I can’t believe that in less than 3 months I’ll be a college graduate.  I’ve tried avoiding it, but that failed. Somehow my mom wasn’t thrilled with the idea of me wanting to stay and party at the #1 party school no matter how much I tried to convince her that I wanted to open my mind to a new world of educational and enlightening wonders.

Yes, the thought of graduating still makes me nauseous (I’d prefer a tequila hangover any day) but these past few months have been a period of reflection for me; that amazing game-winning beer pong shot, the many “I did WHAT” stories, the intense study sessions for required classes that I’ll never need in my real life….

With the real world looming on the not-so-distant horizon, I realize that my time at Penn State has been legen…wait for it…DARY, but there’s still so much useful stuff I don’t know. So now I’m sitting here, up to my ears in job applications, wishing that maybe instead of forcing me to take Geology 101 (and spend major cashola on it), my school would have offered some more useful classes…

Basic Car Skills 101: This past summer I purchased my dream nightmare of a car: a VW Beetle!   I thought we were a match made in heaven, until she decided to go crazy on me.  That’s when I realized all I knew how to do was fill her up with gas.    A simple class that taught me how to change a flat, how to add fluids or oil, line it up on a car wash track, and even talk to mechanics so they don’t scam me for money because I’m a girl (trust me, they do!) would have been very helpful.

Cooking Outside the Kraft Box 202:  Although mac and cheese is one of my favorite foods, I wish I knew how to cook more complicated dishes.  Every time I try, I somehow manage to screw them  up. I once destroyed a pot trying to cook marinated chicken. Yeah, I’m the nightmare in the kitchen.  If I could just have some simple lessons and lots of one-on-one instruction, I might actually be allowed to try cooking a complicated dish, without fear in my roommate’s eyes.

Inside the World of Dating 350: Before coming to Penn State, I was convinced that during these 4 years I was going to meet the love of my life.  Instead, all I’ve met are the wrong guys. Lots of them. No matter how many times I’m convinced I’ve found the nice guy it never works out.  So just a simple class on guys with topics such as “Why guys flirt when they make it obvious they don’t like you”, “Signs he an a-hole”, or “It’s time to make a move”, would definitely save me a lot of my time and energy on the male species. CollegeCandy’s very own Dude could be the prof!

Job Hunting 100: College is intense. Your classes are hard and with each passing year require more time and effort. Yet your teachers still act as if you are only taking their class.  Then with what little free time you have left, you have extracurricular activities to attend to. Your days are so over-scheduled you barely have time to eat that Easy Mac. And then senior year rolls around and you gotta add job hunting to the mix. 24 hours isn’t enough for me to finish all my homework and activities, let alone work on that resume. But I have to if I don’t want to move back in with the parentals in 3 months. A class (or even a semester dedicated solely to the job hunt) would definitely make me more successful down the road. And that’s the point of college, right? To find a job?

It’s internship hunting season and, thanks to the economy, it’s more competitive than ever. That means it’s more important than ever to make a really good first impression. Being that I spent the past week alone sifting through over 100 applications for CollegeCandy’s summer internship positions, I know a thing or twelve about what makes a successful application.

If you want to spend your summer beefing up your resume, learning the ropes and, most likely, getting someone else’s coffee, take a few of these things into consideration:

Stand Out.
Most internship coordinators receive a lot of applications, making it incredibly difficult to remember every single one they looked at. If you want to be remembered, you gotta stand out.

Resume Do:
Move away from the traditional/boring resume format and try doing something a little different. (You can find ideas online.) I once received a resume that had a great pop of bright green on the top and a very simple green line down the left side. Three years later, I still remember that applicant.

Resume Don’t:
Say something stupid. My friend was recently reading through internship applications for a position at her advertising firm. Under “interests” one applicant listed: “Facebook creeping, collecting bar wrist bands, and beer pong.” Not only was she under 21, but she was completely unprofessional. Yes, she was trying to be creative and stand out, but this was clearly the wrong way to do it.

Cover Letter Do:
Writing cover letters is annoying, yes, but they are incredibly important. Don’t just copy and paste a generic cover letter and send it out to every job you are applying for. We aren’t stupid and it makes us feel like you really aren’t that serious about the position.  Take some time and think about the company, the job and the industry, and tailor your cover letter accordingly. Also, a little anecdote at the beginning can go a long way in getting someone’s attention.

Cover Letter Don’t:
Reiterate everything that we already saw on your resume. If we wanted a list of your accomplishments, well, we’ve already got that. Also, don’t send it without spellchecking first. Seems obvious, but I can’t tell you how many cover letters (for writing positions!) I’ve read with glaring errors.

Be Professional:
No matter the company culture, you must act and dress professionally. My advertising friend (again) recently interviewed a potential intern who showed up wearing jeans and Uggs. UGGS! While the ad industry may be more laid back than most when it comes to attire, it is totally unprofessional and disrespectful to show up in the same clothes you wore to class.

Prepare for the Interview:
Beyond just coming up with your biggest personal flaw and memorizing all the skills you’ve acquired from previous positions, spend a bit of time learning about the company and all of their accomplishments. This not only shows the interviewer that you are genuinely interested in the company, but can also be very flattering for them.  While most people won’t admit this, flattery often does go a long way.

Send a Thank You Note:
We don’t want anything sappy, cheesy or fake, but simply dropping a quick thank-you email a few days after an interview not only shows us respect, but also gets you back fresh in our minds. And after interviewing 6 other people since we spoke to you, that could be the difference between getting the coveted internship and ending up in the forgettable pile.

Job Wanted.

When we all entered our senior year of high school, the question on everyone’s mind was where they’d be going to college. We worked our asses off to get decent SAT scores and spent every weekend for months writing essays about why we were more wonderful than the thousands of other students applying for the same coveted place on campus.

Four years and a degree later, I now find myself asking a different question: I did all of this for what, exactly?

Of course, I’ve had the time of my life in college. The parties, the late night gossip fests with my roommate, the 4 a.m. diner visits – all of it was totally worth memorizing SAT vocab words and relearning geometry. But when it’s all said and done (which in my case is way too close for comfort), with $120,000 down the hole, what does my little graduation certificate get me exactly?

Apparently, not much.

As news of the drop in the unemployment rate circulated last last month I felt my heart skip a beat. “Thank God! I won’t be spending the next four years in my parent’s basement mailing my resume to every company in the country.” But I spoke to soon. The truth is, while the unemployment rate is, in fact, down, the unemployment rate of recent grads is up.

According to Don Lee at the Los Angeles Times, “For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November.” It doesn’t seem like much, but that is not good for us seniors. “The unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter — the highest since early 1983 and more than double the rate for older college-educated workers.”

Apparently an undergraduate degree isn’t worth much anymore, since now we are also competing for jobs with adults who have lost their’s due to the recession, and they are packing a whole lot more work experience on their resume than we are.

I’ll give you a moment to cry.

And now I’ll give you 5 things you can do right now to set yourself apart from the millions of other job-hunters out there so you can beat the odds and not take your place on your parents’ couch come May:

1. Network!!
Lisa Quast, President and Founder of Career Woman, Inc. says, “Networking is a great way to get to know people who could potentially help with your job search.  Research local associations and groups you can either join or attend individual meetings so you can expand your circle of friends and make new allies.”

2. Plan Ahead
This means more than tweaking your resume every semester. Take some time now to really consider what you want to do after graduation and work towards that goal. It looks much more appealing to the people hiring to see that you were focused and built up your experience in that specific field than to see a resume spanning from marketing internships to the pre-med fraternity and everything in between.

3. Build Relationships
Dr. Debi Yohn, author of, “Parenting College Students: 27 Winning Strategies for Success” urges the importance of teamwork to employers. “Employers are hiring more than a degree.  They are hiring a complete person.  With the competition in the job market, an employer will be attracted to a person that is multi faceted, interesting and can show that they can get along with people. Being successfully involved in outside activities or teams can be an indication of future success.”

4. Be Prepared
When it comes time to interview, preparation is about more than picking out the right outfit or practicing in front of a mirror. There is a lot to learn and in order to stand out, you must internalize it all. According to JR Rodrigues, a hiring manager with 25 years of experience, the biggest issue with recent college grads is their “lack of preparation and general lackadaisical attitude.” He recommends setting yourself apart by “coming to an interview prepared and then carefully follow[ing] through with the entire hiring process.” That means researching the company, knowing your answers and doing the important follow-up after the fact.

5. Get Experience
This goes without saying, but get out there and do something now. Get an internship, get a job, just do something that proves you’ve got the skills (even basic office skills are important!) to handle a real job and you can do more than regurgitate information on a written exam. Grades are important. Leadership is important. But when you’re competing with a lot of people (many with years of experience under their belts), experience and knowledge are the most important.

So you’re stuck on campus for Spring Break, watching people flee to warmer climates or their parents’ house. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be bored. There are plenty things to do on campus that are fun and don’t break the bank.

Have a beach party – just because you’re not at the beach doesn’t mean you can’t pretend you are. Break out the bikinis and shorts, blend up some margaritas and blast the songs that remind you of summer. Invite others that stuck on campus. You might even find a cute boy you can ‘lei’.

Theme parties – Still not in shape to don your bikini? What about another type of theme party? Have a moustache party (no you don’t have to grow one, just squiggle a nice one on your finger and hold it up to your face). Or you could try out our makeup tips for a decade party. Or how about a party from one of those fabulous places you didn’t get to travel this break. Fiesta anyone?

Be a tourist in your city – Chances are while you’re in school you don’t have a lot of time to get out and explore the city or town you’re living in. Getting to know your town is one of the things you must do before you graduate, so why not do it now? If there are museums in your area, find out when they have free admission, or discount days and check them out. Or find all the weird and wonderful attractions and go take pictures with everything! Not only will it be fun finding all the odd things in your city (my hometown has a parking garage filled with life-size cow statues) but you’ll also end up with a fun set of staycation pictures for everyone to look at!

Be productive – You’ve got things to do and now is the perfect time to catch up. Some schools even have seminars during reading week. At mine they have a weeks worth of job-hunting, resume writing, interviewing seminars that may come in handy. And with the head start on the job hunt, maybe you’ll score an amazing job that means you can go away next Spring Break!

Movie marathons – Get together everyone you know for an epically long themed movie-marathon. You could have everyone bring their favorite movie and watch them all, have an 80s movie night, a slasher-flick marathon or a cheesy-chick flick night. Or, if you’ve missed all your favourite TV shows, catch up on those.

Clothing swap – Get all the girls together for a clothing swap. Chances are your closet needs some new life, so trade in the items you no longer wear for something new. It also gives you a chance to get rid of the temptation of any super tight items leftover from that pre-frosh-15 days.

Game Night — Got any board games lying around or know any good card games? Why not have a games night? Are there cute boys around? As they demonstrate in Friends, every game can have the ’strip’ element added to it.

So even if you are on campus there are plenty of ways to have fun this break. As with any break, there are the people to avoid after you head back to classes. What is everyone doing to recession proof their breaks?

This is your chance to blog on CollegeCandy.com. Find out how!

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During college, we all must put on our serious face, and begin working on our “real” résumes that will hopefully lead us into the scary, professional world. Not those stupid résume templates they made us fill out during high school, where the only jobs we could list were babysitting, JV Cheerleading, and serving frozen yogurt at T.C.B.Y (for three weeks before getting fired for not “taking the job seriously”). Well…that was what mine looked like, anyway.

The dreaded résume is inevitable, and there are definitely rules to follow if you want to create one that is kick-ass, as opposed to one that gets shuffled in with the masses, never to be seen again. There are tons of sites out there that will tell you what you SHOULD do with your résume.

MSN.com has a helpful article about what NOT to do on your résume. Such as, don’t type out your résume on stupid, girly, pink paper that smells like flowers and is covered in glitter. It may have worked for Reese in the unrealistic Legally Blonde, but it won’t work for you. Don’t let your résume go over one page, even if you have worked thirty jobs – condense everything to one or two bullet points if you have to, and make the text smaller. And, make sure everything on your résume specifically applies to the job you’re applying for. Hiring managers can sniff out generic résumes like it’s their job. Oh wait….it is.

If you want to graduate and have a shot at a real position, working on your résume should feel like you’re taking yet another class, as tiring as it may be at the end of a semester. I say, spend a few hours at Borders, get some coffee, eat a muffin, break out the note pads, and really study those résume and cover letter books until you have a firm grasp on the do’s and do not’s. Atleast at Borders, you can take breaks and wander into the erotica section. Can’t do that in Statistics!

Or can you….hmmm….

Happy résume-writing and job hunting!