Tips from John Barnell, Vice President for Academic Affairs

We go to college to get a degree. We get a degree to get a job. Easy peasy. But now a days, degrees don't give you a job. Now, employers expect college students to have a stacked resume. We're expected to go through classes all day, go to our dorms and study, do hours of homework every night, and get really good grades. On top of that, we need to get a job to pay for all these tuition bills piling up and try to balance work with our study schedule. We also need to get involved on campus by joining any club we can fit in our already busy schedule, and try to remember to do everything you just added to that schedule. You might also want to try to get experience with your major to see if you really like it. Oh, and P.S., don't mess up or stress out because then you fall behind and you'll just be fighting a losing battle. Maybe that's not so easy.

I want to get super involved on campus. I'm actually really excited to join a million clubs and start stacking my resume. But is it really worth all that work and stress? I think it is. Everything on your resume isn't necessarily just so employers like you. Of course, it's great for jobs and networking, but it can be for yourself too. You can make every event on that resume mean something to you. My goal is to let everything I do in college be an experience. And I know that each experience will teach me and change me for the better.

Mr. John Barnell told my class to work our hardest in college at these 4 points:
GPA- My goal is a 4.0, or pretty close to it. We'll see how my two science classes will treat me by the end of the semester.
Community Service- I just went to a Circle K informational meeting, and I'm definitely thinking about joining. But I'm pretty good with joining just about any club.
Clubs and Organizations- As I've already said, loving lots of clubs. Looking for anything else that seems fun.
Travel- I'm definitely open minded to studying abroad or even just going to a conference about marine biology. I've been to Career Camp at Sea World, which was amazing. And I would love to do something related to my field like that. Maybe working in the gulf with BP's oil spill...