Career counseling and other services

Happy early Halloween, everyone, I hope nobody’s overdosed on chocolate yet. I think trick-or-treating this year is a day early, on the 30th. I can understand that kids have school on Monday, but I still think it’s strange not celebrating Halloween on the 31st. Then again, I’m too old for trick or treating (or at least too old to get away with it), so I don’t suppose my ranting actually means anything.

Not that it has anything to do with Halloween, but I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the Career Service Center as of today. A potential employer told me yesterday to email a copy of my resume, and suddenly remembering the advice I always give younger students, I realized that I should really have someone look over my resume and give me some pointers. But I didn’t have an appointment, so last minute (this morning) I ran into the Career office and asked if anyone was available, and one of the career counselors had happened to have had a cancellation, so I managed to jump in on short notice. And wow, was that time well spent. It’s funny, because we played around with the format and style a little bit, and we definitely expanded on the important points of my education and work experience, but the core items and bullet points didn’t really change, we just kind of expanded them and explained the benefits to my pool of experience.

That’s a great example of how helpful and accommodating the Career Service Center is, the fact that they had the time so they jumped to fill me in, but most of the counseling services across campus will tend to be about that helpful. I’m sitting in the Admissions office at the moment, and one of our other tour guides just mentioned that he has a mock interview scheduled for next week, and that’s another function of Career Services, but the Tutoring Center is just beneath us as well as the Advising Center and Disability Services. Across the way from those three is the Counseling Center, who just finished a depression awareness program earlier this month for National Depression Screening Day. I haven’t noticed all of the student support offices until the last couple of years, but the truth is that there are quite a lot of services available to GVSU students; I’ve only started noticing them as I’ve made better use of them.

I do certainly hope that whatever plans everyone has for Halloween that everybody stays safe. Have fun, but don’t do anything you wouldn’t do any other night of the year, and make sure you guys are all still working on college requirements and keeping deadlines in mind. Do keep working on those college applications, don’t eat any home-made candy, especially if it comes from your parents. Seriously, Mom and Dad, just leave it to the professionals.

-Kyle