Happy Black and Gold Friday – and a hot one here, high 70s. Definitely strangely warm weather for November.
One of our faculty members, Professor Barry Trachtenberg of the History department, is going to testify before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary next week. Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) invited Dr. Trachtenberg, an expert in Jewish history, to share that expertise at a hearing called “Examining Anti-Semitism on College Campuses” on Tuesday, Nov. 7 at 10 a.m. You can read the full article here, and there is a link at the end to watch a livecast of the testimony.
It’s been a busy week here with academic advising for lower division advisees, or students who have not yet declared a major. One of the questions students in general have is ‘if I major in X, can I get a good job?’ For those students, I always like to refer them to the Office of Personal and Career Development (OPCD) Explore Majors web site. Very important for students to know that with a few notable exceptions, most careers do not require a specific major. Students who major in a subject they love and are good at normally have higher GPAs, and GPAs can help differentiate resumes. Think of it this way, would most people rather hire a 3.8 English major or a 2.8 Major That Seemed Super-Practical? A rhetorical question, but a good one to chew on.
One of the things I particularly like about the Explore Majors web site is that if you scroll down, you can see all the different majors listed. Click on any one of those and you go to a new page that tells you what that major is about, what careers interest students in that major, etc. A fabulous resource is the “Where have Wake Forest graduates landed jobs with this major?” Click on that for the major of your choice and you can download a spreadsheet showing the broad range of jobs – everything from teaching to banking to marketing to grad school and more. In my experience, there is not a major at Wake that doesn’t teach you to write well and think critically and be analytical; all of those are skills people need to be successful. So if your Deac is sweating majors and classes, remind them of this helpful resource.
Hope to see your Deacs out this Sunday at 1 pm at Spry for our game against Virginia Tech. And since it is Friday, be sure to give them a call. You know why 🙂
