How to Take Advantage of Toppel during your Freshman Year

By: Constanza Schubert, Toppel Ambassador

Are you a freshman? Or when you were one, did you think that all this career development stuff should be done later down the road? False! As cliché as it may sound, it is never too late for you to attend Toppel events! The career expo can be useful to any student, regardless of major or year. I attended the Fall Career Expo as a freshman, and I learned that it actually requires plenty of preparation.  It was a great opportunity for me to get a practice round, so that when I attend at a more crucial point, I am prepared and know exactly what to expect. During my first semester, I attended several workshops and programs from Toppel, and I will recommend which are the most crucial ones for incoming freshmen:

Freshmen and Sophomore Orientation: This workshop is the first one a freshman should go to, because it’s like Toppel 101; it informs students on everything that Toppel offers, including career assessments, Toppel workshops & expos, and how one should go about looking for an internship (no, it’s not too early for you to start searching!) on the HireACane website. This workshop is essential, because you don’t want to become a junior that has never heard of Toppel and doesn’t know the first thing about searching for internships.

Effective Resume and Cover Letter Writing: I cannot stress how important this workshop is. There is actually plenty information that the Toppel staff covers that is not as “common sense” as you’d expect. At the workshop, you receive a detailed Resume writing guide that includes resume templates that are according to industry. Use this guide as you prepare to submit your resume on HireACane.com. This way, you will be able to get your resume approved quicker.
Note: Several Toppel events require that you have submitted your resume on HireACane. Do it as soon as possible to avoid any complications. Click here to see a previous blog post about writing a resume: Jam Your Way to a Perfect Resume.

EPIC Program (Employer Practice Interview and Critique): This was by far my favorite program from the ones I attended. Prior to the Career Expo, Toppel hosts EPIC, a program where they bring in employers to conduct mock interviews. When you RSVP, you pick the company of your choice and can pick whether you want a mock interview or have your resume critiqued. I had a mock interview with Northwestern Mutual, and at the end the employer gave me extremely helpful feedback. This is one of the best ways to prepare for the Career Expo, or to just enhance your interviewing skills.

Diversity Etiquette Dinner: This is one of the most unique events that Toppel puts together, in conjunction with the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. This year’s dinner occurred on Monday, November 5^th.  When you RSVP, you get to choose with which employer you want to sit, and there is a wide variety, from a Miller School of Medicine table to a Pre-law table. The host covers all the specific etiquette rules one must know while having dinner in a professional setting, and students get to ask questions of their own while eating a delicious full course meal (for free!). Watch a quick video of this event.

All of the events listed above, with the exception of the etiquette dinner, will also occur during Spring semester. Get started now, for it will benefit you later!

Freshmen...Senior Reflections

Written By: Priyanka Surio

Only one more week of classes and two weeks unitll graduation and I have been trying to figure out how to make time stand still because it keeps flying by too quickly.  Yeah, Priyanka, but everyone says that. Because it is true, maybe as a sophomore feeling the beginnings of senioritis you don’t see it but the time will slyly creep up on you and before you know it, your throwing your cap in the air yelling Class of 2012. Now that I am finally a soon to be alumna and graduate everyone keeps asking me for the tell all advice and wisdom to how to make it through college. While it seems pretty self explanatory, I have put together some of the highlights of my college career and how to survive these four years!

SAGE WORDS OF WISDOM:

Let me start off by saying college is full of obstacles. They are bound to happen at some point but as long as you can learn from them, move on and carry a positive outlook regardless you should be fine. I am the type of person who doesn’t take no for an answer, and I think college should be like that for everyone. This is the time to make your mistakes and learn from them, to test the waters, to challenge yourself and learn about who you are.

COLLEGE LIFE for DUMMIES:

Don’t attempt to go to class in a less than conscious state, but if you must fall asleep, at least make sure it is not in one of those 2 people classrooms and sit in the back with the lecture on record to listen to later.

Professors hate texting, caking, fbooking, any and all forms of social media at least during their class time, so allow yourself to be alone for that hour or hour and a half, the world is not going to end just because you don’t status update.

Actually visit places on campus instead of witnessing the same surroundings of dining hall, dorm, and the RAT. These places include the Toppel Career Center, the Writing Center, the Library, yes people actually study there, not just frolic in dance parties. Take advantage of all these places teeming with valuable information and resources that will only expand your future opportunities.

Take everything with a grain of salt and a mind as open as the sea, because you will find that college and your peers will challenge you. In some way shape or form conflict will find you; whether its an argument with someone in your student organization, to missing important deadlines, to sleeping through an exam, to running out of Uprint dollars when your 25 page paper is due, some crisis is bound to happen, its synonymous with being a college student and without that force field called parents. You have to learn to come to terms with each thing and look at it as a learning experience that will teach you better for next time.

What about real life?

Yes it is important to extend beyond the bubble that is the University of Miami. While college life seems like the real thing because you actually have to wash your own laundry and occasionally heat up some mac n cheese, it is nothing compared to how the real world will be once you enter it post graduation. Thus, it is important to gain some insight into this real world and what better way to do that then by doing something you might be interested in. I am talking about internships and jobs that will not only give you that real life taste but also help you later on with your potential real life career.

Truth hurts but it is better to be honest with yourself and others than live a beautiful lie that won’t last, and trust me it won’t last. You can take this as literally as not lying in interviews and on your resume to admitting when you have weaknesses and need help.  Lying on your resume is not only dishonest but also think of when you actually do an interview for a job and put that your fluent in Spanish when you know you only took Beginners Español. All of a sudden your interviewer bursts out in full on Spanish conversation expecting responses. Point is, you will be highly embarrassed if you say you’ve done one thing or are skillful at another and it isn’t true because guaranteed, your interviewer will be able to tell when you don’t know what you are talking about.  The only way we continue to learn is by asking questions, so it is never a wrong move to ask others for help. Knowing when you need help is just as commendable of a characteristic as achieving something on your own. It is better than trying to do everything and more on your own and then falling into the black hole of overwhelmed.

Superman is still a story. The one thing that us UMiami students think we can do is be invincible, you will see us pull all nighters, partying and being unproductive, and then go to class the next day to give a presentation that is worth thirty percent of our grade, to ace it.  While this occasionally happens, because of course we boast being the number one school in Florida, so it is only given that we are smart enough to adapt to last minute changes, there will be that one time that everything just crashes or blows up in your face. I am talking about when you procrastinate so much that all of a sudden your room is full of empty Monster cans and your mind is on meltdown overload because you have three papers and two exams in the next two days. It is all about preparation. Yes you may not have homework every night and all this free time with no Friday classes, but it is important to do some school every day, after all most of our official occupations are full-time student, so treat it like a job and spend some effort and time to advance yourself.  The same advice tips apply for jobs and extra-curricular activities. It is important to manage your time, know your limits, and be sure that you are asking for days off when you need it, because even Clark Kent didn’t fight evil forces 24/7.

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ ANYTHING ELSE…

I say this on all my President’s 100 tours and I will say it to you Toppel Peers blog followers, the Toppel Career Center is probably one of the most important buildings you will ever use throughout your four years here, besides your advisors office, voicemail and email address. I am not just saying this from a biased point of view since I work here as a peer advisor, I am telling you from past experience that Toppel fulfills what your goal should be from attending college; to hopefully figure out and obtain a career post graduation. We all come to college to potentially learn about what we want to do with the rest of our lives and pray to our respective entities or cross our fingers that once we have graduated that career goal will begin to materialize into a concrete reality.

Why is Toppel so awesome? Not just because as a freshmen I was able to pinpoint exactly what I was interested in and declare my major to Biology, not just because that same summer freshmen year I got an internship on Capitol Hill and accepted to a program at Georgetown University, not just because I got to partake in two more research opportunities and one more internship, not just because it made my cover letter, resume, and interviewing skills exemplary, not just because I received a US Department of State scholarship for study abroad in India, not even just because I have options post graduation, but because overall, my college experience and career journey would be in an incomplete sorry state without Toppel here to hone my professional development. It was through the dedication of the career advisors to help me improve my marketability and application, through their relentless search for opportunities and contacts once I made the effort to build that relationship with them, through their amazing programs and career fairs that brought potential experiences to my door knocking, and through their patience to critique my interview skills and resume that I am able to stand before you with the multitude of experiences I have accumulated in just four years. The advisors, career tests, guides, programs, networking opportunities, and career fairs provide you with more than a fair share of access to achieve everything I have and more.

Freshmen Tip 3: False Resume Info

 As the year winds down, the pressure from parents and from yourself comes to apply for summer internships. And around this time, we start updating our resume to add all the things we did this year, and get rid of the items from high school. And for some, there comes that time when you look at your resume, and it’s only about ¾ of a page, definitely not long enough, and you’re struggling to think of things to add. Of course my thought process during that time was, “Hey, remember CaneFest? I’m pretty sure I signed my name up to about 4 clubs email list… Can’t I just put those down?” When you’re desperate for just a few more things to put on your resume (you only need 3 more lines!), it’s easy to think that it isn’t a big deal to maybe fib just a tiny bit and put down a club that you only attended one meeting for before class work got all consuming. Or put that you have working knowledge of Spanish, when the last Spanish class you took was in the 8^th grade, and the only phrase you remember is, “Donde esta mi pantalones!”?

                The simple fact of the matter is this: any small lie is still a lie. On a resume, that little lie can get you in a lot of trouble. On the legal side, putting something that isn’t necessarily true is a simple matter of fraudulent information and misrepresentation which could have serious repercussion. Now, you’re most likely thinking about how a company would be able to prove that you were not, in fact, a member of the Scuba Club? Why would they really ask you, or even care if you mentioned that you were proficient in Microsoft Excel, and actually had only made one pie chart at a summer job once? If you don’t really care about the legal aspect (I’m required to say this: YOU SHOULD!), think about the awkward situations it could get you in. Imagine your interviewer, before being an HR recruiter, was an avid scuba diver and wants to talk about your favorite dives with you, but you only went to the info session before you decided it was too expensive. You’re left with nothing to say except, “Yeah… fish are pretty.” Or even worse, you do get the job, and then when you get there, they say to you, “Hey we need you to make 30 pie charts written in all Spanish because we have a big presentation with the CEO of our Spain branch.” How awkward is it going to be when you have to tell them that you don’t know how to do either of those things, even though on your resume it says that you have conversational knowledge of Spanish, and are an expert at all things Microsoft Office?

                It might seem like it isn’t a big deal to fib a little bit on your resume, but doing that can get you into some awkward situations. If an employer catches you in a lie, it will not only ruin their impression of you, but also force them to question everything else on your resume, and question everything that you say, now believing you to be a liar. It’s so tempting to try to beef up your resume with little things that don’t seem important to try to make yourself seem a little bit more impressive, but you simply cannot risk it. My rule of thumb for clubs on a resume is asking myself if asked about the club, would I be able to say at least 3 sentences about what I did there and have them be true. When it comes to languages and computer skills you just need the right word. Basic knowledge, working knowledge, proficient in, advanced knowledge, conversational, fluent, etc. The most important thing is to be properly representing your abilities, but not selling yourself short. The easiest thing to do, is if you have to question whether or not you should put something on your resume, don’t. If you aren’t sure, then chances are it shouldn’t be there.  If you still need ideas on how to make your resume longer, you can look at our resume guide, pages 3 and 4, or come in for walk-in advising, Mon-Thurs 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.