Tag: time management

Cheers to Senior Year

The past three years have literally flown by. Through this blog, I’ve been able to share a lot of the things I’ve done and experienced, so here’s to another year of doing so. Let’s catch up on my life.

Let’s cover summer. After many applications to various companies in and around Chicago and Washington DC, I didn’t come up with anything. (In fact, I did still end up receiving a ‘we went with another applicant’ email halfway through summer). So, I decided to keep my job at the Burge Front Desk and my internship with Congressman Dave Loebsack’s campaign. However, the front desk job did change: late last spring, I was offered the Lead Desk Clerk position. Due to staying at the desk over the summer, I was able to train and learn from our previous Lead Desk Clerk so I would be able to take over come early August. Being the Lead Desk Clerk means that I continue to do a lot of my regular duties as a desk clerk with supervising the desk, schedule-building, and other extra tasks added on top. I’ve only officially been in the position for a few weeks, but I’m happy about the direction its heading so far.

My position as Campaign Fellow did not change and it has been business as usual. We did get a new campaign manager in early summer, but that still did not change much about the job.

One big event over the summer was taking the June LSAT. As you may or may not know by now, with my major being Ethics & Public Policy, I’ve been aspiring to go to law school. One part of the application process is a standardized test that is called the Law School Admission Test, or the LSAT. The test is comprised of 4 scored sections: 2 logical reasoning, logic games, reading comprehension, and the unscored writing section. The score range is 120-180. And I actually did okay! However, I fell a little short of my goals for the exam so I’ve decided to retake it in September. I’ve increased my study hours (trying to do around 20-24 hours per week. (yes, that is on top of my classes, work schedule, and extracurriculars) and found some study buddies. I don’t think I can pull an Elle Woods, but I can definitely try to get close.

Besides work and LSAT, I finished up the summer by volunteering with OnIowa! again to welcome the class of 2021. The weekend before classes started, I took them through mini-lectures based around the Iowa Challenge and then through activities planned around campus. I had a pretty cool group of students to lead with my co-leader and I really do hope they thrive on campus. (shoutout to you, Group 720! I hope you have a great year).

Summer wasn’t extremely eventful so I’m excited that classes have started up again. Here are the courses I’m taking this semester:

  • Pilates
  • English Grammar
  • Women and Politics in the US
  • Social Entrepreneurship
  • Calligraphy I: Blackletter Hands.

I am taking my course-load more lax this semester due to wanting the extra time to work on my law school applications and the LSAT. I also only have about 25 credits left to graduate so we’re cruising towards May.

The Internship Search: Resources & Success

Much like my student employment search over a year ago, the internship search has certainly been a trip. To start off, the University of Iowa has a number of resources to aid students in a job or internship search. There’s the Pomerantz Career Center and the Job & Internship Fair. The career center will help you with anything from resumes, cover letters, and letters of introduction to interview prep and practice. Not to mention, they are a great resource if you do not know where to start. The Career Center also puts on the Job & Internship Fair which pulls over a 150+ employers and all of the graduate schools from the University of Iowa.

Due to my own blunders, I have not been able to attend the Job and Internship Fair during my semesters here. It is held once a semester, always on a Wednesday, and usually from 11AM-4PM.

And I always have class.

The fair is one of the more traditional ways of finding an internship. Being a political science major and being subscribed to student organization emails, the UDemocrats presented an interesting opportunity: Congressman Dave Loebsack’s Iowa City office was still searching for another intern. It had a minimal time requirement (~10 hours), unpaid, and purely made to gain experience.

While the unpaid part may sound disappointing, it’s the experience part that is key. There are thousands of stories of college graduates who have never held a job and are struggling to find work because employers want experience. The internship sounded more than okay to me: it hit my interest in politics, my desire to gain experience working within a political office, and it was something I could put on my resume if given the job. So I applied. All I had to do was send in my resume and wait.

Luckily, I received a reply from their staff within a day. They wanted an interview and offered up some potential dates and times.

I dressed in my best business casual and went out to meet a member of their staff for the interview. It was rather open ended. They wanted to know why I wanted the internship, what my relevant experience was (thankfully, I had volunteered to canvass neighborhoods for the Hillary Clinton campaign prior to to the caucus), and any details about myself or experiences that would make me a beneficial intern. Between my experiences of canvassing and my involvement with No Labels, I had plenty to talk about and use to sell myself. And I did it successfully. By the end of the interview, I was offered the position as an intern. Now, within my first week, I’ve done a little bit of work for them and I’m excited to see where this experience takes me.

How To: Time Management

Pinterest and social media are full of funny little infographics on how college is a triangle and you can only pick two out of social life, good grades, and sleep.

And it’s true.

Kind of.

Now for starters, I am no way an expert in Time Management. It is a skill that I have learned and am still finding my way around as each new semester has its new challenges.

I can however give you some tips on how to manage your time and be on the path for being a successful student at Iowa.

  1. Get an agenda/planner/notebook

    Monthly Calendar View
    Monthly Calendar View

You can choose whatever method you like in order to keep track of dates, deadlines, and appointments. There are also other popular methods like google calendar (which you can sync to your smart phone).

  1. You’re going to use your agenda to write down all club meetings, exam dates, work schedules, and whatever else is going to take up your time.
  2. Follow your agenda and prep accordingly.

On a day to day basis, I like to write in my agenda about what I need to do to be prepared for classes, work, and club meeting for the next day. On the weekends, I put a sticky note in my agenda and write down all the things I want to accomplish in order to be prepared for the following week.

  1. Reap the rewards!

Last week, I was so on top of things due to this method that I had all of my homework done for the week by Tuesday night and was able to relax Wednesday. This also allowed for having the time to care for myself but also have the time to do any assignments that were assigned during the week and due soon after.