Setting Sail: An Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Sean Boyden, and I’m one of the Career Center Social Media Interns for the 2014-2015 academic year. I’m a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, and according to Nicole, our supervisor, this makes me the youngest Career Center blogger ever.

I’m excited to be back on campus again (although moving into my 4^th floor West triple was not fun, no matter how nice the architecture is). I spent the summer in my hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts, which was recently called the "Most Boring Place in Massachusetts". Hometown pride, right? For the first 2 months of the summer, I interned at a small animal hospital in a neighboring town, where I gained valuable experience and learned a lot about veterinary medicine. I spent the rest of the summer working full-time on a local farm, which, despite my small frame and noodly arms, was a lot of fun.

This year, I hope to be sharing with you my personal experiences as a young college student attempting to find a career and prepare myself for life after graduation. So, I think it’s best to start with a little background on myself. For most of my life, I was certain that I wanted to be a veterinarian, and pursued it avidly through internships (like the one I mentioned above) and extra-curricular activities dating back to middle school. However, since coming to Tufts, my mind has exploded with possibilities. Like many of you, I have dozens of ideas about the perfect career for me. Part of me earnestly wants to pursue veterinary medicine, but some days I wake up wanting to go to (human) medical school. Other days I think I’d make a fantastic history teacher, and sometimes I just want to run back home and work on a farm for the rest of my life.

My aim for my blog posts is to reach out and connect with younger students who, like me, may not have a set idea for their career. Sophomore year is a crucial time to get oneself on a track for the rest of their life—we must choose a major, identify an academic adviser, and seriously search for internships, research opportunities, and other items to add to our resume. No pressure for a 19-year-old, right?

Hopefully I’ll be able to shed some light on the dark and scary world of adulthood, or at the very least, ensure my classmates that they’re not alone in utter confusion. So, here we go! I’m excited to get back to school, work hard, try to overcome my social awkwardness, and maybe even find myself along the way! 

Stay tuned for my weekly blog posts, and good luck to everyone else on the start of another school year!

Until next time,

Sean Boyden
Class of 2017

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Welcome Back to Campus & Happy Labor Day!

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

By far, this is one of my favorite quotes; I am a career advisor, after all.  Often credited to Thomas Edison, it really could have been authored by a number of people including Henry Dodd and Paul Larmer. Edison makes sense, though, because when we think of the history of work in this country, we think of Edison as one of our great inventors.  So, in the spirit of work, let's get down to business.

The 2014-2015 Tufts Career Center Bloggers will reveal themselves, and their task ahead, later this week.  The purpose of this blog, after all, is communication by students to students.  In the meantime, on behalf of the Career Center, Welcome Back!

As you make the transition to campus, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy Labor Day!  That's right, Labor Day, the national holiday that all career advisors look forward to each year: rewarding a hard day's work. On this day, we break out the party hats and balloons and celebrate the spirit of the American worker  . . .

Well no, not really, we don't do that.  What we are doing is enjoying a BBQ, or in my case, taking advantage of the first weekend of apple picking in New England - all the while counting down the minutes until our students hit campus en masse and flood our offices and our email with big, existential questions about work, careers and life.  And WE LOVE THIS.  So, it is a holiday of sorts, with high anticipation and planning.

Since many students at Tufts are back on campus before Labor Day, we, career advisors, don't have to wait long to engage with our audience. Labor Day weekend at Tufts coincided with New Student Orientation, so prior to apple picking, I was on campus presenting to first year students at Join the Party with Tufts Career Center.  About 50 students attended.  Party leis, chocolate and the musical stylings of the Gorillaz c/o Pandora kept students interested for the entire session (see pic below). We didn't discuss Edison or Labor Day; instead we talked about how the Career Center works with first year students and we plugged our kick-off event, Career Carnival on Monday, September 8 on Tisch Plaza (come one, come all, there will be an ice cream truck!). 

Career Advisor, Jim McCarthy, talks with new students at an orientation program with Career Center staff on Saturday, August 30, 2014.

What's more, at this year's Carnival we'll celebrate work in our own way, displaying posters of 48 students whose unpaid internships were funded through the Tufts Career Center Summer Internship Grants (we know it's a mouthful).  If you've ever wondered "where do Tufts students intern?", the Poster Session is a convenient way (who doesn't walk through Tisch Plaza during open block?) to chat with students about their internship experiences. 

Stay tuned.  In the next post, our new Career Center blogger and sophomore will introduce himself.

Nicole M. Anderson
Assistant Director/Career Advisor
Tufts Career Center

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Introducing the 2014-2015 Career Center Bloggers, sort of . . .

Introducing the . . .

Tufts Career Center 

2014-2015 Social Media Interns

After a seriously involved application and interview process (we required a writing sample and candidates came in for second interviews!), I'm happy to announce that we hired three new Social Media/Blogger Interns to start in the fall.

As supervisor to our bloggers, I am excited to have a senior, a junior and a sophomore join our staff.  Their primary responsibility is to share their personal career experiences during the 2014-2015 academic year, and get paid for doing so!  I think that's a pretty sweet deal.

And to throw some intrigue into this post, I'm going to hold off on introducing them by name - I'll let them do that on their own in their first posts in September.  However, because I can't contain my excitement about their credentials, I offer a few clues to keep you tuned in:

(C) Chris for OPENPHOTO.NET
CC: Attribution-NonDerivs-NonCommerical

• We selected our rising senior because she is a social media pro, with presence on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, among other media, and for the way she described herself in her interview: "Writing is my hobby - I feel more eloquent through text."  Here's another clue: she has an obsession with the character who said, "It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."  Incidentally, a lot of people feel that way about their career - it's their work that defines them. And after this summer's virtual internship (ooh, what's that!?), she should have some interesting content for us come fall.

• Our rising junior is a student athlete, and we're interested in hearing about how she balances school, career, sports and extracurriculars.  Plus, her team made it to the Final Four this past year.  Did I just reveal which team she played for? Want to know what we discussed in her interview? Pottermore. She's a Harry Potter fan, I'm a Harry Potter fan - what else is there to say?  Be prepared for the part of an interview where the employer asks you questions about your hobbies and interests because they want to get to know the real you.

(C) Michael Jastremski for OPENPHOTO.NET
CC: Attribution-ShareAlike

• One intern, a rising sophomore, attended the Career Fair as a freshman. Can you imagine going to the Career Fair in Gantcher during your first month on campus? Well, this student did, and we were mightily impressed, so we hired him.  (In fact, one of our peers in the "ten best career services blogs", Oregon State University, posted something on this very subject a couple of months ago, check it out: 10 Reasons to Attend the Career Fair as a First Year Student.)  

I just can't wait until the fall!

Nicole Anderson
Assistant Director/Career Counselor
Tufts Career Services

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Tufts Career Center Blog is Among Top 10: Congrats & Farewell to 2013-2014 Bloggers!

Farewell 2013-2014 Career Center Bloggers

Another academic year comes to a close and with it, the Career Center says farewell to our two social media interns, Morgan Kee and Nirvanna Lidharrie, members of the graduating class of 2014. The Center wants to thank our bloggers for their service and to announce that because of their hard work (and the hard work of others behind the scenes), the Tufts Career Center blog has been named one of the ten best college career services blogs by Create a Career.

Tufts Career Center Blog does it again!  

For the second year in a row (last year we were recognized as one of the 10 Simply Awesome College & University Career Service Blogs by Blogging4Jobs), our blog has been recognized for the high quality content that it offers readers, and we admit that we are just a little proud of this achievement.  Morgan and Nirvanna were mentioned by name in the Create a Career recognition, which I reminded them to include on their resumes. Good luck to both Morgan and Nirvanna as they enter life after Tufts!

Nicole Anderson

Assistant Director/Career Counselor
Tufts Career Center

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