Write Stripes

I met with Rebeca Riddlespurger Friday afternoon around 5:00. Mrs. Riddlespurger is a System’s Analyst at Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation. She proved to be a great resource because her job directly correlates to some of the daily tasks that IT professionals are asked to perform. After speaking with her, I feel very confident about my options upon graduation. She went over the high points of my résumé. Mrs. Riddlespurger told me that after looking at my credentials, it is apparent that I have a very strong work ethic. My high grade point average shows that I am willing to work hard and I have a strong capacity to learn new material. Though I am not familiar with a majority of the programming languages, she said that my background in Java will show a future employer that I am able to problem solve. I should expect to be trained in other programming languages upon being hired as an entry level employee.

After discussing the résumé, I asked Mrs. Riddlespurger for some personal advice. I am nervous about entering the IT field due to the vast amount of knowledge that I am required to retain. She suggested that I learn Sequel, Cobol, and Security before graduating from Clemson. If the college does not offer these classes, it is highly recommended that I get some type of exposure to them so that I will be familiar with them before entering the working world. Also, she gave me some tips to use when interviewing for a job.

The advice that a lot of advice during our meeting. I feel as if I am ready to interview for any job that I find interesting.

After meeting with Dr. Revis Wagner, the pre-med advisor here I Clemson, I feel very prepared for taking the steps I need in my final semesters at Clemson to get into medical school. After looking over my resume, Dr. Revis-Wagner said that I looked qualified for the internship stated in my objective, but recommended I add my health science courses to my resume. He said it is good to show medical schools that I am educated about how the health field works and that I have a background in Health promotion and education. Dr. Revis-Wagner also encouraged me to take adolescent psychology courses if I want to work with children in the future. He also stressed the importance of quality over quantity on resumes for undergraduates and for my medical school application. Dr. Revis-Wagner complemented me on my resume focusing on my specific abilities and being different from others he had seen.

Dr. Revis-Wagner informed about MUSC visiting the Clemson campus next week to talk to students about applying to their school. This would be an excellent opportunity for me to talk to admissions representatives about my qualifications as a pre-med student. He also told me about an internship in Greenville for the summer that he said I seemed perfect for after looking at my resume and hearing my goals.

I received so much advice and really benefited from this meeting. After meeting Dr. Revis-Wagner, I realized he will be a great tool for me utilize in the future.

Making the voter guides about stem cell research helped me understand political issues better. One thing that I realized is that there is often much more to an issue than is common knowledge. People tend to understand one element on an issue and base their whole opinion on one fact, when the issue is really much more complicated. Working on the voter guides also helped me to see past my own personal bias and understand multiple sides of issues. I learned to recognize biased sources and how factual information can be discarded by some people based solely on its source, even if the information is valid and true. I also learned to present information in a fair and informative manor, without trying to make my own personal opinion seem like the better choice. This is hard to do when you care about an issue, but people should be able to look at facts and decide for themselves, instead of being manipulated into a certain opinion based on the information that is presented to them.

While our group was creating the voter guides on the oil issue, I feel that I gained a lot of new knowledge on the subject that i did not have before. Also, i saw how college students are somewhat educated on this issue already, and yet there have many false perceptions about the true nature of how oil prices affect our economy and who benefits from high prices. Also, i think we found that college students feel that there is not much they can do to change things, and i hoped we showed some of them ways that they can, because i definitely found ways i can change my lifestyle in order to save money and reduce my use of oil and electricity.