Category: Public Interest/Public Service

Where Do I Start???????????

By Barbara Hewitt

The internet is a terrific resource for job seekers, making information on job openings, employers, and job search techniques instantaneously accessible to all of us. The down side, however, is that the amount of information can be overwhelming. Luckily, Margaret Riley Dikel has provided a terrific resource through the Riley Guide to help you sort through all of this!

The Riley Guide is a regularly updated directory of employment and career information resources available via the Internet. It provides instruction for jobseekers and recruiters on how to use the Internet to their best advantage. While she links to job hunting resources on topics like writing cover letters and resumes and interviewing, I most appreciate her A-Z index which makes finding specific links relevant to your particular search a snap. Click on ‘N”, for example, to find resources for your nonprofit job search or “E” if engineering is your passion. The RileyGuide has loads of links, so you will still need to do some searching to see which might be the most useful for your personal job and internship search, but it is a terrific starting point.

Day in the Life: Development Officer at Penn Medicine by Day, Grad Student by Night

Day in the Life on@PennCareerDay is back!  January 30th – February 3rd we will highlight Careers in Healthcare on our various social media platforms.  There are a variety of career paths in the healthcare industry beyond becoming a nurse or doctor, managing insurance or healthcare policy.  We are excited to welcome Lee Every to discuss an important role to the industry – fundraising for research.  Lee will also talk about a component to anyone’s career path – pursuing an advance degree – as a current graduate student here at Penn.  To learn more about Lee, visit our Penn & Beyond blog.  And remember, follow him on @PennCareerDay next Tuesday.  We welcome questions on Facebook or send them directly on Twitter, and we’ll be sure Lee gets to them!

Lee Every is an Assistant Development Officer at Penn Medicine Development and Alumni Relations.  In his role Lee works to develop fundraising initiatives for a number of centers and institutes within the Penn Medicine Health System.  Currently, Lee is working with the Center for Aides Research and the Neuro-Ophthalmology Program within the Department of Neurology.  Both departments are spearheading cutting edge research that requires additional funding to support their work.  In addition, Lee works in conjunction other Penn Medicine Development Officers in order to fundraise for some of Penn Medicine’s most well known centers and institutes including the Institute on Aging and Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research that consistently makes strides in the fight to cure Alzheimer’s.

Lee began working at Penn Medicine in 2010 and immediately enrolled in the Fels Institute of Government Executive Program where he will graduate with a Master of Public Administration in May of 2012.  A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in 2009 with the Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, Lee interned with a number of non-profit entities during college including the American Red Cross and the United Way of America.  Lee hopes to combine his knowledge of public policy and finance with his experience in the non-profit and higher education sectors as his career moves forward.

Guest Blog – Learning to Let Go: The Toughest Lesson to Learn

by Alyssa Schwenk, CAS ’10

When I was at Penn, I had a certain routine: up at 9, class, gym, library until 3. A late lunch with friends, then into the Daily Pennsylvanian offices to report, write, and edit until the wee hours. I’d break for dinner around 7, return to the office, go home around 12:30, catch up with roommates, do homework, and send emails until about 2:30, when I’d crash. Lather, rinse, repeat. I loved it.

Now — two months into my second year teaching in D.C. through Teach for America — I can’t give you a daily schedule. I have the broadest strokes: Up at ten till six, at school by seven, and the kids come at eight. After that — who knows. While there’s an academic schedule, no two days even resemble one another. Some days, my math lesson goes amazingly, and every one of my 23 kindergarteners can count to 20 (trust me, it’s a big deal). Other days, there’s a tough-tough-tough conversation with a parent, an administrator, or a social worker. Or there’s an earthquake. So it  goes. It’s an experience unlike any other, and one that I’m incredibly proud of doing on a daily basis.

I joined TFA immediately after graduating Penn in 2010, surprising even my closest family and friends. In September of senior year, excited and anxious about the future, I’d decided to apply. I wanted to try something new, to push myself farther: It was time to put myself in a situation that was bigger than me, one that made an impact in the world. I also was struck by how unbelievably lucky I’d been to spend four years at Penn, for being from a family with the savvy to make that happen, even if we didn’t have the resources. I wanted to give back. Like most major life decisions, it wasn’t exactly planned, but in retrospect, it made perfect sense.

Everyone I’d asked about TFA said, “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” While I appreciated the enormity of the work, I also saw the phrase and the sentiment as partly cliché: If closing the achievement gap were easy, obviously it would have happened. Of course it was tough. I was expecting hard and frustrating and a learning curve on teaching. I was expecting to experience situations that I had never encountered. I was expecting steep statistical odds and long nights and a struggle.

But I was not expecting the crash course in emotions, acceptance, and letting go. It’s all in how you look at it. Nothing can ache more than watching a child, who you see every day, who you taught to do multiplication and whose shoes you tie and whose milk you open, not getting what she needs and deserves. But nothing can bring you as much joy as that same child figuring out how to really do subtraction for the first time. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a student dealing with a situation that can’t be fixed through hard work and strategizing, but nothing is more empowering than seeing that student learn to read, count, and think independently. Even just eight weeks into the school year, I can already see enormous growth in my five-year-olds. Seeing my hard work pay off in such a concrete, immediate and life-changing way — so soon after leaving college — is a rare and amazing privilege. It’s that ability to affect change in my students’ lives that keeps me going on a daily basis.

Exploring Careers? Check the Obituaries…

One exercise I have seen suggested in career counseling books and workshops is that to learn what really matters to you, you should try writing your own epitaph.  The idea is that you can see what you want to be remembered for, and as a result become more focused in your career exploration and job search.

I know it sounds creepy, perhaps this blog might have been better timed in a month for Halloween, when talk of the dead and the undead is more socially acceptable. But I will venture forth in sharing a Sunday ritual I have had for years (not eating eye-of-newt, I promise):  I sit down in the morning and pore through the Sunday New York Times Obituaries.   As a career counselor, I have always found the profiles of people in their long career spans to be very compelling.  I can’t think of a better place to learn about the variety of careers available, nor to really illustrate the varying roles of fate, of ambition, of goals achieved and how unanticipated experiences have changed the course of people’s lives. When you read obituaries you also see how a personality, for example a style of leadership or capacity for empathy, can play a huge role in the nature of someone’s achievements.

While reading the obit articles can be sad because the lives described are at their ends, it is also thrilling to be reminded how much people can accomplish for society in how many ways.  If you are currently exploring your options, this is an unconventional, but inspiring approach to learn about the world of work.  These are some of the people profiled this week:

Entertainment/Communications Careers

Founding Force of the Big East Conference

Gavitt harnessed the burgeoning power of televised sports coverage with his nascent league to produce a powerful conference.

Man Who Shaped Miniature Golf

Mr. Lomma and his brother Alphonse are widely credited with having shaped the game’s familiar postwar incarnation

Painter and a Creator of Pop Art

Mr. Hamilton, whose sly, trenchant take on consumer culture and advertising made him a pioneering figure in Pop Art, was known for his cover design of the Beatles’ “White Album.”

Political Careers

Leader in Gay Rights Fight

Mr. Evans helped form and lead the movement that coalesced after gay people and their supporters protested a 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar.

Antiwar Leader in 1960s

Mr. Oglesby led Students for a Democratic Society as it publicly opposed the Vietnam War, and his speech “Let Us Shape the Future” is considered a landmark of American political rhetoric.

Charles Percy, Former Ill. Senator

Mr. Percy was a moderate Republican who clashed with President Richard M. Nixon over the Watergate scandal.

Education Careers

Man Who Fought Standardized Tests

Dr. Perrone’s ideas on flexible teaching methods led to a loose network of public alternative schools in New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Cultural Musicologist

Christopher Small, a New Zealand-born writer and musicologist who argued that music is above all an active ritual involving those who play and listen to it

Judge and a Scholar

Mr. Asch, a judge with a Ph.D. in sociology, wrote scholarly works about civil liberties and made notable decisions about landlord-tenant law and gay employment.

Hi Tech Careers

Early Chronicler of Video Games

Mr. Kunkel helped start the first published gaming column in 1978, and later the first video game magazine.

Pioneer of E-Books

Mr. Hart began the digital library Project Gutenberg after a July 4 fireworks display, when he typed up the Declaration of Independence and made it available for download.

Builder of Cargo Container

Mr. Tantlinger is credited with creating, in the 1950s, the first commercially viable modern shipping container, which changed the way nations do business.

And, for the thrillseekers…

Daring Italian Mountaineer

Mr. Bonatti was a member of the Italian team that conquered K2 in northern Pakistan

Air and Land Daredevil

Ms. Skelton was a three-time national aerobatic women’s flight champion when she turned to race-car driving, then went on to exceed 300 m.p.h. in a jet-powered car.

What do you want to be remembered for?  I’ll close with a quote from my colleague John Tuton: “…our society focuses so much on the outward trappings of success like salary and possessions when folks are alive, but I’ve never seen a dollar sign on a tombstone.”

A Day in the Life: Environmental Advocacy Group

Read Charley Dorsaneo’s archived tweet feed here: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/CharleyDorsaneo_Feed.pdf

Here at Penn Career Services, we are dedicating special attention to careers in sustainability and the environment next week in line with Penn’s theme – Year of Water. On Tuesday, February 15th, Charley Dorsaneo (SAS ’10) will tweet throughout the day about his job as the Clean Energy Associate with PennEnvironment, a statewide, citizen-funded environmental advocacy group.

Charley Dorsaneo (SAS '10)

Charley joined PennEnvironment in August of 2010 and is in his first year of a two year fellowship program with Environment America, a federation of state-based environmental groups of which PennEnvironment is a member. As the Clean Energy Associate, he works to pass statewide legislation to promote renewable energy like wind and solar across the Commonwealth.

PennEnvironment’s mission is to protect Pennsylvania’s water, air, and open spaces. With roughly 50,000 members and activists across the state, PennEnvironment works to advocate for strong environmental policy by showing our state legislators that Pennsylvanians care about their environment.

Since Charley has been on staff, he has been working to pass legislation that would promote green building technology across the state, increase Pennsylvania’s solar requirement, and allow for the construction of an offshore wind farm on Lake Erie.

Charley received a B.A. in Politics, Political Science, and Economics (PPE) from the University of Pennsylvania.

If you want to hear first hand what other career paths are, attend our panel Traditional & New Directions in Environmental Careers on Wednesday, February 16th at 4pm in Houston Hall’s Golkin Room.

For resources to help explore a career in sustainability and the environment, visit our Career Exploration page.