Hello all,
As a scholarship recipient, I was invited to arrive early to the conference. So, here I am in Baltimore, Maryland one block away from the convention center.
I have to say, this conference has already started for me. On the airplane to here, I was sitting in the midst of a group of women all discussing their previous experiences at GHC. It was exciting and a little nerve-racking because I was an outsider and a first-timer; yet, I wanted to talk to these women about what they have done.
Professor Rodger is right. Once you initate the conversation, everything will flow. The person I sat beside is a senior manager at Cisco whose daughter had gone to Duke as an undergraduate. By talking with her, many of my questions about entering the job force were answered and a lot of my fears were lessened. The one point that stuck out to me was that you aren’t going to stick with you first job for forever. There is room to explore and find what you like, but make every job a learning opportunity. Through me, she invites all of the Duke students to come by the Cisco booth.
Later in the day, I got to meet my roommate. She’s a sweet and bright international graduate student at a Kentucky University. Her concerns, which focused on her being international, about her future were interesting to hear about and to think about. Will there be time when we are no longer concerned about country boundaries? Why did she decided to go to graduate school for a masters degree here and look for a job afterwards?
I’m looking forward to seeing all my fellow Duke students tomorrow as well as learning to be someone who can come back to GHC and help other newcomers.
~Wynne
