First Semester Reflections: Graduate Assistantship Experience

In my next few posts, I'll reflect and comment on my first semester experience.  Today I'd like to talk about my graduate assistantship (GA).

Before arriving on campus everyone must get update their resumes and get them to the Walton College Career Center (W3C).  They help you refine your resume and get it ready to send out to various companies.  Once the resumes are finalized, Heather Sprandel, the W3C director, sends them out to companies looking to hire GAs.  There were a few students that got external GAs this spring.  Those who had GAs, but didn't get external GAs had to work for the college in some capacity.

I did not get an external GA.  I was disappointed at first.  Then I got my internal GA assignment, I was going to work in the W3C for Heather Sprandel.  After some discussion with the other staff of the W3C I became more optimistic.  I thought this could be fun, I should make the best of it.  So I did.

It was really a blessing in disguise.  Working for the W3C was great.  They were very flexible with my schedule, and they are right there on campus.  So I didn't have to spend time driving to and from my GA.  I got interesting projects to work on, and it also opened doors to networking opportunities.

As far as schedule goes, the flexibility allowed me to get many of my professional development and speaker series credits out of the way.  I plan on attending as many professional developments and speaker series as I can, but it's nice to know that I don't have to.  I have completed 40 out of the 48 required hours of professional development, and I've attended 8 speaker series leaving two required speaker series.

The thing I really enjoyed about the projects I worked on was that I had a lot of artistic license to do what I want.  Heather was open to anything as long as it was within the scope of the project.  The biggest project I worked on this past semester was the development of the Career Closet.  This is a place where business students can go to get business clothing free of charge.  The Closet will come to fruition this summer.  I also got to do the CareerCast, short podcasts on business topics for the Career Center website.  I wasn't sure I was going to like doing these podcasts, but they are surprisingly fun.  Other students have gotten involved, and we are also doing interviews with business leaders in the Northwest Arkansas area.  I also worked on the Career Center bulletin board located on the third floor of the Business Administration (BA) building.  I must admit this was not my favorite thing to work on, but it grew on me a little bit.  I like developing the idea for the bulletin boards, but not so much the actual making of the bulletin board.  Overall the Career Center GA experience was wonderful.  I really can't complain.

I've gotten to meet many people through the W3C.  Companies come on campus to conduct interviews in the Career Center so I would meet many of these company reps just in passing.  As I mentioned earlier, the CareerCast also provides networking opportunities in itself.

I'd like to thank the W3C staff for making my GA experience really great.   Those folks are Heather Sprandel, Renee Clay, Tommi Featherstone, Sara Yell, and Jordan Frevert.  I enjoyed my experience so much that I will continue to work with the W3C.  I will continue working on the Career Closet as well as the CareerCast.

So if you end up with an internal GA don't be disappointed.  Make the most of your opportunity and take advantage of your resources.