Tag: work

Working and Being a Full Time Student is No Joke

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Hey Sunny Siders, happy Sunday! Today I wanted to talk a little bit more about my final semester of grad school and some of the things I learned.

Mainly, the biggest difference that my final semester of grad school presented was that I was working a full time job on top of being a full time student. This is something very common, but to an outsider you don’t truly understand the kind of challenge it is to balance both until you’ve done it.

I had never worked a full time job while going to school and once I did I had a lot of extra respect, admiration, and appreciation for my friends and colleagues that had been working full time since the start of their program.

It’s not an easy thing to balance to full time commitments separately, especially when both areas of your life are seeking your entire attention and devotion.

Not going to lie, it was hard to balance both. The only way I could find being able to juggle my 8 hour days at work with my homework load was by not having a life for 5 months.

Essentially, I’d get up go to work from 8:30 to 5, come home around 5:30 – 6 depending on traffic, and work on academics until 9 or 10 pm when it was time for bed.

On weekends I’d load up with most of the work so that weekdays only had to be spent strong group meetings or taking exams, but still I really only had the capacity to focus on those two things to be successful at both.

I was so lucky that I had my brother living with me because he helped with a lot of the regular household things such as cooking and getting groceries. Had I been fully alone I probably would have subsisted off of pop corn and pasta because I just didn’t have time or energy to cook every night.

I think the most interesting element to all of this is how professors really are out of touch with reality and not understanding of their students circumstances at all.

I was in a working masters program as most are, and still my professor scheduled office hours for 9 am on weekdays. Trying to explain that I was working and couldn’t make it never mattered to her, which is why it was always so hilarious when she couldn’t understand why no one showed up to them.

All of this to say that working full time and being a student full time is a big order. If you know someone in your life that is doing both, give them a big hug and tell them you’re proud of them for sticking with it because it really is a big feat to handle two full time jobs at once, especially when one of them expects you to be available 24/7.

I am amazed by my friends who had been doing that since the start. I could barely handle one semester, let alone 2 years of having no downtime where you aren’t expecting to be thinking critically. People really are amazing when they put their minds to things they want.

All About My Disney Internship

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Hello Sunny Siders, I am so excited to finally talk all about my Disney Internship with everyone! Let’s start with a little background and for that we need to go back to January 2023 when this process all started.

So in January I reached out to one of my colleges alumni that I had met at a Women in Business event in November. She had come to give us a presentation about her career journey and growth at the Walt Disney Company. I decided to reach out to pick her brain about how I could work for Disney, and from this point on she has been my amazing mentor. Truly, this process would have never happened without her guidance, and I will forever be grateful for her kindness and support.

Once I started meeting with my mentor, she advised me to try and apply for a Professional Internship. We created a plan to have me start meeting people in various areas of the Walt Disney Company so I could start finding my passions.

I was meeting with at least 1 person a month from March to August of 2023, just learning and absorbing any and all information I could. I’d also meet with my mentor monthly to check in and tell her how the process was going.

Then, in August an internship opened up for a team I was very interested in. With the help of my mentor we strengthened my resume and tailored it to the job posting and I applied.

A few months later at the start of October, I got a notification from HR that I had made it to the first round of interviews. While I was preparing for that I also had an opportunity to go meet the leaders of the team I was applying for thanks to my mentor.

She had set up a super fun day for me to shadow at the office and thank all the people I had conversed with since March in person for their help and guidance.

After my interview, near the end of October I got a call saying I was chosen to be the Professional Intern and I’d be starting in January 2024!

Flash forward a few months from October to January and I had moved to Orlando to start my internship, so let’s dive in to what my internship is and how the past 5 months have been going!

My internship is in Consumer Franchise Strategy. Essentially my team works with global Disney parks to make strategy recommendations for which characters they should focus on depending on which audiences they want to attract.

I can’t say too much more than that about what I work on, as much of the projects have an element of confidentiality to them, but I do specialize in competitive franchise analysis.

I love my job so much and while the work is amazing I love my team even more so. They welcomed me in with open arms and each day I’m so happy I get to work alongside them to strategize about the franchises in the parks.

Throughout my internship I’ve continued to meet new people in other roles to learn more about the company, I have regular one on ones with my mentors to check in and work on my career development, and I am always learning something new on the job each and every day.

Alongside everything I’ve learned on the job, I’ve met so many amazing people. I am so excited that now that I’m officially done with school, I get to go experience all of the extra things my internship has to offer. Just yesterday I went to Magic Kingdom with a group of friends from work, and the weekend prior I went to Epcot to celebrate Mother’s Day.

I’m so excited to see where this journey takes me next! I can’t wait to share all the things I learn and do in the next 7 months of my internship.

Why Hobbies Are Just as Important as Work Experience

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Hey Sunny Siders, today I want to delve into a topic that I believe most of us are familiar with: Resumes. I’m sure that everyone here has crafted a resume at some point in their life, but I bet only a handful of you have ever considered including your hobbies on a resume. I’m here to share why you might want to reconsider adding your hobbies to your resume; it could very well be the reason you secure an interview in the first place.

This summer, I applied to become a Graduate Assistant at my university. The process is quite straightforward: basic information, a checkbox of your current skills, and submission of a resume. I decided to include “Canva Design Tool and WordPress Web Design” in the “Skills” section of my resume. These are skills that I didn’t acquire through work or school, but rather skills I picked up when I started running this blog back in 2019!

I had wanted to initiate a blog to document my college experience for friends and family, allowing them to share in my journey. I invested time in learning how to create drop-down tabs on the Homepage, incorporate photos and banners, design a logo that encapsulates the essence of the blog, and much more. For those of you who have been long-time readers, you probably remember the @/sunnysidewithsiri Instagram account that supported this page. I employed Canva to craft graphics to complement posts and enhance the overall content engagement. These skills were cultivated not due to a job or school, but rather because of my passion and interest in managing a blog.

Fast forward and I recently received a call to interview for the position of Webmaster at my business school. I didn’t land this interview solely because of my prior work experience or education. The interview came my way because I listed WordPress as a skill in my toolkit. This blog not only secured me an interview but also clinched me the job – something I never could have imagined in a million years!

The takeaway here is that just because something is a hobby doesn’t mean it isn’t equipping you with valuable skills that can be applied elsewhere. Even if your hobby doesn’t yield concrete skills to add to a resume, it might still be cultivating intangible skills that prove invaluable during the interview process. A great example is someone who engages in ceramics as a hobby, like me. Ceramics has taught me patience and the importance of meticulous planning from the initial design phase to execution. It has also honed my problem-solving abilities and encouraged me to discover fresh, creative solutions when a project encounters setbacks. Although I didn’t learn these skills on the job, they are still transferable and set me apart from others.

So, the next time you’re updating your resume to apply for a job, take a moment to consider the skills you’ve gained just by indulging in the activities you love on a day-to-day basis. Who knows, you might just end up securing a job due to a hobby, just like I did!

Lastly, I’d like to express my gratitude to every one of you for following and supporting this blog over the years. As I mentioned, I wouldn’t have landed my new job if it weren’t for every Sunny Sider! You all are truly amazing, and I hope you realize just how thankful I am for sticking around as this blog has evolved. To the new Sunny Siders, welcome aboard. I sincerely hope you derive as much enjoyment from the content as I do from creating it!