What do you do at USM?
My title is project associate. My job is to partially oversee the office of Internships and Career Placement. I oversee the four work-study students who work in here and I helped to open the office and develop protocol. That includes doing outreach to faculty, community members, coordinating with other staff and hiring the work study staff in here. The other half of what I do is community college outreach. I helped to open up a USM resource office at YCCC [York County Community College]. I go there and answer questions if people have questions.
A lot of my time is spent supervising people. The other side of this whole thing is helping students at USM who have transferred, to direct them to resources they need and basically answer any questions they need.
I think the reason they thought of me was because I was already passionate and knowledgeable about some of the issues and they thought I would do a good job I guess. I was really interested in developing a more consistent internship program at USM.
Did you think you would start working at USM right after grad?
Absolutely not. The thought didn’t really cross my mind until it was brought up to me. I had planned to travel — particularly I wanted to teach English in Asia and then I wanted to go grad school. Both of those things I’m still going to do. The draw was to get a year of professional experience and make money to do the kinds of things I want to do.
Did USM prepare you for after graduation?
I think my position as student body president prepared me for after-graduation and I think I wouldn’t be where I am now if I didn’t do that. My courses definitely prepared me for being a good citizen — being a political science major. I didn’t really have other resources like resume writing or interviewing or anything like that, but now that’s what I’m doing.
What is one thing you took away from your time at USM?
If you do whatever you’re doing really well in the short run — even if it doesn’t seem that you’ll reap any benefits — in the long run, it totally is beneficial. USM is what you make of it. You can go to class and go home and not get involved and not really care about what you’re studying, or you can get involved and get engaged with what you’re studying.