How my college experiences have given me experiences employers want to see

     Thus far I have worked two jobs in my life, one was rather trivial at a movie theater and another at a hospital so at least for entry-level, no education required(which is a lie, a patient access representative needs three months education paid by the employer and then about a year of training to become relatively valuable to the company) type of job, I have some knowledge of what employers may be looking for. 

    My first and greatest experience that has given me teamwork, critical thinking, and communication skills was my internship with the NCEHSS program in the summer that was all about doing research. Being able to work with your peers on projects that are not gated by grades or strict piece-by-piece deadlines is a good way to build teamwork. Given two months to create a presentable research poster of a topic of our choice, my lab partner and I had to set up schedules, communicate results effectively, understand where this research leads, and work with our lab PI and mentor to show our interim results. Critical thinking in my opinion is when you have a question, and you try to answer it, and there's simply no one giving you a check-mark or an X on how you did. You yourself have to come to terms with what you're able to do, what you can understand, and how you can come forward with a rational conclusion. This experience is how I grew in those three skills and is one of my strongest experiences.

Another experience I've had was when I was in my Flora of Arizona class with Dr. Sweat in the spring. It sounds like a dainty and fun class and it was definitely fun, but that class helped me develop my time management, project management, and decision-making skills. To start off, before taking that class I had zero knowledge of flora whatsoever, and if you asked me then what a petal versus a sepal was, I would shrug. Over the whole semester I had to not only learn, but create a forty page herbarium identifying 40 different native angiosperms in Arizona. This required me drive to different places that are all easily hours away from each other to find ecosystems that had sufficiently different native plants to identify. This was all done during a full semester while I had a full time job at a hospital. Thus, I had to learn to manage my time, manage the project by constructing this herbarium over the course of three months, and deciding when was the best time go out and key different flora; not everything is in growing season and the best way to identify an angiosperm is it's flower. This experience had given me strong skills that I would not have had in a normal lecture setting.

The last experience I have is when I actually made the switch from Computer Science to Environmental Science for a major. A lot of people have the misconception that it is simply just a flick of the wrist and you are on your way to your different degree. That is far from the case. At the time, I had to find the motivation and commitment to both go out of my way to make the changes by setting up many appointments, figuring out what I wanted to do next, and doing this all while still handling the current classes that I was trying to finish without dropping. This all requires good communication skills by advocating clearly what your intentions are so advisors can help you, and risk or financial management with trying to decide what other avenues of majors are available to pursue. This means looking at what credits you've already taken, what job prospects may exist after getting the degree, and how this all fits in to an already turbulent time for most people who go through this similar experience. There is a ton of planning involved and despite it may seeming like a negative experience, it builds important skills and character development that can make someone much stronger for it. Everyone makes mistakes even at jobs and I think this experience shows how I can overcome my mistakes to produce a positive experience.