Jeremiah Eaton ’22–This summer, I have had the pleasure of working with the Wabash College Career Services department as an Operations Intern. Over the course of this internship, I have worked ona variety of tasks which I find to be very rewarding. On the one hand, I’ve been working with Career Services administrators and faculty on the Freshmen Fifteen program. This program is designed to integrate the incoming freshmen into the world of resumes, LinkedIn, and Handshake to get them ready for the world of job searching and applications. The Freshmen Fifteen program requires certain steps to be met by the incoming freshmen including the aforementioned tasks of completing a resume (which Includes creating a LinkedIn profile), activating Handshake accounts, and receiving goodies from Career Services (getting a food bag and a free t-shirt). Once these steps are completed, freshmen are then eligible to enter a raffle for either GameStop gift cards or a Nintendo Switch. During the creation of this year’s Freshmen Fifteen program, our team brainstormed possible themes to follow and ultimately chose video games. Video games connect dearly to our young generation, so it seemed like an easy choice. This themealso made the rest of the program creation fun as we created a sample resume for the popular video game character Mario. I also created the flyer graphic for the Freshmen Fifteen program that might be seen on campus this coming semester. Other than this, I have been steadily reviewing and providing feedback for resumes that are submitted through Handshake. It has been a very rewarding task to review resumes because I have seen quite a few peoples’ resumes change dramatically after following my advice in myfeedback. It was also very nice to see what some of my fellow Wabash brothers have been doing this summer as well as what big things they have accomplished. Obviously, these are private things, but nonetheless it is always interesting when I review resumes.
Through this internship, I have learned the importance of holding myself accountable to complete the tasks I set out for myself in a timely manner, especially since the internship was virtual this year. I did not have an environment that made sure I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, so taking the initiative to spend time completing even the smallest tasks as soon as possible was very important and helped me become a more productive intern. I also learned how fun trying new things is! I never saw myself as a Career Services type of worker, but after working with the department, it has been nothing less than eye-opening and fun! You will not always like what you do, but this was not the case for me this summer.
