Growing Up and Growing Into the Professional World

Hi all! The above picture has pretty much been my life this past week. Doing class work and succumbing to the overly sweet hot cocoa of Dunking Donuts as my last resort to staying warm in the poorly insulated gas hut. Yesterday I sprung for an electric blanket which combats the draft to an extent.

We’ve had assignments due tonight and every day this past week and there is plenty of work remaining for these next two weeks. But on a positive note, we are over the hump! I’m hoping my proposal that was due Friday proves my excitement for the recipe creation project. I really do enjoy spreading nutritional awareness to those who haven’t been educated much on the topic and I thought this project was a good opportunity to do just that. However, I’m not sure if my technical writing abilities in my proposal were truly able to express my interest. I guess I prefer a more laid back style of written communication such as these blog postings. Unfortunately, this type of writing will not always cut it on the job market.

Speaking of the job market, I’m anxious about our cover letter and resume assignment. This assignment is probably the most relevant assignment to all of us taking this course. We won’t be able to get professional jobs in our fields unless we learn how to set up a decent cover letter and organize our achievements on our resumes. I thought the textbook was fairly helpful as far as explaining different organizational techniques. In high school, we had to make resumes as part of our graduation project. I didn’t mind doing it because I was involved in so much during high school: soccer, basketball, track, YIP club, chorus, drama club, National Honors Society, Spanish Honors Society, my church’s youth group, and held a job my senior year. My resume was a lot more colorful than many others in my graduating class. However, now that I’m in college I’m involved in a lot less than I used to be. So I struggled deciding what to keep on my resume and what to omit. I read on an online source that anything older than four years old is unnecessary and probably wouldn’t be paid much attention, unless it was something remarkable and/or really specific to the job in which you’re applying. Since I’m only a Sophomore, that rule of thumb didn’t help me weed much out of my resume at all.

I was always curious about why sports would be a necessary thing to include on a resume, but awhile back I had a casual conversation with the woman who used to do the job hiring at Giant. She told me that seeing sports on a resume proves an applicant’s determination, dedication, and team collaboration skills. I had never thought about sports in that light before but I’d have to say, it seems legit to me. With sports, I remember waking up for 6am soccer practices in the summer to avoid the midday heat, going home only to come back in the evenings for a second round of sprints, drills, etc. In sports, I learned the value of attendance before I was ever held accountable for attendance in a work place environment. And I’d have to agree that team collaboration was another important skill that I learned through playing sports. A company is just like a team, and sure, there people who are the “higher-ups” and have more authority, but they typically get that through seniority and/or skill, which is exactly how captains are chosen on sport teams. It’s nice that my manager opened these thoughts to me because otherwise I’d never think involvements in sports would be something worthy to add on a resume.

I also think that maybe some of my high school awards are irrelevant and wouldn’t be of any interest to my employers. It just seems wrong of me not to include them. I mean, in college I’ve received awards for academics but for my high school achievements to mean nothing seems to be a difficult pill to swallow. They may have lost value since I’ve moved onto bigger and better things, but are they truly meaningless? Don’t they prove that I valued my education even when I was younger in high school? Plus, even if they might mean less to me now, I have proof in old journals, and in my memories, about how hard teenager me worked for those pieces of paper, plaques, and newspaper clippings. And proof of how stressed and miserable younger me was when I thought I wouldn’t make it or wasn’t good enough to deserve the award. Realistically, I know the awards are pretty much meaningless now and their value on my professional resume is nonexistent, it’s just interesting to me how at one point in our lives we are so fixated on certain things and then you just grow up and that thing you obsessed about before is so insignificant now.

In all, I’m really thankful for the resume and cover letter assignment because I haven’t had any practice with that so far in my college career. I hope everyone is doing well with their assignments and using their time efficiently!

-Anna J.