Campus Life & Future Careers

Few university students haven’t heard of LinkedIn, pleasantly deemed the Facebook equivalent of young professionals and job seekers. Although underdeveloped, many students have started a budding profile on LinkedIn. Typical experiences highlight experiences in faculty and departmental organizations as well as research skills and summer internships.

Nonetheless, not everyone is convinced to invest time into creating a LinkedIn profile. It’s too much effort to create another social media profile and it’s intimidating to jump into a platform where you start afresh with 0 followers. If you already have a strong résumé, why bother with LinkedIn?

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There is nothing wrong with being career driven, in fact it is admirable and encouraged to have a goal that you are actively working towards achieving. Taking every opportunity that you come across and seeking out ways to make yourself stand out as a candidate when applying for positions, through your education and experience demonstrates an immense amount of motivation and dedication. However, while this “do whatever to be successful” mindset can be very productive it can also be detrimental, as one may become too robotically focused on what will “look good” on their resume, resulting in an unintentional ignorance towards equally beneficial opportunities.

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Today I went to my final classes of second year. Most of them were review, a lot of them let me know of the difficulty of exams to come. I will be writing essays for what feels like a very long time. But this is something everyone can relate to. Rather, I’m excited for my summer.

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“Hi, can you write a reference letter for me?”

If only it were so simple to get a reference letter.

If you need to apply for any graduate programs and awards for next school year, now is the perfect time to start soliciting around! (more…)

By now I’m sure most of you know that science is not my field of study, therefore I have little to offer in terms of information regarding science related research positions or careers. In an effort to balance out the subject matter of my blog posts, I’ve enlisted the help of a friend who is more than familiar with the field. As a third year Health Sci student at McMaster University who’s been working in a research lab for nearly two years, has taken an MCAT prep course, scored phenomenally on her MCAT and is in the midst of applying to medical school, she’s basically a treasure trove of information. She works in an immunology research lab examining the cellular mechanisms involved in allergy. Recently, I sat down with her and asked her a few questions regarding lab research.

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Getting your hands on solid reference letters can be one of the most challenging aspects of the application process to navigate. Nevertheless, it remains an indispensable element of any application. The prospect of acquiring references can be so daunting, it’s often difficult to know where to begin. In my own experience, I’ve questioned everything from how many references I should list, to who I should ask, what qualifies as a legitimate reference, will so-and-so agree to be my reference, what if their letter is negative and so on and so forth. As time progressed and I began submitting more and more applications of various types, I’ve grown to appreciate the art of acquiring references. Along the way, I received tons of advice from friends and peers as well as having learned a thing or two on my own. The time has come for me to pay it forward and share the knowledge I’ve accumulated with you all.

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             I really just thought I’d be the coffee girl.Handing files to people, doing mechanical tasks and helping out around the camp whenever needed and at the service of everyone else.

            My experience as a Camp Coordinator in an Ontario private schools’ international ESL summer program was much more than I expected in every way.

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I’m ashamed to say that even after gruelling over the perfect cover letter, prepping for the interview and waiting for the call back that may never come- even after going through all of this and somehow succeeding- I have anxiety on the first day.

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Woot! Who else is excited for Tech Fair? Every year the New Rez lobby is packed by tons of Tech Fair goers, and this year, this will be happening on October 7^th and 8^th. For those of you not in the know, Tech Fair is a career fair of various companies in the technology sector. They come to introduce themselves and recruit talented students, especially in engineering and computer science. As a networking event, it’s one of the biggest and most fun at McGill.

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Last week I worked my first shift after a long four months of summer vacation (those of you who’ve read my bio know that I work part time at an independent grocery store). Now that I’ve been working there for a little over a year, I can genuinely say that I enjoy and appreciate my humble, minimum-wage job. But I didn’t always carry such a positive attitude towards part-time work.

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