an English teacher, secondary education. One of the really killer things about OU that not a lot of other universities do, is they give you undergraduate classroom experience in their secondary education program and I realized teaching wasn't for me which was a great lesson. I feel like some people don't learn that lesson early enough so I just was forget it, I'm just going to go just get an English degree and see what I can do and I was so terrified, which is why I love to do events like this because it's like I'm just hearing all these horror stories about how English majors can't get jobs and it's a useless degree. I was really worried. I went to career services and I went to job fairs and I always love the story. I went to the OU job fair with the ENG name tag for English, and then all these employers saw as an engineer, so they were all wanted to talk to me and I was, [LAUGHTER] I'm a word engineer, not quite mechanical. It was great, but I was able to get my resume a lot of places, and luckily at the time, and I really do advocate this Quicken Loans was just indiscriminately giving jobs to new graduates and I figured I didn't have anything to lose and I just needed to get some experience out my resume so they were English here you go, here's a job in talent acquisition. So I worked in talent acquisition and just was lucky enough to really fall in love with it and through talent acquisition I worked at Quicken for a little bit, now, I'm at Tech Group. We service automotive suppliers as well as civil architecture engineering firms, and biomedical fields and lots of different. When you work in recruiting, you get exposed to so many different jobs. I learned about so many different jobs that I had no idea existed when I was in college. You'll hear a lot of themes on this call. I think you've heard every single person from Chanel to Adam talk about just researching different jobs and getting experience. I can't stress that enough how important that is. Also there's this really cool feature thing that you can always ask people to do called just an informational interview where you interview people that look like they're in jobs that you think are really cool or that you'd be really interested in. You interview them, talk about how they got their job, ask them, you can approach them on LinkedIn, you can shoot them a message, connect to people. I think we said on the onset of this call, a lot of people really like to help new graduates because everybody was in that seat at some point and everybody remembers how just terrifying it is and not necessarily knowing what you want to do especially in the liberal arts world, especially in English and creative writing so I'd be happy, I'm sure anybody who does a call like this would probably be happy to do an informational interview with you, talk to you about their job, talk to you about their career. It's also just a great way to network, so can't stress that enough. Also I think Chanel mentioned having a portfolio. I definitely second that. I think when I was looking for jobs and I was in panic mode, I missed out on opportunities in journalism and tech writing because as soon as the shoot me your writing portfolio question came up, I was I don't have one of those and you have this great opportunity, in college you have so much time, it probably doesn't feel like you do, but you do actually have a lot of time to generate that portfolio and anything works. If you have a college paper that you're really particularly proud of, if you wrote an opinion piece for the Oakland Post, if you helped your friend set up a website and you did copy or anything like that, throw that all on some website. You could do a free wick site, you can do all different portfolio sites or portfolio templates and I'd highly recommend having something just so that question doesn't stop you in your job search there. I think leverage, obviously everybody thinks of English majors as good writers and so that opens up a lot of doors and things like tech writing or social media is really popping off for English degrees. Everybody needs people to do content writing, content management, things like that, but also English majors, I think are undervalued as really good readers. I know at my company, I rose through the ranks simply because I could take a really boring resume and read it. [LAUGHTER] A lot of times people get really fed up reading really technical documents, things that don't make a whole lot of sense to them right away and they're really bad at dealing with boredom when it comes to reading things so a lot of people brought things to my attention and it's been really good for my career in that sense. There's lots of jobs in the business analytics world. Even in the data world, I think a lot of times people discount English majors as not numbers people, but we are all very good at getting into the minutia of anything, be it letters, be a numbers, whatever so there are lots of different avenues you could go there, and again, network informational interviews and just researching different types of jobs even if you're just going to a job board and typing jobs near me and just reading the different ones. I also can get with Annie and some of the other folks on this call because I also have a lot of exposure to different job boards and I can send a list of very specific job boards. A job board for just remote work, a job board for just creative work or writing work. Then the only other thing I might suggest is if you're really desperate for experience, there is work to be had in gig work and writing content and there are also boards and websites for that as well where you can help people write resumes or you can help people write copy because they just farm these jobs out. That stuff can all go onto a portfolio, that stuff can all go onto a resume. That's just another option there for you.

Thank you so much, Kyle. That was terrific and talent acquisition. I didn't even know that's what recruiting is called now and [LAUGHTER] also the informational interview, I hope everyone really takes that advice to heart because people are generous. If they don't want to help you, they'll just not answer your email. So it's no big loss then. So this is how you network, this is how you reach out. I love your advice about the portfolio too because that is snippets from your various writing classes and that can be a huge range of different subjects. It doesn't have to just be English papers, it's all stuff, but I love that you can just reach out via LinkedIn, terrific information. Then before we go to the Q&A, I want to go to Aaron Hall, he works in the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office as an attorney and so I'm going to just let you give us the specifics, Aaron.

Well, thank you Professor Gilson. This is a lot of fun. Really appreciate the opportunity and hope a lot of the students that watch this in future learn some things about it. One of the things that I notice is it seems a lot of people are connected to law in this group. I didn't necessarily know I wanted to be a lawyer when I was an English major. I think everybody thinks maybe I'll just get a PhD and be like a wonderful professor, but then you realize there are some serious books. But I think the benefit of English, and so many of you touched on this, is that it's in the details you can teach yourself so many different things. Whenever you go into law school, after that, if that's what you choose to do or if you choose to go into business. Just like Kyle was saying, he became a technical guy with some number of stuff. I've kind of developed specialties in different areas that my undergrad I wouldn't have thought that that would prepare me for it, except that was the exact preparation that I needed. Because whenever you're reading some text from 3 or 400 years ago, it's essentially a different language. Whenever you're learning, whether I'm the chief of the probate at the prosecutor's office. Before I start at the prosecutor's office, I worked as a business attorney at the Macomb County Circuit Court. I was a research attorney. Primarily I focused on the business court. I shifted from business law with complex virtual litigation and contracts and litigation disputes all the way to criminal law. English has been a major part of that throughout the entire thing because one thing about it whatever you do in your career, you're telling a story and you have a human element to it. No one understands the human element especially if you studied any type of literature, you get that just emotional human connection. Right now, I deal with a lot of victims and cases. You're meeting with people and creates empathy. It creates the way to truly connect with other individuals. The other thing that's great about law, and especially I know we've got a lot of Oakland County folks here, and I'm glad to represent the Macomb County Coalition. I know there's a lot of Macomb County folks that go to OU, it's wonderful school, and I think we have some satellite spots where people are able to go as well. But the thing is that you got to do internships. If you're wanting to go into the government, all those internships, unfortunately, at least all the ones I did, they're unpaid. You might have to work at Starbucks like I did and then you realize, you know what, once you're a Barista, it's not that different from being a prosecutor. You're just here just dealing with people's demands on specific cases, and you're able to make it the right way and have a good resolution. I think that also I saw a lot of people worked at the Writing Center. I worked at the Writing Center. It helped me gain confidence in not being afraid of the written word. I think so many people in today's age are just scared because they see a document or a scary email. The benefit that English majors have is that they can get served a serious email or paper, or a legal document or something, and they're like, oh, that's no big deal. I think that confidence that you develop with the written word, it is so valuable whatever career you search out. I do believe in cold calling people. I've had a couple of people. We have a robust internship program at Macomb County Prosecutor's Office, and we have it for undergrads and law students. If anybody is interested, I have a good connection with the internship coordinator. I've gotten a lot of people internships and some of the interns I've written letters of recommendation for after the fact, even when I felt like I didn't have time. I've written letters and they've gone on to get jobs. The people that hired those individuals called me and said we hired so and so because of your letter. I care about helping the the next generation but everybody does. I think you guys, the benefit is like you just got to reach out. Be willing to cold call people. My email is in there. It's [email protected]. Email me if you want to get an internship, it will be unpaid. Usually sometimes you can get school credit. I know some law schools they also do externship credit or internship credit but externships, I think you pay for. But yeah, you can get a lot of credit, valuable experience if you're in I see internship credit through the English department in the chat. We have a great opportunity for every person that wants to get involved. Realistically I don't know. I think being in the prosecutor's office it's a very fulfilling role. I've done a lot of different legal jobs, and I've been around a lot of different attorneys, and it sounds like Adam has found a really cool and fulfilling career throughout his journey. But at the end of the day as a prosecutor, there's a reason they make so many TV shows based on prosecutors because there's something about you're in the action and it's exhilarating. When I was a research attorney, my main client was the judge, basically. I would talk with the judge and I would talk with some of the other research attorneys, and we would come up with an opinion. The thing is, is that if you're a social individual, that is not the best job for you. If you want to be essentially a librarian, it's a great job for you. The other thing I'd say is that, don't think that your first job is your only job, especially nowadays. You can transition in so many different ways in areas. When I started as a research attorney, I never thought about being a prosecutor. I thought I was going to transition to a business firm, but then as a research attorney, I'd watched some of these trials. I'm like, you know what, I think that would be a fun thing to do, and maybe I could see myself in there. Because of my writing experience at the research department, I was able to transition into the appellate department at the prosecutor's office and then from the appellate department I've been able to transition to a lot of different spots. Now, I'm the chief of the probate unit, a deputy chief of specially treatment courts. I've been in forfeiture units, appeals, district courts, so many different units that it all opened up because of my English degree. There are so many opportunities that you have, I I can't emphasize enough that it is such a benefit to have an English degree, and I'm grateful. It also helps because when you're busy working, you can still find time to speed breath through a good novel because you've read so many in your career. I'm happy to take any questions. I'm sorry on the last one. I think if somebody is waiting on some food, I'm trying to be as quick as possible.

Oh, that was wonderful, Aaron. Thank you so much and it's just so crazy like I did not plan or know that there were all these connections between all y'all. So anybody have questions or anybody want to add anything, having heard this just terrific presentation. Oh my goodness.

I have two questions actually. The first one is, does anyone know if the Writing Center is hiring?

For next year? Yes, they are for next year.

I'm applying.

Like a class in order to apply, but I'm pretty sure they're always hiring.

I'm technically also an alumni. I am one of the creative writers that are saying there's nothing to do with my degree. Maybe I should look into the Writing Center, if it's possible. No, don't know.

I definitely should. I didn't have to take a class to work there, Katy.

Maybe it's changed. I did it a decade ago.

Yeah. You should definitely like every year because people graduate. It's awesome there.

They are hiring now for next fall.

Okay. I'll be looking into that. My second question it's like a half of a question. We mentioned technical writing, car technical writing, communication, marketing development assistant, public relations, content editor, copywriting, editing publication. Am I missing anything?

I'm going to smuggle in project management, I know a couple of people with English, two degrees in project management roles.

Several people at my firm have English degrees and work in also administrative stuff. A bit more of like that R thing, but our office manager had an English degree and a focus on Shakespearean stuff, weirdly.

That's all I get.

Well, I would just add the digital marketing PR also the communications and marketing assistant, and then also the search engine optimizing, which I had to write down because I'd never heard of. You guys are the ones who are in that world now. Anybody else have any ideas off the top of their heads?

I do know several people who do freelance content writing for like a full time position, so you can juggle a couple different ones, especially if you're working remote. I do a hybrid one actually, because I started remote because I started this job in 2020, which was very weird, so no handshakes at the interview. That was a little odd. My first day they sent me home at lunch, they were like, here's your computer, go. But then now I come into the office once a week. That works well for me because then I still get to interact with the people that I work with. But then I can also have the flexibility of working from home and having like my own more comfortable set up and stuff.

Katy, could you give us an example of the content that you write?

We do a lot of medical content that are related to the things that we do. It'll be, here's a page on infant seizures. It'll describe what symptoms you might see, stuff like that, and then also how it might relate to medical malpractice because that's how it comes back to our firm. But then we also branch out and do stuff just informational disability, advocacy stuff, anything that could be potentially related, potentially like equipment that a child with cerebral palsy might need. Just a lot of informational content that spans the whole range of what anything could possibly be related and bring somebody back to our firm for what they need.

Nice. Vanessa, if you want to talk about this further. I was attending a reading that we hosted on campus last week, which was Rachel Gross, who is a science writer for Smithsonian, The New York Times, and a number of other journals. She was an English major. She did not do an advanced degree, but she took certain classes to familiarize herself with medical language. She's now full time a science writer. This is the crazy adaptive ability that our people have. Those are just a few ideas. But please, if you'd like to talk further, just make an appointment and we can chat about different possibilities.

Just a quick aside regarding creative writing and writing as your job. Sometimes if you are doing nothing but writing as your job, if you intend to do creative writing outside of work, it can burn you out really hardcore. Having a job that's a bit more multifaceted and might not be specifically on the writing process and generating content is sometimes better for your creative writing outside of work.

I would second that. I have a job that has nothing to do with writing. What is nice though is that I just put in like a hard 40 hours and then I have a lot of time, resources and things to put into more creative outlets. I think that's a really good point Katy.

Nice. Any other questions?

I don't know about questions, but I met somebody the other day that was a financial planner. I'm like, well, what did you study in your undergrad? They said I was an English major. I'm like what? But they just took some series license classes afterwards and they passed a bunch of exams. They said that English helped them because they're people. You can teach yourself anything and you have the confidence. I feel like the arts get bashed on all the time. You see it in all these articles, worthless degrees and all that. But realistically, you can do what you want because you have the ability to read all this complex stuff. Everything's a puzzle. Whether it's old school writing style, or a language of finance, or a language of medical malpractice, a language recruiting, whatever, it is. It's a puzzle and you can figure it out. Don't be ashamed of your English degree. Really, I think you should wear it proud.

I totally agree with that. Good. Anybody else have any other comments, questions?

I'm going to throw in. Don't get discouraged when you're applying for jobs after graduation because I applied to so many jobs and so many I never got callbacks for, and it's really competitive out there. But just keep applying and you'll get in somewhere. Once you're in, then you can start bouncing around. I don't know how employers feel about job hopping, but honestly, I did it out of college. Really, that's good with me. I'd recommend it. If you're right out of college and you just need to take a job, because you just need a job. Then you can move around. You're not stuck anywhere, especially with an English degree because it is so versatile. Then internships too. It's not on my resume. But I did do a communication marketing internship in college. That really helps me to get a job after college. I did the creative arts project, I volunteered for that with Annie. That was great, and it's really great to talk about even to interviews. Just do everything you can do. Just really get out there and do things and don't feel discouraged and you'll get there eventually.

You'll throw a lot of job applications out there that nobody will look at and nobody will read, and you'll feel like garbage, so don't. Like Chanel said earlier, apply for stuff you don't think you qualify for. When you're interviewing with the person who's actually interacting with the position, it might not one to one correspond with every single thing they had on that job listing. So if you have even a few of the skills that you think might be relevant, it might be worth applying just to interview and see if you might actually be a fit based on something that is relevant to that department because the person who's writing the job description is not always the person who interacts with that position.

I want to just add to that a lot of the jobs that are currently listed as open are not actually actively being interviewed for. You should not take any rejection or lack of response. It does not mean anything, really doesn't because they like to keep a job listing out there. This is anyway, what I heard on NPR.

This is true. I can confirm. Or they'll post a job. The unpopular opinion, but a lot of times employers will. They have to post jobs for jobs that they are considering people internal for. It's like a policy of theirs. Sometimes you'll run into a lot of those jobs where they're posting something. They have to post it for a period of so long, but they know there's like a shoe in internal person for it. There's lots of stuff like that or they'll just keep it open. They might not be actively interviewing for or it's a pipeline role, they're trying to build applicants for something later. This is all very true. Especially when you're entry level, it takes a lot of applications to get something to stick for sure. But I did want to say too, if any students listening to this or any students on this, I dropped my email in the chat. If you send me your resume, I could just stick it in our database any jobs we have open now or jobs we have open in the future. My firm B, could reach out to you and happy to represent you somewhere. Take advantage of that if you'd like.

Recruiters are cool. They can advocate.

Thank you, Katy.

The current job through a recruiter, so it was really neat to be able to talk to somebody and then interview and have somebody as an in between, which was super cool, so cool.

On a quick note, just on the fact of a long line of either rejections or just a long period of waiting. If you're applying for the government, they're going through government HR, so it may be three months before they get to your job because they have to have the county HR, the local municipality HR review everything and then set schedule every different person that has to approve of the job for them to either be on Zoom or in person. Don't get discouraged if you don't hear back within a week, like sometimes in private practice, or they'll say yes or no, whereas in government, you may get an e-mail. We're available for an interview and you've already accepted a job a month ago. That's something to be aware of. Just know the field that you're applying in. Don't get discouraged.

My gosh. This is just such a wealth of information. I learn so much every time we host these things. You guys are all amazing and rocking. Plus now, you all have each other's information. You all can network too because that's the name of the game. I hope everyone who's here in the moment and listening to this recording realizes that every person you know in the classroom, your professors, people you meet on campus, people you're just walking down the street and having a casual conversation with. It's a potential networking moment. That sounds transactional. I don't mean it like that because anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a transactional person. I just mean that if there's 1,000 applicants for a job and you happen to talk to someone, and then they happen to know someone who's at that company, your application will rise to the top. That is how it works because nobody wants to read 1,000 applications. We trust the people in our network. Like I know everyone here and I'm all, you guys are righteous and amazing. I would totally trust you and I would only send you people that I believed in. That's how it works. Well Rachel, anything else from your end?

No. I think we're all set. If you have any questions about internships, make sure you reach out to one of us. We have some organizations and companies that we've partnered with for a long time. We can give you some more information about doing the internship for credit as well. Well, thanks everybody for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it.

Thank a lot.

Good luck.