I have found an internship and an apartment in Portland.  I have scheduled my last few classes.  I just realized that these next 10 days will be my last at the University of Oregon campus in Eugene.

I have been here for so long now that it is a very bittersweet transition.  I have made lasting relationships and many memories here.  I will be sad to leave it all behind.  However, I have a bright and interesting future to look forward to.  A new chapter.

Fortunately, I can stay connected through social media.  It is great that I will be able to maintain relationships with all of the great people I have met here.  Also, I have started networking in Portland and have established some contacts and potential pals.

Facebook and Twitter will surely help me in my transition from Eugene to Portland.  I will also keep blogging about my experiences with my last few classes and my internship in the city.  I am really excited.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am relocating from Eugene, Ore., to Portland, Ore.  I am involved in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication’s program called Portland Senior Experience, a portfolio-building internship program that allows graduating seniors to finish their remaining coursework in Portland while interning at a company doing journalism and communications-related work.

Relocating is not easy.  I am moving two hours away and I may as well be moving across the country.  I have spent my last three consecutive weekends commuting to Portland to look for a place to live.  I found it difficult, to say the least, to find a place.  Most decent places that are conveniently located are either too expensive or require a long lease.  While I love Portland and see myself establishing a life and career there after college, I am hesitant to commit to a long lease because I don’t yet know what my job situation will be.

The company I will be interning for, Elemental Technologies, a thriving startup company located in the heart of downtown Portland, may decide to hire me after the internship is over.  I am hopeful that they will, but there is always the chance that they won’t at which point I will need to look for other opportunities.  I will focus my job search in Portland, but if I happen to find an offer I can’t refuse somewhere other than in Portland, I will need to relocate…again!

After many grueling trips to Portland and after seeing one awful apartment after the other, I finally found the perfect place to call home.  It is the diamond in the ruff—the needle in the haystack.

I applied for the place and was accepted!  It is a gorgeously redone apartment in a very nice, quiet and safe neighborhood and it is close to downtown.  The place couldn’t be more perfect.  I have, however, run into a few slight obstacles.  First of all, I have a cat and the property owner didn’t want to allow animals.  I was able to talk her into it though—whew!  Of course, I have to pay a hefty pet deposit, but I’m not worried about it.  Secondly, I was told it was a month-to-month rental agreement—this is perfect for me because of my situation—but the landlord is looking for someone long-term.

I wish I could see into the future and know where I will be in four months.  Since that is not doable, I just have to cross my fingers and hope for a series of events that work in my favor…

Wish me luck!

A few sunny days have budded daffodils that line the pavements, and campus is waking up from a long winter nap. The onset of spring and my dwindling motivation can only mean one thing:  I have senioritis.

The main symptoms of senioritis include chronic procrastination, lack of motivation, a drop in academic performance, and “coasting,” which is the act of going through classes with very little concentration or application of intent. This usually happens in the last year of high school, college or graduate school. One of the most notable symptoms of senioritis, is that all attempts by educators to curb senioritis tend to actually increase senioritic symptoms.   -Wikipedia

I have suffered from senioritis before; it is not foreign to me.  Although it has been nine long years since I graduated from high school, I can still remember how it feels to be a senior.  It is a bittersweet feeling.  There is a lot of excitement to be had about ending one chapter and starting anew.  It is very exhilarating; however, it is making these last few weeks of academia a huge challenge.

Although my college experience has put me into the category of “non-traditional,” I still have been infected with senioritis. Does anyone know a cure?

I have an iPhone 3G.  This may sound cliché, but I don’t know what I ever did without it. I used the Craigslist application on the iPhone to research rentals.  I used the iPhone to call on the listings I found.  I used the iPhone’s GPS feature to navigate around the city

to each of the 10 apartments I checked out—and of course to Voodoo Doughnut (a Portland landmark).  I used my iPhone to find entertainment, restaurants and shopping near the hotel I stayed in.  I also used it to post Twitter updates, check my Facebook account and check my e-mail accounts.  And now I am writing this blog post from my iPhone while riding back to Eugene.

There are many other smartphones and handheld devices besides the iPhone that offer the same or similar features.  I just happen to have an iPhone and I love it.  It has been a convenient time-saver for me.  I use it multiple times per day for many different reasons.  It has made my life a lot easier!

Blogging is an important part of the public relations curriculum at the University of Oregon.  I started this blog as a requirement for my Strategic Public Relations and Communications class.  I am required to write two posts per week for the term.  I think it is a great assignment and I am really happy it is a part of the required work for the class.

Today, however, I have run into a little bit of trouble.  WordPress users, Do the words “Aw Snap!” ring any bells?  Well, I have made numerous attempts to write new posts, but the program keeps quitting and not saving my work. Instead I get an error message that says, “Aw Snap!  I have logged out and logged back in, restarted my Web browser and even restarted my Mac.  None of these has been a solution.

My frustration level was just about to reach a 10 when I decided I would just write the post in Microsoft Word and e-mail it to my professor as proof I did the work.  If this post appears on my page, please know the trouble I went through to get it there.

Thank you WordPress for your sad-faced file folder—it actually looks quite sympathetic—now fix the bug!

This technology has been a great benefit to education.  Each passing year, more and more professors are incorporating video into lectures.  This is great because it helps keep students’ attention by providing variety.  I sometimes find my attention drifting during a long lecture, but when visuals such as videos are used, it puts me back on task.

Sometimes words don’t quite capture what a video does.  The cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” definitely applies here, except a video is multiple pictures and often has sound, so that would make it worth several thousand words.

I have had very few classes that did not incorporate video into the learning process in some way.  It is great that professors are able to do this because adding different types of media to the curriculum is helpful to students of all ages.

Having the ability to adapt well to different environments is a great skill to have, but sometimes it can be time consuming and difficult. For example, I had a wonderful Spanish instructor for three straight terms, then had to change instructors due to scheduling conflicts. She made every effort to suit each student’s learning style–visual, auditory, kinesthetic etc. She made power point presentations for each lecture and made them available to students, she incorporated music and video into the curriculum and did other small things that really suited the individual needs of her students.

My new Spanish instructor, though he is smart and enthusiastic, does not make the same efforts that my previous instructor did. It has been difficult for me to adapt to this new learning environment, and I feel like I haven’t learned as much under his instruction as I have in the previous terms.

In a university environment it is nearly impossible to cherry-pick your instructors. There are some classes that enable this; however, more often than not you are stuck with what you are given. That can be a great thing, or a not-so-great thing.

In the instances where you have some discretion, it would be nice to be able to be able to find information about the instructor, his or her teaching style, and student reviews.

RateMyProfessors.com is a site that offers this service, but many times there is not enough information, or the information provided is unreliable. Most of the student ratings on this site are either written by students who adored their instructor, or are written by students who detested their instructor.

Essentially, this blog entry is a plea to students to rate your professors so that future students can get a better idea of a future instructors teaching style. Remember, you are paying a lot of money to receive instruction from these people. It is up to you to make sure you get as much bang for your buck as you can. Do the research, participate in RateMyProfessors.com and fill out surveys at the end of each term giving as much feedback about each instructor as possible.

Personally, I have never considered lying or even bending the truth to a potential employer, but I have heard many stories of people who have and the truth is always found out somehow, especially with the internet and all of the different ways to find out information about people.  (See my previous post, “How did you know I like DnB music and Persian food?”)

I did an internet search for “how to lie on your résumé” and Google returned 210,000 pages.  It is a shame that this type of unethical behavior is encouraged.

A good company will check references and validate information about potential employees to make sure the information they’ve been provided is true and correct.

Ultimately, some morally bankrupt people who have nothing to lose will always be dishonest in an attempt to get ahead. Take the ethical route.  Be honest.  Work hard.  And you will be rewarded.

I recently replied to a post of hers titled, “How to manage a college education.”

(Image: Mike Keefe, The Denver Post)

Penelope,

I am a senior at a liberal arts college. I went to college directly out of high school, but realized that I had no idea what I wanted to study. I had to take several years off to commit to an area of study–communications.

I have many friends and associates who–with their frivolous degrees–are struggling to pay off debt while working in an industry completely unrelated to their area of study. I have been making every effort to avoid living that scenario.

Above all, I am extremely happy with my choice to study communications at a liberal arts college. My instructors are mentors who have years of experience and an excellent grasp on traditional communication methods and a handle on all of the current social media trends.

Many other invaluable opportunities are offered through universities, like study abroad programs, internship programs and student groups and societies, which further validate the importance of a liberal arts education.

While it is true that people can read and study the same information outside of a classroom that they can inside the classroom, a diploma certifies that a person has learned to write effectively and think critically.

It may be true that the generation that grew up with social media is the most effective at communicating of any generation in history, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are communicating strategically–in a way that will influence behavior.

Lastly, I do think that societal status (unfortunately) still plays a role in who gets the jobs on many occasions, even if two people have an equal knowledge base. Having a college degree plays a big role in societal status. Of course there are exceptions–Gates, Jobs, Kerkorian etc. So, I am willing to trade the $30K per year for that status in case I am not one of the lucky ones who can bypass an education and end up as a gizzillionaire.

The first day of my strategic communications class (a fancy word for social media), my instructor had put together a power point presentation with a slide on each student in the class.  The slides contained information she gathered from the internet through various social networking sites.

When she got to my slide, it said that I like DnB music and Persian food.  At first I had NO IDEA how she possibly could have found out that information.  It turns out she had somehow found some comments from years ago that were on my MySpace page!

I made the natural migration from MySpace to Facebook along with everyone else and I pretty much stopped maintaining my MySpace account.  After class I looked myself up to see what dirt I could find on myself.  Let’s just say that I wasn’t presenting myself how I would like to be seen.

Here are a few suggestions for maintaining your personal brand:

• Use appropriate default photos that reflect you positively
• Set privacy settings for accounts you prefer others outside your network to see
• “Google” yourself every now and then to see what others find when they look you up

Remember that you are in control of your online image.  If you have friends who have posted pictures or information that does not support the image you are trying to maintain, ask them to remove them.

Finally, it is better to have some information about yourself online than none at all.  Happy branding!

Here is an interesting video of Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library discussing social media and branding.  (Warning: Video contains some colorful language.)