Spring Break is just a few weeks away, are you excited yet? Whether you're flying away to sandy beaches and blue waters or staying home to plow through 9 seasons of Seinfeld, keep on eye on HackCollege this week for tips to make the most of your Spring Break. Stay Tuned!
Friendly reminder: you are not required to attend class on the weekends. Photo via flickr user umjanedoan. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Boy oh boy! Here are this week's best questions:
Next year, I am moving to a college with about 55% of the Freshman class being that, while my class is originating from at least 40+ other countries.
So, in essence, on top of the shock of meeting new people/making new friends/etc., I am pretty new to social diversity. I am totally not a racist, nor have a history of any social bigotry, or anything like that. I just would like to know some tips on meeting and making friends with people from around the world.
By my question I mean what websites have you come across that offer unique and/or relatively useful information/features for students?
What is a good car choice for college students? Should I go with a cheap, reliable car? What type (SUV, sedan, coupe, etc.)? What brand(s) stand out?
Got the answer? Head over to Discuss Campus and start earning points. (If you haven't figured it out already, it's free!)
Trying to turn that internship into a real job come graduation? This is just one of many tips in our Internship-to-Job Series.
Pitch a brand new position at the company you're interning at. This is the most balls-to-the-wall way of getting hired but you'd be blown away by how effective it is. I highly recommend this in an economy like this one – one that's supposedly on an upswing.
As the economy bounces back, you want your new position to be the big (or little) idea they invest in. Not only is pitching a new position an incredible learning experience (that's what college is ALL ABOUT!), but it has a great likelihood of blessing you with employment because it's just so damn crafty and confident.
Note: Crafty/confident also works on the opposite sex.
First of all, you need to figure out what's missing at the company you're interning with. There's probably a lot missing – they just laid off 95% of their workforce and hired 25 extra interns to fill the holes. The job you invent can fill some of those holes. Here are a few places to start finding the leaks:
Man, the world runs out of money and the first things to go are golden parachutes and lobbying fees degrees from higher education. Last week, we posted a video from Fox News questioning the value of higher education on political grounds. It garnered quite a few comments. When you look at it, $100,000+ is a lot to spend to destroy your brain enlighten your mind. This week, Time is pitching in.
It is absurd that people have to get college degrees to be considered for good jobs in hotel management or accounting — or journalism. It is inefficient, both because it wastes a lot of money and because it locks people who would have done good work out of some jobs.
While I'm not sure about the hotel management side of things (Readers: chime in), I don't think it's federal mandates that prevent people without college degrees getting jobs in accounting or journalism. Sure, there's the CPA, but there isn't a similar organization for professional journalists. And some of the most interesting and progressive people are those doing extra-curricular activities, completely exclusive of their college educations. While we're learning to constantly question the norm while in school, this is bordering on a little too much college-hating for me from large publications.
"The Case Against College Education" [via TIME]
What do you think?
My Geektool setup, to-do list on the bottom.There’s no shortage of task management and to-do list apps available for Macs, but only Geektool can embed a totally-customizable (and dare I say, beautiful) list of tasks right on your desktop.
You can use Geektool to add just about anything on your desktop, and no blog post could begin to describe all of its features. It can be a daunting program for those of us who haven’t dabbled in scripts before, but there isn’t too much scary coding involved for this simple setup.
First, clear your desktop of any clutter, and find a kickass wallpaper (I recommend NASA). Next, open up TextEdit, type out a sample T0-Do list, and format it as plain text in the format menu. Save the file anywhere as “todo.txt”, and drag it onto your dock to create a shortcut.
Once you’re all set up, install the latest version of Geektool here. It will show up as an option in your system preferences. Launch the app, and drag a “Shell” geeklet onto the desktop. A dialog box and a draggable rounded rectangle will appear on your desktop. Drag the geeklet wherever you want and, type “cat” followed by a space into the command line of the dialog box. Finally, drag your todo.txt file from finder into the command line. If you keep it in your documents folder, the line will read something like this: “cat /Users/YOURNAME/documents/todo.txt.” All that’s left is to set a refresh rate and fine tune your font.
Your gorgeous list will now update automatically whenever you edit todo.txt. The result is far more elegant than OS X’s “Stickies” program, and makes more sense than setting calendar appointments for things like “proofread paper.” This tutorial barely scratches the surface of what Geektool can do, so if you want to tinker further, check out this gallery for some inspiration.
After a rough night, Chris is back this week with some interesting stories. A quick thanks to everyone who shared last week's episode. It was one of the most-watched HackCollege episodes of all time! Thanks for sharing it around!
More show notes after the jump!
Always be mindful of your corporate communication skills, and that internship will be a job in no time. Image via Flickr user star5112 and licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Trying to turn that internship into a real job come graduation? This is just one of many tips in our Internship-to-Job Series.
In a perfect world, your odds of landing a job at the completion of your internship would be based on the quality of your work. Unfortunately, you'll need to find time between making copies and fetching coffee to show off the impressive social skills you have been perfecting on campus. No company wants to give the pink slip to an intern that the whole office loves. I've been at my internship/part time job for over a year now, and still find myself tip-toeing (usually unsuccessfully) through a minefield of miscommunications and awkward situations.
Trying to turn that internship into a real job come graduation? This is just one of many tips in our Internship-to-Job Series.
Now that you've made sure everyone in the office knows you're looking for work, co-workers will probably make you aware of any job openings before they're listed. But some companies are so big that word-of-mouth can only go so far. There might be opportunities at other branches, at other companies owned by the same entity or even in other states and countries.
The best way to become aware of all the openings at your company is by working with HR or "human resources." This is the department (or single person) who manages the hiring/firing process.
Here's why this is cool shortcut. Outsiders, even very well-qualified outsiders, can't walk right into the HR office like you can. You're only an unpaid intern and you have this great edge. Set up a meeting with a rep and talk to them about your job situation.
HR can also help you hear about positions before they even open up to the public. Many companies prefer to hire from within rather than open positions to outsiders. Giving employees a shot a promotions can improve company morale.
However, it can ruin company morale if someone is picked unfairly. So, most HR people know that they need to give everyone a fair shot, including interns, when it comes to internal hiring. For that reason, you can probably expect at least a courtesy interview if you apply to an internal position.
Some companies have entire internal hiring databases or email lists. Get access to those resources and start applying/networking now so that you're in the running as graduation approaches.
[Image courtesy of -Jérôme-]
Sunday, February 28, 2010