Does anyone else feel like they have 2398 things to do?

So I'm finally in the swing of C term. I've already had my first round of homework and tests in my classes, and PQP is really starting to pick up. (We are basically writing a draft of our whole proposal in a week and I feel like we haven't even finished doing background research!). With all of the work that I've been doing for PQP and ID2050 I'm really looking forward to going to Australia. To top it off, I've been talking to kids who went there last year on IQP, so hearing about their experiences and all of the fun things to do makes me want to go even more.

Unfortunately, before I leave there's still so much I need to do (in addition to passing my classes and PQP of course)

1. Make a packing list/pack/somehow acquire adapters. (I'm flying to Australia with 4 other kids and we decided to leave from Boston less than 24 hours after we finish finals. What were we thinking when we bought plane tickets?!?)
2. Get an MQP. I've been talking to my advisor since part way through freshman year about what I'm interested in and I already informally talked to him about doing an MQP with him last term - but I still need to officially apply and make sure everything is all set before I leave for IQP because once I leave I won't be back at WPI until senior year. Weird. (Even typing that makes me slightly uncomfortable. College is flying by and I'm not quite ready to grow up yet haha.)
3. Get an internship. Okay, well obviously that's the goal, but I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to pull it off before the beginning of D term. However, I need to do a lot of work so I've at least contacted more companies and made progress towards making sure I have something to do this summer. (Even though I have a lot to do with classes right now, anything I get done now will be easier than when I'm 10,500 miles away and dealing with a 14 hour time difference.)

For your entertainment:

When I was looking for the distance between Worcester and Melbourne, Australia I originally tried to use Google maps. Bad idea. Google decided to give me driving directions that takes about 57 days and involves KAYAKING thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. (Not by boat or plane, but kayak. Really? hahah.) Plus a good portion of the directions are in Japanese. If you want to see how ridiculous the journey would be if you took Google's advice, check out the link below. Enjoy!

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=worcester%2C%20ma%20to%20melbourne%2C%20australia%20distance&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

C Term and Internships

Hi guys!

I know you haven't heard from me for a while, but I'm back! :) Sorry for the lack of posts at the end of B term... I was caught up in the ridiculousness of finals and my Humanities and Arts project and didn't have time to update this as often as I should have.

Winter Break was awesome. It was so nice to see all of my friends from home and just have a vacation from schoolwork and the normal stresses of WPI. But after being genuinely lazy for a week or so I decided I needed to do some work on my internship search. It was really difficult to get motivated to work on it a lot, so I did some in small pieces throughout break.

I started my search on Job Finder. At first it was pretty discouraging because I didn't really find anything I was looking for. But, the good thing about Job Finder is that even if you don't find what you're looking for at first, check back in a few days or a week and you may have more options.

I also used general search engines like www.indeed.com, www.careerbuilder.com, and even Craig's List. These are a little more hit or miss, but, like Job Finder, are important to keep checking.

Also, last year I applied for an internship with a company, and, after emailing back and forth for a while with the lady in charge of hiring college interns, she found out the company wasn't hiring at all that summer. She told me to feel free to contact her again for next summer (aka this one coming up) if I was still interested. So, over break I sent her another email. I got an automated email saying she was on maternity leave and to get in touch with another woman in her office who wasn't as friendly. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to have great news either. BUT the good thing is that I just saw the company posted jobs on Job Finder. So, although they aren't specifically in Mechanical Engineering, they're in stuff like R & D, and quality control which could still be relevant considering the company works in an area that I'm interested in.

Finally, my friend's mom works in an administrative position in a Biomedical Engineering company in my town. She reached out to me and offered for me to come in and meet someone in her department. I took her up on the offer, and it ended up being really helpful. It was neat to talk to someone in a job that I'm interested in and to figure out what steps they took to get there and what they think is important. Even if that doesn't actually help me get an internship with that company, it's still a helpful step in my internship search overall.

But, even though I've obviously made a few steps in the right direction with my job search, I still have a long way to go. (Which I'm kind of stressing about). The funny thing is, I think everyone is in the same boat that I am. Whenever I run into friends on campus a few of them always ask the question "Do you know what you're doing this summer yet?". When I tell them I don't they look really relieved and say "Phew. Me either!".

So if you're also someone who doesn't have an internship yet, rest assured that you are most definitely not alone on this campus and a lot of people are in the same position as you are. Although some companies have already decided on interns, there are still internships out there and you're not too late. But, with that being said, don't relax too much. It's definitely the time to be looking now. Good luck!

Following Up

So unfortunately I didn't get as much done over Thanksgiving Break as I had hoped in terms of job searching. :(

With what time I wasn't spending with my family celebrating Thanksgiving, I was working on homework and projects. I hate it when teachers expect you to get a lot done over breaks like this. Thanksgiving definitely didn't feel like much of a vacation for me, so I'm looking forward to Christmas Break even more now. Luckily the end of B term is approaching quickly. (When did that happen?!)

So even though I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, I did make a tiny bit of progress in the job search department. I know I blogged earlier about a job interview I had over October break. Well, I wrote a thank you note after that, and when I didn't hear from them, a few weeks later I sent a follow up email to my contact in HR. I asked her if they had made any decisions in terms of the position and let her know that if they hadn't I was still interested. My email was probably was a little later than I ideally should have sent it, but I guess better a little late than never? I feel like I get tunnel vision while at school here and I'm so focused on the here and now that I occasionally lose sight of the bigger picture and am somewhat unaware about how fast time is actually going. (Probably why I'm always so suprised by the end of the term....oops.)

But anyway, the lady emailed me back and told me that they weren't making a decision until the end of January and that I should hear from them then. She said I didn't have to do anything, but to feel free to contact her again in January if I hadn't heard.

The good news is that I didn't miss the boat on this one like I was afraid I had, and I still have a shot at this internship which sounded pretty cool. :)

So, moral of the story: Follow up and stay on top of things. Put dates to get stuff done by in your planner if necessary. At a school like this it's sooooo easy to focus purely on homework and projects with deadlines that it's easy to forget about other parts of your life (like job seraching!) which are also important.

It's almost Thanksgiving break!!

So last week and this week I'm definitely feeling the pressure of mid-terms. :( Thankfully we only have two more days of this ridiculousness until we're on break. I definitely feel like junior year is significantly harder than freshman and sophomore year. It seems like everyone I talk to is getting a little burnt out. I think a break is much needed for everyone on this campus.

Needless to say that with all of this work I've been pretty unpreductive with my job search (again). I know, it's bad. I need to work on it. I just physically don't seem to have enough hours in the day to work on that and get all of my assignments and studying done. At this point I'm lucky to get sleep at all.

Over break I plan on sleeping (a lot), working on my job search (finally!), visiting with my family and friends from high school (some of whom I haven't seen since the summer!), and eating lots of turkey (yum.).

So, considering a lot of you are probably in the same boat I am - stick it out. A lot of us are just 24 hours away from break and those who aren't are close to that. When you think about it that way it seems so much more managable, right? ;)

Enjoy your break and have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! :)

Do you know what Career Search is?

Are you looking for a Chemical Engineering job in Connecticut? Or how about a Biomedical Engineering job in Washington? Or do you just want to see what Biotechnology companies are located in the Northeast and do Cancer Research?

If you're asking any of these questions (or anything even remotely similar), than Career Search is a useful resource for you!

Last year, as a sophomore, I was really confused about when I should be applying for internships, and, more importantly, how I could even get started on my job search. I made an appointment with one of the counselors at the CDC to try to get some of my questions answered. Not only did I leave with a better understanding of what I should be doing, I also learned about Career Search.

Recently I've been talking to friends about applying for summer internships, I realize that a lot of them haven't heard of Career Search before, and, because it's such an awesome tool, I wanted to try to spread the word so now all of you will be able to use it too. :)

So what is it exactly? Career Search is an online database that you can access through your Job Finder account. It is a tool that you can use to search for companies by industry, location, name, or any combination of those three.

Can I see job opportunities on Career Search? No. Career Search is a tool designed to find companies, so it doesn't tell you about specific job opportunities. However, the majority of job offerings aren't posted, so if you contact a company you find through Career Search, you could possibly end up with a job or internship if you follow the right steps.

How do I find Career Search? First, you log into your Job Finder account. Next, on the home page, under the shortcuts section, its the last link. Once you get into Career Search, your best option is probably to chose US Search, and then you can get started. :)

Check it out!

TGIF

TGIF. I know it's only the second week of classes, but I'm already starting to feel the pressure of B term start to kick in. :(

One of my classes is absolutely ridiculous. Our teacher wants us to turn in a 15 page lab report, take a test, pass in a hard and very time consuming homework assignment, pass in a 30+ page group project equip with CAD models and analysis, and turn in another 15 page lab report, all within a week. It's crazy. The professor says that he knows he's giving us a lot of work, but I don't think he really realizes how much it actually is, especially when we're trying to manage two other difficult classes.

So needless to say, with all of this work on my plate in addition to Rush and Recruitment, I haven't had any time to spend on my job search. Hopefully I'll get some done this weekend...

Back to WPI already?

I feel like each term I always look forward to the break as this long, relaxing time to recoup from the stresses of WPI, but when break actually arrives I end up being fairly busy. I spent time with my family, went to NH to see my grandparents, visited my high school and old job, ran errands, tried to figure out what I wanted to be for Halloween, stayed overnight with a friend at another college, called high school friends to catch up, re-organized my room (and found my ipod that had been missing for a few weeks!!), cleaned my apartment, and had my first job interview. I can't tell if I'm actually that busy, or, after two years of involvement at WPI, I don't know how to have down time anymore. Both are definite possibilities.



So about this interview...it was actually my first real job interview. I mean, I've had interviews for things in the past, but this was the fist time I was interviewing for an engineering internship. (About time, right?). The cool part was that I didn't even apply to this company. It was a company that I talked to at the WPI Fall Career Fair. I wasn't super interested in what the did, but they were sort of related to the field I want to work in so I talked to them and gave them my resume. A few weeks later I got an email from someone in Human Resources asking me if I was interested in having an interview with them for an internship position and getting a tour of their facility.



Truthfully, at first I was a little skeptical. The job description they gave me was very vague and I couldn't find much information about their company online. And, any information I could find didn't really seem to match up with what I wanted to do. But, I accepted anyway. I figured that the worst possible outcome was that it could be a good experience for later interviews.

I am so glad that I accepted the interview. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the part of the company that I was interviewing with (that does stuff that I'm interested in) was actually a new branch of the larger company (the one that I found online that does more general manufacturing that I'm not so interested in). I got a tour of their facility and then met with a team of four engineers. It was nice because I think all four were WPI graduates a few years ago (maybe 05 or 07?), so they knew all about WPI's classes and projects and were easy to relate to. After I actually also interviewed with the president of the company. He was easy to talk to and had a lot of cool ideas of what he wanted to do with the company and his plans for the next 5-10 years. I feel like it was a successful interview, and at the end he even told me "I just wanted to let you know that you interview very well". (It looks like doing that Mock Interview already paid off!).

So I wrote a handwritten thank you note to the people I interviewed with and a thank you email to the lady in HR. I guess now I'm just going to wait for a little to see if they respond, and if I don't hear from them in the somewhat near future, I'll follow up. In the meantime I think I'll get started looking for other internships. You don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket, right?

Other than my job search, I'm working on getting settled into my new B term schedule. So far my classes seem to be a lot less stressful than A term's, and I'm optimistic that it's going to stay that way. :) I've also been able to go down the hill at a reasonable time and actually spend time with my roommates in my apartment. (Well except for last night when we were forced to go back up the hill if we wanted to be at all productive because we lost power for 13 hours!!)

Hope you're all also having a good start to B term, and enjoy Homecoming this weekend. :) And Happy Halloween!!