Below are several quotes from current college students & interns from the Campus Clipper. The Campus Clipper has provided New York’s more than 600,000 students with an easy way to save money in the local area where they study and work. Students are invited to explore New York armed with a pocket-size discount coupon book that saves them cash on products and services offered by merchants. Each semester, several students are selected to intern at the Campus Clipper and gain valuable experience in social media, networking, marketing, advertising, writing, publishing, design and much more! Read more about the Campus Clipper Here!

The students have been participating in podcasts with me for several weeks; offering tips and advice to current college students & career seekers and to help people tell their story and do what they love!

“My advice is, don’t wait till your senior year to get internships or to get to know your professors and faculty. Even if you feel there are more qualified upperclassmen ahead of you, don’t discourage yourself from trying. You might not get the internships but you get to practice going on interviews. You want to get a tentative foot into the real world as early on as possible. It might help you determine if your major is the right on for you in time for you to reconsider if you have to. You don’t want to have to make a big transition. You want to ease into the working world and be confident you are going to do well at your job. Start getting into the habit of being organized with little things because they will save you big time and money. Also be sure to balance social life and school. Those grades still matter and it might require just doing a little more. There’s a big difference between B+ and A- when it comes to numeric average.

You also want to use your time in college to promote your interests whether it be raising awareness for a charitable cause or educating people on an issue that’s important to you. As a college student you have a wealth of resources available to you. You have the guidance of faculty and an easily reachable community of like minded people. College is a place where you can empower your own voice and create memorable experiences that may serve you for the rest your life.” – Margael St Juste, Hunter College

“It’s important to get to know as many people as you can; not only that, but to get to know them as well as you can. Friends, coworkers, professors, advisors – all of these people have valuable experience and connections that may one day be able to help you attain your dream job or goals. Join clubs, attend meetings, go to job fairs, etc. Any way you can meet and get to know quality things about quality people can only help you in the future.” – Nancy Ma, NYU

“Introduce yourself to people.
I know that freshmans can feel very shy and intimidated but taking initiative to introduce yourself to people can help you overcome the shy factor as well as getting more comfortable with the social atmosphere. This can also be practice for official conferences and events in the future where introducing yourself to potential employers can make you stand out. Speaking about the socializing topic, networking and maintaining a large connection of professional networks is very important. You never know who you can meet and how they can help you in your career. Of course, this advice isn’t only limited to freshmans but I feel like this is something very important that people who are just starting to get their foot into the career world need to hear about.” – Jessica Yang, Parsons New School of Design

“My advice for college freshman is: don’t procrastinate! Proper time management is the key to using your time as best as possible.  If you find yourself not having enough time for social events and school work it’s because you still haven’t gotten time management down yet.  However, that’s OK! Freshman year is always a challenge and perseverance is the key!” – Paola Delucca, Parsons New School of Design

“Try as much as possible to get a lot of internships. Apply for two internships (one unpaid and the other a paid one) every semester if you can. Sometimes it’s hard to get two paid internships at the same time. If ever you get a paid one and you want another internship consider getting an unpaid internship so at least at one point you get more experience and of course some extra cash at the same time!” – Moyl Cledera, The New School for Public Engagement

Visit thelivingcalendar.com for more tips and advice from Arielle Fiffer  – College/Career Advisor

Follow the Campus Clipper on Twitter and Like us on Facebook!

Interested in more deals for students? Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter to get the latest in student discounts and promotions  and follow our Tumblr and Pinterest. For savings on-the-go, download our printable coupon e-book!

Telling your Unique Story

Each college requires a personal statement along with your application. Be prepared to write and re-write your story, and have it looked at many times.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

1. What makes you and your life story unique/impressive?

2. What are your career goals?

3. Have you had to overcome any obstacles so far throughout your life?

4. What skills and experience do you have?

Tips:

• Tell a Story

• Give specifics to keep the admissions committee interested

• Make a compelling case

• Start Out Strong – Just as employers may not have time to read your whole resume, the college admissions’ team may not be able to read your whole story

• Be Creative; Do not begin with a generic first sentence such as “My life has been very challenging because _______”

• Pick a topic you are passionate about

• Self Promote – but, don’t over do it, your story will sell itself

Visit thelivingcalendar.com for more tips and advice from Arielle Fiffer  – College/Career Advisor

Follow the Campus Clipper on Twitter and Like us on Facebook!

Interested in more deals for students? Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter to get the latest in student discounts and promotions  and follow our Tumblr and Pinterest. For savings on-the-go, download our printable coupon e-book!

Two resounding characters come up each and every time I bring up the Avengers, Steve Rodgers/Captain America and Tony Stark/Iron Man. Both have successful movie adaptations, very successful, which have raked in millions of dollars in capital, and millions of new fans. There is something about these characters that resounds within my generation of people.

To put it into prospect a Forbes article detailed Captain America’s Second movie debut, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier earned $41.4 million on its second weekend. It’s a good thing the film ended up number one for the weekend, because otherwise it would have magically become a super flop and Captain America 3 would have fled for the safety of a mid-August debut. In all seriousness, the hope was that sterling word-of-mouth and strong reviews would perhaps stem the traditional second weekend bleeding just a bit. But nope, it’s a 56% drop in viewership the second weekend come hell or high water. In terms of weekend drops, 57-60% is the general average among Marvel stand-alone entries outside of Thor (-47%) and Iron Man (-48%), so I guess a 56% drop qualifies as “leggy” by comparison.”

Eighteen year olds, like myself, feel a certain amount of invincibility, and the heroism of the Avengers certainly appeals in that respect. But looked for a deeper analysis, I realized that the Avengers the evil nature of the world as defeatable, and isn’t that reality that everyone is searching for.

We want to believe that our actions are working towards the betterment of society, which both Steve Rodgers and Tony Stark do within their installments. At the root of Avengers is a humanism that I did not expect with all the fantastical elements that surrounds the production. Whether the characters actually cause a difference within our society is what will be the discussion of this series of articles.

Perhaps your area is a dry spot when it comes to radical organizing. Or maybe there are plenty of leftist groups in your area, but their politics don’t quite align with your own. If you find that regularly meeting up with like-minded individuals is not much of a possibility, don’t feel at a loss––you should see this as an opportunity to start up your own group.

A lot of the tactics for finding like-minded people can also be used for drawing them together, but you’ll be using the platforms in slightly different ways. Here are some tips for starting your own organization:

1. Draw up a plan.

   Before you jump in and start trying to recruit people for your group, it would be helpful to articulate the ideas you have in mind. Create a pamphlet articulating the transformations that you fight for, assemble a list of readings you would like to discuss over the next few weeks with a group, or construct a mission statement for your organization. Whatever you’d like to do, just put it down on paper or on the web, and make it compelling. You can then rely on this information when trying to get people interested.

2. Again, start at school.

   If you find that there aren’t any radical clubs at your school, start one. Most schools require a minimum amount of prospective members in order for a group to become officially recognized (AKA chartered), so gather up some friends and classmates and begin fulfilling your school’s requirements.

   Some schools won’t be friendly if you’re a leftist group, and they may insidiously undermine your efforts. The bureaucracy in charge of approving my campus-based organization’s application for chartership has repeatedly rejected it for insignificant reasons that are normally overlooked for other student clubs.

   In some cases, you could also be the target of overt action. In 2013 the school administration at CUNY City College, one of our sister schools, shut down without notice a student center that has historically been used for radical organizing. All of the students’ and groups’ belongings were seized, and a number of students and activists who later moved to take back the center were suspended from school or arrested.

   

   CUNY students protesting the school admin's practices and policies. Photo credit David McGlynn; revolutionarystudents.wordpress.com.

   Organizing can be dangerous, so be mindful of this before trying to start up a group at school. If you find that your campus administration is hostile to your ideas, you can still meet up with your associates on or off campus without becoming a chartered organization. You can also use this to your advantage by publicizing the unjust treatment you’ve faced in an effort to recruit people to your side and organize resistance.

3. Attend workers’ strikes and activities.

   If class struggle is a central aspect of your politics, there’s no better way of starting up a group than attending workers’ strikes and rallies. You can move with the workers to start organizing other rallies and protests, supporting other strikes throughout your area, doing readings, or even translating pamphlets to other languages so that they can be easily disseminated amongst immigrant workers. Organizing workers’ strikes is also a possibility, but this is an entirely different animal that cannot be adequately addressed within the purview of this book.

4. Use social media and existing groups.

   Again, social media can be used to your advantage here. Post to radical Facebook discussion groups or your area’s reddit page, or start a Meetup group for the organization or activity you’d like to create. Ask your friends and colleagues if they’d be interested in attending, or ask them if they know of anyone who would be. Publicize your idea through Twitter by tagging users that you think would be interested.

   You can also attend the meetings of groups with whom you don’t completely see eye-to-eye to see if anyone else shares your politics and would like to begin a split-off group. Be discreet: you don’t want to start a fight (unless that’s your thing).

Once you have a small group set up, you can start broadening your membership and participating in direct action, which we’ll tackle next.

Amanda Fox-Rouch (Hunter College)

Follow the Campus Clipper on Twitter and Like us on Facebook!

Interested in more deals for students? Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter to get the latest in student discounts and promotions  and follow our Tumblr and Pinterest. For savings on-the-go, download our printable coupon e-book!