Tag Archives: Colleges & Universty

College Student Orientation – Welcome Week Student Success Secrets – Success & Leadership Secrets

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Create an unforgettable and success filled college experience for new college students during welcome week and orientation by speaking students language and starting strong.

Separate your college and University campus from the rest of academia by initiating a relational and professional approach that appeals and wins the respect of incoming college students. Transcend the old school collegiate hierarchical mentality that immediately alienates and subordinates students.

Captivate, connect, and keep your college students and carry them fully through matriculation to commencement by cultivating academic and professional success. Celebrate, embrace, equip, and empower your college students to unlock greatness, achieve success, and assume a leadership role on your college campus to serve your academic community.

Quickly captivate your new college students during orientation and welcome week by speaking their language and starting strong with a message that awakens their hearts.

1. Identity is destiny.

Who am I? Who do I desire to become? For what reason am I in college in the first place?

2. Pinpoint college students purpose.

To begin strong and stay the course, a successful college student needs to have a powerful vision of his or her future. If it is not quite crystal clear initially, that is o.k., as vision is progressive as it is passionately and purposefully pursued continually.

3. Beyond books and school work, how will I structure my life?

Depending upon college students passion and purpose, they may want to pursue a variety of extra-curricular activities. Greek life is a wonderful way to make friends and align with an established organization on campus through whom you can do charitable work and let your voice be heard. If Greek life appeals to you, evaluate the mission statement of each fraternity or sorority.

Student associations and organizations on most college campuses are many, each possessing a different focus and objective. Get acquainted with your student union, student government, and Greek life director. As you become acquainted with these various organizations and associations on campus, attend some “meet and greet” socials early in the year or whenever possible to familiarize yourself with whatever groups spark an interest and seem to suit your personal preference.

Keep in mind you don’t want to stretch yourself thin by being over committed. Therefore be wise to stay focused on your primary purpose for attending college, after which you can choose a complimentary social or professional student group organization with whom to align yourself.

Remember also to eat healthy, get plenty of sleep, and exercise regularly. Many college students forget to do so and later suffer when their immune systems are run down by winter. Think long-term and prepare to go the distance and finish your college studies strong.

4. Proximity is key to fulfilling your destiny.

Sit at the front of class whenever possible to be sure to absorb all vital class information and test material. It is also harder to get distracted when you sit upfront. Less talking and disturbances occur in the front of the classroom. Always respect and befriend professors as much as possible, even if you don’t always fully agree with them. At the very least respect their position, remembering they will be grading you and hold the keys to your academic progress and ultimately your future.

5. Maintain close relationships with your family.

If you only can stay in touch with your family by phone, make the effort and do so. Since your parents may be financing or helping you finance in part your education and expenses, the least you can do is check in periodically on a bi-weekly basis and give them an update as to your academic progress and life.

Certainly if you were making a substantial financial investment in someone’s future you would want the same decency and courtesy to be shown you. Therefore be appreciative, courteous, and respectful toward your parents to further endear them to you and build a supportive bond, which in turn will serve you well throughout the course of your life.

6. Be proactive in pursuing and launching your career, while you are yet still in college.

Rather than sitting back and waiting for a resume alone (which usually ends up in a stack of paper) to produce your desirable results professionally, take the initiative to make things happen for yourself. Visit your college career center and begin reviewing various internships in your field tha are available to provide you further professional development. Even if these internships don’t pay you, the professional experience and knowledge you will gain will be priceless.

If no internships turn up for you, consider launching your own business as an entrepreneur. Providing a product or service is essential business in its simplest form. How can you serve people with your time, talent, and expertise? Consider ways you can serve the administration at your own college and University campus.

If necessary, begin serving people for free to get them to recognize and discover your value to them. When you add value, you always immediately become valuable. Thereafter once you have proven yourself, you can set your price and negotiate a pay raise or launch your own business.

7. Be patient with yourself as you evolve and your career comes into clear focus.

Life and professional development is not done in a microwave. Give yourself some time to evolve and go through the discovery process. As you sample various courses, you will discover in college what you like and dislike; what fits you and what is not you. Don’t try to rework or remake yourself to fit something you are not.

Be authentic and true to yourself. As you do, your own uniqueness and difference will emerge. As you delight in and continually develop the genius within, your own success and leadership capacities will emerge and begin to shine.

Keep a childlike heart while pursuing academic and professional life. Remain curious, carefree, fun, but remain simultaneously professional and courteous. As you show yourself friendly and have fun while you get the college schoolwork done, good things will happen for you!

I wish you great success and dream fulfillment as you arise and wholeheartedly enjoy the college experience!

Five Words That Scare College Students

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When students graduate from college, they expect to begin a new job, one that will launch their careers and get them started in life. They will have worked their way through college and reached the senior year with the expectation that they are prepared to conduct their senior year job search, will take a few interviews and will receive one or more job offers. Unfortunately, things don’t always go the way we all would like them to work out. In fact, after a long, frustrating and disappointing job search effort, unprepared students and recent graduates will start the negative self-talk and think to themselves, “I can’t find a job.”

Those five words should scare every college student. That’s why it’s important for students to understand that the battle for a good job starts long before the senior year of college. Nobody can conduct an effective senior year job search, having done little or nothing to get prepared for that job search. “Getting Ready” is what students should be doing during each and every semester of college.

Since most students just don’t know what they should be doing to get ready, let’s deal with that issue here and now. There are things that students can be working on from the first day they enter college. Therefore, students who are serious about landing a good job should concentrate on things that will help them do just that. They include the following:

1. Enthusiastically pursue beneficial knowledge, activities, experiences and friendships

2. Discover and explore personal interests, directions, capabilities and limits

3. Become known for something associated with their interests and direction

4. Impress at least one influential Professor

5. Involve themselves with two or more doers and thinkers in their field

6. Get some solid work experience in their area of interest

7. Develop relationships with three or more impressive references

8. Lead a group that achieves something positive and significant

9. Develop, then demonstrate exceptional communication skills

10. Research 200+ employers that hire college grads with their capabilities

11. Create and utilize their personal Alumni network

12. Develop a comprehensive job search strategy

Each of these assignments must be started early in the college experience and should be completed before the beginning of the senior year. Because these difficult and challenging tasks will take a long time to complete, any student who waits until their senior year to get started will almost certainly have killed their chances for landing the job they have dreamed about. They won’t be prepared for the five word question that the best employers want answered, “Why should we hire you?”

When students approach their college and job search responsibilities in a systematic and businesslike manner, they will help to ensure that their search for employment ends in success. A semester-by-semester plan should be developed, written out and followed. That plan will bring clarity and a timetable to the steps required in the critical process that is overlooked by too many capable students.

We all know that not everything will go smoothly along to way. When problems and obstacles occur, students must call upon their pride, determination and creativity to push through or go around the challenges that present themselves. Employers look for those qualities that enable students to keep going, when things get rough. During interviews, students should be prepared to present and discuss their accomplishments, including a few stories about the obstacles that were overcome. Employers love students who have had to fight for success, can stand up to difficulties and still function well.

Because the best candidates are already fully prepared for their job search, they can devote their entire senior year to that effort. All of the preliminary work was completed earlier. Now it’s just a matter of executing their strategy in an exceptional manner, one that will result in them uttering five more words, “I have a great job.”