“Opportunity dances with those who are
ready on the dance floor”—H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Here at Penn State, always be ready to dance. Although I didn’t intend for that to be taken
literally, I guess you could think of it like that too. As a student here you are always going to get
asked, “but your school is so big…isn’t that overwhelming?” For the first few weeks, maybe. But once you are here and settled in, you
will realize the campus shrinks by the day!
This is because the more opportunities you take advantage of, the more
people you will meet and the more you will start to feel like Happy Valley is
truly your new home.
The best part about going to a large, world renowned
university is the immense amount of opportunities you will get from simply being
here. These opportunities start at the
small level (if you could say that).
Currently Penn State has 951 registered clubs, ranging from sports to
greek life, professional to performing arts, and at scales as high as THON (the
world’s largest student run philanthropy) down to clubs solely dedicated to
soda (yes, it is a real registered thing I promise). At first, you may be thinking to yourself
“that is way too many clubs, I’ll never decide what to join!” No worries, Penn State holds involvement fairs
at the beginning of the year for you to walk around and talk to representatives
of the clubs to hear about what they do and decide what sounds interesting to
you!
As you go through your time here you will find your niche
in these organizations, and may even get really cool opportunities like being
able to travel out of them! I know
through my involvement I have been able to travel around the state and even the
country; just recently I went to Atlanta to present at a conference. But traveling as a whole is a lot more
feasible at a university of this size because of how many connections we have
around the world. We have study abroad
programs in dozens of countries, so wherever you have always dreamed of going
we can find or make a program that works for you! I even have friends who have gotten to travel
as far as Spain for their research!
Doing an internship abroad isn’t that uncommon
either. But here at Penn State, as an
engineer getting internships and co-ops in general are very common. This is mostly because people know exactly
what it means to have an engineering degree from here, but I am sure it doesn’t
hurt that we have one of the largest living alumni networks. 1 in 50 engineers has a Penn State
degree. That’s right, I said it: 1 in
50. Something you will notice once
coming here is that Penn Staters LOVE other nittany lions. Not only do they have a new friend to talk
with about how awesome our school is, but they know from going here how prepared
the school gets you for making a true impact in the field. This leads to a lot of hiring stats for full
time and internship positions.
So as you can see, while a large school may seem
intimidating at first, the only thing you have to worry about is what you will
try first! Think about the vast unknown that is our school like a song you don’t know the
lyrics to: Just because you have never
heard the song before doesn’t mean you should avoid the dance floor…
Sarah Krisher is a senior in Biomedical Engineering and the Success Strategies Lead for WEPO'13! To read more about Sarah visit her WEPO Profile:
No comments:
Post a Comment