 start. We're excited to see everybody here. It's wonderful. First, I'd like to thank our panelists who are along from English for creative writing. Some of them have double majors in other fields as well, and they'll be talking to you about the exciting things they're doing out in the career world and how what they did at Roger Wales prepare them to do that and give you maybe some tips and things you might want to think about doing as well while you're here to help prepare you for future careers. And we're going to try to wrap this up about quarter of so we know some of you have five classes or five of classes you have to get to, but last year we heard from students that they weren't sure what to do after this session ended and they were out there in the scary employer world. There are certain people who come from various jobs to talk to you informally. So we'll have a little five-minute what to do when you get out there session. That'll be the last thing we do before five o'clock. So if you aren't sure how to informally network, we'll give you some tips on that. And I'd also like to introduce Tori Bedossian. Tori is the English department's fit intern and this event would not have happened without her. She's been working tirelessly behind the scenes, emailing all of you. So she's a good person to know. And if, so just she that you have in front of you, the panelists are seeing the last three panelists are here at the top. But we also have additional resources who have generously volunteered to be around if you have questions. So their names are here. Not all of them could be at this session. Some of them are, but if you're looking for them because something that they are doing is interesting to you and you want to find them and there's a lot of people out there, just come to see me or Professor Soto or Tori Bedossian and we can see, we can stalk these people and help you find them. So then after the session our panelists will also try to stay centrally located sort of in the hallway in general. Some of them might want to go mingle with employers as well. But they'll mingle and come back to the hallway and mingle. So that's where you can kind of find people after this session ends. All right, any questions? Sorry, I talked quickly. Okay, great. Well then I'll turn it over to, we'll just start here on the end with Beth Eyre and HLs. We'll try and speak just for a few moments so that you know if you want to talk to them further afterwards. Before we do that, if you're standing, there's a chair there, there's a chair there, there's a chair there. This is your time to walk behind the panelists to get to the front seat. There you go. I'm very quiet. I'm Beth Eyre. I graduated in 2005. I was an English major and creative writing minor and since then a series of things. So for one thing, I got an after that. I spent a year in the American Wall River. Right after that, I was a web editor for the American Mathematical Society, which is headquartered in Providence. You didn't know of the largest math society in the world. So though I'm not a mathematician, I spent some time in their world editing their website and trying to help them have well written content that can represent their society. This past April, I left the AMS and started working for Bay State Health, which is a health system in Western Massachusetts. So I'm a digital content strategist and editor there. So I work on writing and editing web content, all sorts of projects related to the website. I just launched a new website this summer and social media and it was like that since then. My name is Alexandra Artinano. I graduated in 2012 for the English major and visual arts minor. Right after graduation, I went to Emerson College and I taught a master of arts and publishing. While I was there, I was an editorial assistant at Ploughshare and Telleray Magazine. I filled out for about two years and that job was a lot of answering emails, but also editing and working. It was a small literary journal, like most are. So I wore a bunch of different hats there. And then I got the job that I'm in now, which is that Adams Media, which is the lifestyle of book publisher, and I'm a production design assistant. So I'm actually designing book covers and doing their catalog and doing all the air marketing design. But yeah, I'd be happy to answer any questions about grad school search and working in publishing and things like that. Hi, I'm Sam Meekoyle. I graduated 2014 of the English Literature Degree. Right after school, I was like in an internship, like, actually, I got a hybrid with Aftai software, the employers here actually Melissa Baker. So that is a small company in Warren. So I lived in Bristol for about a year after school. So I never actually left campus. And so that was I was a technical editor there. I was also on a tech support. So I do a lot of stuff with, like, I wrote a lot of emails, I helped customers, you know, I did a lot of testing, firmware and software, I did a lot of writing documentation as well. In June, I left for a health care company that now it's called several communications. Primarily, my company works with a health care, you know, human health, etc. to do member engagement. So if you guys are members and you guys need blue shots, we would write programs or communications for you as a health care entity to talk to your members. So right now I am the junior technical writer at the company. And I'm the only technical writer at the company. So I'm doing a lot of interesting type of writing in that they have no documentation at all. I'm writing all of it now. So it's cool. It's very, very interesting. Thank you. I'm Ali Wynanski. It says alumni, but I'll actually be graduating in December. I'm an intern at Aptec, but Stephanie was just talking about. She sort of Helped you. Yeah, sort of gave away some of the information I was going to talk about. But this actually it started last year at the career panel, at this career panel last year, they sent me and I found out from Melissa as well about externship over the winter, which was a I went to Aptec for three days and worked with Melissa and she just she showed us the documentation that they have and we worked on trying to figure out how the machines that they have their work and worked on, you know, rewriting the documentation. So it was it was a fun three days there. I went with three other people. And it was pretty low stress. Actually, I was there. And after that, I found out that they were having an extern, an internship. So I went for the internship and I started in April. Stephanie did a lot of training while I was there. And then when Stephanie left, I sort of had to step up and take on some of her responsibilities to respond. And then when school started, they asked me to stay. So I'm still there. English lit degree. And I jumped around a lot in the job market. Before I left RWA, I was an intern at Hasbro as a copywriter. I mostly worked with the girls toys and my little pony. After I graduated, I just kind of floated around retail. And then I found a job at Boston Heart Diagnostics, which is a lab. And we needed reimbursement there. So I worked with finance, which was my deal. And I did get into writing for our website and our internal employee website, which I did a lot of articles for. And then after a year, I moved to the company on that now called By Brands. It's a lifestyle beverage. So we're very much like vitamin water, which we're currently selling. And for a five calorie drink. So I wear a lot of hats at this job. I'm an official title as an administrative coordinator for the marketing and creative teams. But I also assist the executives and their day to day tasks. I approved everything before it was out. And I run the website and our flavor line of shirts. And we are looking for interns for the summer and graphic design. Hi, my name is Laura Wind. I was a class of 2008 English major. I minored in French. And during my time here, I actually thought I was going to do a very different career path than the one I ended up in. And that was I was going to teach English. I was very sure of that from freshman year onward. And I was so sure of it that when I graduated, I went and got my master's at University of Rhode Island in English as well. And during that time, I got the opportunity to do a lot of adjunct professor gigs in English as well as women studies. And it was during that time that I got my first publishing job, because as you may know, adjunct professors don't get paid very much. So if you want to pay the bills, you really got to add on other jobs. So I got a job as a proofreader for Pearson education while I was working on my master's thesis. And I fell in love with it. I actually really enjoyed publishing. And meanwhile, I realized I actually wasn't that fond of teaching at least in a stage of my life. So I kind of took a major life change moment. It was a very hard year because I really thought I was going to be a professor and then suddenly I wasn't. So I got off the PhD track and I put myself fully into publishing. And I went to a networking event for book builders of Boston. And through that, I actually found someone at my organization who asked me, what is it you want to do in publishing? I was like, well, I would really like to move to project management. Because I really like organizing all of the balls that are flying around and getting everyone on the same page. And due to that networking event, she said, well, there's actually an opening. Let me put you in touch with this person. And within one week, I had my first promotion, which was as the project manager for the DRD digitally rendered document department at Pearson. I worked at there for a while and then I decided to move over to McMillan where I am now. And my first role there was custom media editor. And that was working directly with universities to customize the products that we were already providing for the universities, so that they were based specifically on their pedagogies and so forth. During that time, we started going through a major change at McMillan. And I was at Bedford St. Martin's, which was the Humanities imprint. And there was another one also McMillan called Freeman and Worth that was the Sciences imprint. Like why are we doing things so differently between these two? So those got folded up into the same umbrella. They were always McMillan, but decided to work together. So I got my current role, which is the editorial program director, which means I work directly with the sciences and the humanities and work out how you can streamline processes between those formerly very different groups. And publishing, you'll hear a lot is a very tumultuous industry. It changes so fast and fast that my name tag is already out of date. We are called McMillan Learning Now, the press release went out like three days ago. So McMillan education is no longer even relevant. So it's a very quickly changing industry. And if you're someone who really likes a job that changes quite frequently, and they really keep up with what the needs are, then it might be a good fit for you as well. Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I graduated in 2011. My major was creative writing. My minor was anthropology and I had a core concentration in graphic design. When I was a senior at Roger Williams, I went to the career fair. And that's where I got my internship. It was at a small company in Warwick, Rhode Island. It was called Islamic Results. And what they did was help insurance agencies market to their clients. And so what I did, I was a copywriter, a CO content writer. It was a good experience. I was there for about two years, and then I decided I wanted something different. And so I looked for other jobs. And that's where I am now, which is currently American Program Bureau. We are leading speakers below in the country. We've been in business for 50 years. And what we do is we create events for universities, hospitals, corporations, conferences, and we bring them speakers who are authors, celebrities, Nobel laureates, all different kinds of people. And what I do there is I'm a social media coordinator. And so I started there as a copywriter. And as I gained more skills from my internship that I did, but also with my creativity, which I gained from majoring in creative writing, I used that to kind of create my own job within the company, which they never had, which was media coordinator. And I still am using my writing skills by creating posts online. But I manage about 15 accounts that we have. And I have interns that I manage as well. So we're looking for interns for the summer, if you're interested. Hi, everybody. My name is Phil Deavitt, and I am a 2009 grad. And I'm the rare bird in the room who was an English minor in a communications journalism major. But it's true, I sometimes forget that. Now that it's been a few years, I sometimes think, Oh, yeah, I was an English major. I definitely definitely an English major, because I feel like I just took so many classes. And that's that's really my, my love. I'm the managing editor of Hathaway Publishing, which is a group of weekly newspapers and their websites, surveying nine communities in southeastern Massachusetts. And I'm editor of one of those papers called The Chronicle, which serves the sleepy little towns of Dartmouth and Westport, Massachusetts. You know, okay. Hey, Westport right there. Okay. And so I've been in journalism in one way or another. For about 10 years, actually got my first job freelancing because of work I did here on campus with the news outlets that we have the student newspaper and the radio station got me in the door of a daily newspaper. And that was sort of the first step in in my my career. And it's not uncommon to see English and creative writing majors in the cubicles alongside me in the newsroom. That's not an uncommon leap at all. I've worked with quite a few. So in journalism, as they'll probably tell you in another room these days, it's about throwing everything up against the wall. So it's about writing. It's about editing photography, but also about layout and design, your digital presence, social media, video, audio, social media, all that stuff. And while that's certainly true for me and my colleagues, I think it all comes down to the writing at the end of the day, because it's the foundation. You can tell a story in a clear, compelling, entertaining, interesting way. It really doesn't matter what the platform is, as much as I appreciate the long form story. And so I would just say prior to my current role, I got to do that, the kind of writing that I love, which is feature writing for five years with a specialty feature publication in Fall River Mass. Just sort of, you know, writing about everyday people, human interests and social issues and personality profiles. So it's journalism, but it's not necessarily the straight news, just the fact stuff. You get to exercise that creative writing muscle a little bit in a real world way. So I love that. And like I said, it all started here, just sort of taking advantage of what was in front of me on a small scale, allowing that to sort of blossom into something bigger. So happy to be here and happy to answer questions and listen to everybody else too. That was a great overview. I realized I forgot to introduce myself. For those of you who don't know me, I am Margaret Case, Professor Case, and I'm in the Department of English and Creative Writing. So I'm a chair if you have questions, you can come to me. But I was, and this is kind of a segue from what you last said. Do you, what kinds of things did you take advantage of while you were here? What advice would you give students who are still in courses? Advantage courses they might try to take that they might not necessarily think about, that you've found helpful. So I see that each of the panelists can maybe think about what, what should they be taking advantage of, a bunch of you have mentioned internships, maybe talk about those, anything that you think would be helpful for them to do, or maybe things that you wish you had done while you were here. That would probably be really useful as well. Should I? Yeah, let's get it. Okay. Is that not something else to talk about? Well, like I said, you know, knowing that I wanted to get into journalism, I wanted my writing to be published. I said, okay, well, the most obvious avenue would be well, for me at the time it was the newspaper. And of course, you have another sterling outlet in Mount Hope here, which I'm looking forward to reading today. So if journalism isn't necessarily your thing, you know, going up to people with notebooks and asking them questions, you're more of a creative writing person. I mean, there's, there's an outlet right there. I think it's all about just doing it, just doing it and getting published. And I would say even if there was no outlet, pretend there is an outlet and do it might be considered a crazy person, you know, producing a newspaper that doesn't really exist technically, but you're doing it. And I think there's something to be said for that. I remember being anxious in school. I felt like by the time I was a sophomore or a junior in college, I had spent just so much time sitting and learning and hearing about other people doing it, that I was just anxious to get out there and do the work myself. So I found that that helped. And as far as internships go, for me, it was the internships were in communications at a TV station in Cranston and a radio station in Providence. Didn't know walking in the door if I'd be able to, you know, if I was going to be, you know, not not getting coffee for people, but are you going to be in the back room sort of organizing stuff? You're going to get to do some good, good stuff. I get to write. And, you know, right off the bat felt a lot more comfortable, you know, because it was a real world application of something I had previously only done for my own entertainment. So, so that definitely helped. But I would say definitely internships. And also what I would say is the class that really helped me kind of find my leadership skills and things like that was Roger. I don't know if they still offer that anymore, but it was a way for me to step up. I was the assistant poetry editor. And, you know, even and I also ran the student run literary magazine. I think that really helped also with teamwork and team building skills. Because when you're in the real world, when you're working, whether it's, you know, with an internship or, you know, you find your first job, you're going to work with many different personalities. And I think some people find it difficult to work with different people, you know, whether it's your manager, you know, your peer, I think it's all about kind of finding that balance and also finding something you're passionate about. I think if you don't do something that you're really, that really inspires you, you know, whether it's writing, whether it's journalism communications, whatever, I think you're, and I, from experience, I know you'll be unhappy. And it's what people say to you, it's not all about the money. I mean, in a way it is, but still. But you're not going to be dedicated to your work unless you're passionate about it. So I think trying different internships, you don't really have to like put yourself in, you know, such a like a focused area, really don't be afraid to branch out, you know, I know, I've majored in creative writing, I never thought I'd be in marketing, but I love it. And so I think it's really all about finding something you're passionate about. So we actually have really similar things that we did when we were in college, because I was also on Roger with Renee Soto, which was an incredible experience and was a huge one for my resume, because I had experience in publishing from everything from editorial production. So experience doesn't start once you graduate and you have your first job, you're already getting your experience, you're already getting material for your resume. And that was a great example of that. I was also on our student literary magazine at the time. And also something called Ezra, an online journal of translation, which is a website developed with Kater Thompson. He's still working here. Yes. And then Ezra is still up and running and there may be people in the room who work with Ezra. And Roger is the same as CW 330 literary publishing, which is now running not hope. So just to kind of close that gap. And I would say in terms of getting involved, it doesn't have to be an opening. If there's something you're really interested in doing and it doesn't exist, create it. There are no rules at all. For example, there was no student literary magazine when I came to Roger Williams. So we created a student literary magazine. Me and two of my best friends got together, filled out the paperwork, resented it to the student senate. Our second year running, we got the program of the year, which I was extremely honored to receive. And it was an incredible experience. That was not something I could go through here at the available clubs. And there was one, there wasn't one. So we had to create it. Ezra was something else that didn't exist. We had to sit down and build the website. I knew nothing about web design whatsoever. But you just create it. And you're not an expert. And you just have to trial and error and kind of guess at it until you do something and producing something is far better than doing nothing. And I would say that also extends beyond just within the within the university and clubs. There are no rules. If there's not an internship available at a company that you're dying to be involved with, call them anyways. Say I would like an informational interview. I've never heard of someone getting turned down for an informational interview before. And that's not something that's publicly advertised. So just say there's a dream person. I really look up to them. Will you just talk with me for 20 minutes about what it is you do. And Then if there is an opening, they already know your name. You're going to seem much more impressive to them as someone who already reached out and expressed interest. And even if there isn't an opening, they might even create one for you. It happens. Sometimes they're so incredibly impressed that they're like, you know, we need you on this team. You didn't have an opening. But now we do. So there, the gist of all of that is just that there are no rules and you can create what you want to create. Going off that, definitely try as many things as possible, especially if you don't know what you want to do. I know it's probably one of the biggest and hardest decisions to figure out what you're going to do after you graduate. Clearly, an example of that, I did know I jumped around a lot. And I love that I did that because I got to try out different things and figure out what I didn't like and honed in on finding what I wanted to do. And there are jobs that, yeah, I worked at a lab, but they also gave me opportunities to work marketing teams so that really opened up the doors for me to figure out what I wanted to do. And then I would also say do a lot of volunteer work, a lot of companies put a lot of emphasis on that right now. And they are more likely to look over your resume if it's, you can show that you're willing to work for a degree, even if you're going to be paid. But they would like to see that you're willing to do that better. I was really excited to hear about the externship or something similar. That would be a job shadow because you just get to go to the company for a few days, which is a lot less stressful than signing up for an internship where you're committed to it for a certain length of time. It sort of lets you go in there and see is this a place that I'd like to come back to? As far as the internship, I create a writing major and this job requires that you have knowledge about IP addresses and networks. And these are words that I couldn't even necessarily define when I started working there, which was scary. But the great thing about having a background in writing is that all companies need people that know how to write. And so it'd be a lot easier for them to hire someone that already knows how to write and teach them something about IP addresses than to hire someone who knows about computers but doesn't know how to write. So that's definitely an advantage that we have. I want to mention another thing I did was I was here a couple of years ago. And so I've done an internship with the Marketing Communications Department at Roger Williams University, which was a convenient internship because it's right on campus. So commuting is not an issue. And what I did with them is I got to go to events and write articles for a PDQ, which goes out and for the alumni magazine. That was cool because it was just adding a new type of writing that I learned how to do. There's like a journalistic type of writing. And again, as an internship, it was great because it's not necessarily something I want to do for the rest of my life. But I got to learn that by doing the internship. Another thing, working at ABTAC right now, my passion is not IP addresses. But I got to learn that this company is really, it's a small company, has really great people. And I just really love the atmosphere there. And so that's something to stay for, even if it's not something that you think you're interested in, just getting in the door and you might find something else that makes you want to stay there. Right on top of that point, just like in addition to doing the internship and stuff. For instance, I don't think that I want to stay in the technical writing field forever. But I found a good, it was just sort of a segue from a graduation. Like why I started my internship at ABTAC. And it seemed like a very logical path to go down. So even though, like, I mean, my ultimate dream, you know, like, I want to be a published novelist. But of course, not everyone can do that. Not everyone can make money. Not everyone can do that as their own job. So it's like, OK, well, I can do that on the side. But being in technical writing field, I've been healthier now. But previously with ABTAC, the sort of engineering software is you find that you can apply things from these jobs, like literally everywhere. So I mean, like, I'm going to stay in the technical writing field because it's very lucrative. You know, I have a lot of self-definition and I don't really want to boundary the brand of my company. So I can do a lot of really interesting work. And it's for myself. But I know that I can pull down from other areas. So don't be discouraged if you end up in a field that you don't necessarily know if you want to be in because it can still teach you a lot of things. And that isn't to say that I'm unhappy. I'm just not being my passionate dream job, you know. And so it's OK to take time to figure out what you want to do with your career. And I think my career is going very well for me. But like, you know, passion wise, creativity wise, personally, like, I don't know what I want to do yet, you know. So it's it's OK to have sort of this career is going well, but you don't know if you want that necessarily. I feel like I'm not in the circumstance right now. But just, you know, it's find out what you're good at, even if it's not what you want to be doing sort of thing, you know. So these are your good fields to go into. And they're going to help you sort of know where you go on to. So internships, definitely. And keep finding out what you want to do and get closer and closer to that. You know, I guess the first thing I want to say is that you just have to create whatever version of that is for you. You just have to do that. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was well, it was advice in the form of kind of a negative statement. It was someone telling me that I should be embarrassed of what I did in six months, something that I created. And that comes off really horribly at first. But if you really think about it, you should be embarrassed of something that you've done in the past in the sense that you've grown, you've gotten better, you realize what you could have done better. And knowing that in hindsight, you're not going to be as great as you are in the present allows you to kind of get over that fear of doing something bad. Because of course, you're going to get better. Of course, you're not perfect right now. What you just have to create and put yourself out there. As far as what I did at Roger Williams, I was an opinions editor for the newspaper. And that was really interesting because I wasn't a journalism student, but I wasn't really in like the journalism part of the newspaper. I was in the opinions part. And that was nice because I got experience managing people. I got experience working kind of like a work environment. And I kind of counted that as an internship for me because somehow I was able to go through all these steps and never do an internship. But a lot of my peers have. And I would say like my advice for internships is there's kind of two ways you can go. You can either go do an internship at a name place that's really easily recognizable. And that'll be a great little check mark on your resume. Or you can do an internship at somewhere small, kind of unknown. And that's where you'll get to wear a bunch of different hats and get tons of experience that might not be that company line that'll be recognizable to everyone. But it'll be all those points underneath that line that'll actually be applicable to the jobs that you want. But yeah, just create. To add to what everyone has already said, I would agree with Inter to say been out there in a few different positions so far. I have so much confidence in the English major. And it's, I think, beyond what you would see as directly applicable skills because we're not only writers, we're also readers. And I see it all the time when I'm working with people on projects and when I'm in different tough work situations, things like that. Bringing the analytical and critical mindset is a huge strength in that group because it's very obvious when you're out there. And also, as an English major, one of the things I think about, actually, in Professor Degundt's class, we read William Prokner's, it's just one example, but I'm sure a lot of us have appreciation for nonlinear narratives. I think it is a way to approach your life after college. Think about staying open to opportunity and realizing that your plans aren't going to happen in the way that you expect them. If any of you do need to leave, this may be a good time to seek out. But I was thinking it might be nice to have just a nice question session if you have questions for all the panelists or for specific panelists. Probably, if you have a question, somebody wants to too. So great if you have a couple of those, go ahead and share now. And then in about five hours, we'll switch to a quick, what do I do when I get out into the informal networking atmosphere? So questions, anyone? I wanted to ask stuff, how you ended up in that job if they didn't have any technical writers with the situation where you just approached them and just kind of created that job for yourself, like they were saying? So actually, I got, I had started to sort of send out my resume to different places, but I actually had a network connection there. I had previously worked at a health company in Miami called the Tugger Health, and that's as I have a new family down there. So I worked here three summers as an intern. Someone I knew there, knew that this technical writing was a healthcare company that I was actually looking for a technical writer. So they told me to look there, that they would contact the people on charge. So I sort of like, they helped me get sort of like a shoot in the door, but they said like in, so I applied to the position. So they were looking for a technical writer, but there had never been that position before. And just also too, the qualifications they were looking for on the job position were just not what I am at all. But I gave them my resume, I practiced the hell out of my interview answers, and I think that I really impressed them with my interview and I fit really well with the company culture. So they really liked me and I know that they were liking the work that I'm doing so far. So like they were talking with like five years in the field already with the degree in computer science. That's not me, that's not me at all. But so I had wonderful experience working at Aptec with computers, software code, hardware, firmware, that sort of thing. So I had that experience. I had already been in the healthcare industry. So I knew all those ins and outs. So, and I have been writing forever, obviously as an English major. And I worked all four years in the writing center as well. So just, it was a nice cocktail of experience that they weren't asking for, but they realized they liked. So I think that answers your question. Yeah, okay, yeah, thank you. My question was for Beth. In you not being a math person, how challenging was it for you to go to that math person? What did you do to adjust and prepare for that? It was hard in the sense of being in this world altogether and not being familiar with it. So I was going to math conferences with research mathematicians and helping also people within your organization with their information on the website and trying to, luckily I wasn't writing too much about the actual math that they were doing, but trying to accurately portray the world that they live in or sound like it's actually in the voice of the math society and things like that. It's hard, but I don't think at the end of the day that it's that different from anywhere else. Anywhere you go, you need to try to figure out that particular culture and where they're coming from and who their audience is and so on. And so I'm actually think that it was pretty great learning experience, just getting completely outside of what I've been there from having an appreciation for the fact that I don't know very much about research math, but also knowing that you're bringing in a very specific set of skills as well and that you're there to help. That story of my own experience, that I worked for seven years at a university in Ohio as a professor and then my partner got a job here. So we had to make that terrible decision where you do when you have to leave a tenure position. So I came here and I got to put into practice what I always told my English majors and the skills for creating writing majors as well. You must have skills that everybody wants. So I thought, great, now I get to put that into practice because I didn't have a job. So I ended up working at Brown in the Center for Regenerative Medicine and the people that I work with were mostly orthopedic surgeons, orthopedic researchers. I knew nothing about any of that. So it's kind of like that's experience working with math which I also know nothing about. But I instead of housing them actually write their research proposals because I knew how to communicate information to a general public. I could tell them, no, if you want a general brochure that's going out, you can't use the word condo genesis. Nobody knows what that means. And I know that because I don't know what it means. So I just have to, I'm so glad you said that because it's really true that as an English major you can go out, you're kind of like an international translator. You can go out and you can put yourself in a new situation and you can learn and read and what you said about talking to people there and researching what they're studying. It's actually fascinating. And I think that kind of connects to what a lot of you are saying that you get to learn on the job and then apply your skills to what you're learning. I know we're going a little over time but I actually would love to add something to that. And I know there's a lot of rah, rah, like there's a lot of wonderful things about being an English major including the fact that you have the critical thinking skills that you can bring in and apply. And those are fabulous. But I do want to just present one reality and that is that there is no such thing as a degree whether it's English or medicine, whether it's in science and humanities and so forth. There is no such thing as a degree that will fully prepare you for any career path or for any job. And that's just a world. And it's not something that's not just only for English majors or anything like that. It is across the board. And so just knowing that the end of your college career is not the end of your learning that you need to be a lifelong learner and that if you get into a position where you are missing some skill, it is, you can't blame your degree for not having given you that skill. You can't ask your employer, like you didn't give me the training for this skill. It is personal responsibility to know I need this skill and I know that I have to go get it. And that can either be going and taking an additional class or it could just be going to YouTube. There's a lot of wonderful things on YouTube. Sometimes I have to use a software. I'm like, I have no idea how to use that. So I spend a couple of hours watching those videos. And whenever things like that come up, it is your responsibility to find those gaps and fill them so that you are the right fit for roles and your degree just isn't going to do that alone. It's wonderful as it is in your toolbox and your resume, it's not gonna cut it solely. I would actually like before you go out there to meet the employers and talk with our panelists. I would like the guest panelists who are here, the auxiliary panelists, just to stand so that we can see you, Corey and Brian and Ash. This is Ash Lago and Brian Tabars and Corey Alex. Not Ash Lago. Not Ash Lago. I'm sorry, Ash Allen, Gina. She's great. I can't. Ash Lago will be here. I've got two Ashes in my head. And Ash Lago will be here as well as Nicole Foti. And they're available to you as well in terms of what happens when you get out of here in terms of job searches or graduate school or just surviving and doing it with a smile. So they're available to you. I also would like to make sure that you all recognize. I know that a few people on the panel and that Ash for sure and Brian know are wonderful and beloved Professor Diane Kudisky is back for this. I would like you to stand and just be recognized as someone to love and to go. And then you're going to go out there and there are all kinds of people that you did your homework, went online and you looked to see the names of the companies you're thinking about. And I want to target just in terms of getting a little bit of information and introducing yourself. Remember there are two kinds of interviews, right? This is not a transactional interview which is a term I learned, you're not exchanging resumes. You may exchange a card and make it a note from them. But Laura I was wondering since you talked about the information gathering interview sort of thing our students won't have 12 minutes, 15, 20 minutes with everybody but can you give them some tips? Am I just helping them know how to approach these strangers? I would encourage each of you to challenge yourselves to go and meet and talk to one person out there that you don't know and practice this. That's your challenge. Laura thank you. Yeah, network is terrifying for everyone involved. It's going into a cocktail party and not knowing anyone and then having to go and find something to talk about and present yourself in a quick pitch. So just know that it is terrifying. Networking does mean talking to someone and so you can challenge yourself to attend as many networking events as you can get your hands on. I mean you're already here tonight so you're doing fantastic. That's such an important part of getting into the workforce. But if you challenge yourself just to talk to one person for each networking event you go to and make sure you exchange cards with them and that is a really good just go to goal. If you talk to two or three then that's even better and that's fantastic. And sometimes you're gonna be on fire and you're gonna be able to talk to like 10 people and that'll be awesome. Networking never stops. Even when you have a job don't stop networking because you never know like changes really quickly the more connections you have the better and the last thing is never say oh that doesn't relate directly to the job I'm specifically looking for right now. Toss the card or that's not a work well contact. You're building a network slowly and it's a process and it's a lifelong experience but that network grows and then you never know how they might connect later to really help you in something like I had no idea I was going to be doing X but suddenly you have in your LinkedIn network like oh I know so much of your works there. I actually have an example of that. Recently I had a colleague who decided that she wanted to leave publishing and she really wanted to get into education and to top it off she was moving to North Carolina so she was like what do I do? So all I did was do a search in my LinkedIn and I was like who do I know in North Carolina who's in education and through that set up an informational interview when she has a job starting there in a month. That's just someone I randomly met never knew it would ever result in anything but because I kept that connection it helped someone eventually. So as soon as you meet someone I know I'm talking a lot now talk to them, exchange cards and even if they don't directly relate to what you're looking for keep it in your back pocket. All right, thank you all. Thank you everyone. About skills snaps, future employers. Head out.