Four down, Two to go
Note: This is an entry I wrote for my Kellogg Student Diary, which was a student life blog I kept as a student at Northwestern. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m copying my entries to my personal blog to preserve my writings. You can read all of the entries by viewing the category Kellogg Student Diaries.
As I close out my 4th quarter at Kellogg, I’m sitting in a coffee shop in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan while most of my classmates are enjoying this year’s Kellogg ski trip to Snowmass, Colorado. I’m on my way from Evanston to the Washington DC suburbs (where I grew up) and I’m visiting a few friends in the city I called home for 4 years.
And as a “wiser” second-year student, I can actually reflect on and offer advice about a few things that I’ve experienced while at Kellogg:
1) Ski Trip: Even though I didn’t go this year, I highly recommend that every first year student go on this adventure. Imagine making 550 new best friends over a 14 week period (KWEST, CIM, and the first quarter of school) and then getting to take a week-long vacation with them, with no group projects, papers, homework assignments or networking events to worry about. We all come to Kellogg to get intellectually challenged, but we bond (a lot) at events like this.
2) First-year recruiting: I know every second-year student told me not to worry and that I’d find a summer job, but I worried anyways. We all did. I offered the same advice to many first-years this year but I’m sure they heeded it about as much as I dd. In fact, I even prefaced my advice with the words, “I know you’re going to ignore what I’m about to tell you, but …”, but it’s true. We all found internships and most of us got a lot out of them. The real key is to know exactly what you want out of your internship to get the most out of it.
3) Keeping your eyes open: I came to Kellogg with a fairly strong idea of what I wanted to do after school, but a big part of the education here is learning about your classmates and their backgrounds. I didn’t have any interest in certain industries and functions when I came here, but talking to my classmates has raised my interest in those areas. In fact, I’m signing up for classes that I’d never imagined I’d take.
The first year at Kellogg involved a lot of adjustments on my part and there is no question that it’s intense. With my time at Kellogg now slowly ticking down, I’m really appreciating all of the opportunities and people around me.
