My Resume!

Lauren Krueger

Education:
Southern Methodist University—May 2011
Bachelor of Arts in Advertising, Journalism minor
Overall GPA: 3.65
New Trier High School Honor Roll, 2004-2007
Pi Beta Phi Honor Society, awarded to sophomores
With GPA 3.6 and above

Experience:
Dance Instructor, 2005-2008
Nicchia-Retail Store, salesperson, 2007-2008
Child Caretaker, 2003-2008
Winnetka Park District, counselor, Summer 2004
Three at your Service Catering Company, founder, 2004-2008
Save the Schools Fundraiser, Chicago, IL, member, 2006-2008
“Big Sister” to Intercity Girls Dance Foundation, 2005-2008
Northwestern Settlement House Charity, volunteer, 2006-2008
Soup Kitchen, Chicago, IL, volunteer, 2006-2008

Activities/ Interests:
Advanced Dance Competition, competitor/ High gold trophy, 2005
Tremain Dance Competition, participant, 2004
ELS (Work with mentally challenged Students at New Trier High School), member, 2005-2006)
Habitat for Humanity, member, 2008
Pacific Coast Dance Fest, participant, 2007
Adventure Treks Wilderness Camp, participant, 2006
Relay for Life, volunteer, 2007
Fisher Dance Studio, member, 1996-2007
Pi Beta Phi Homecoming committee, member, Fall 2008
Pi Beta Phi Philanthropy committee, member, Fall 2008
Pi Beta Phi Mr. University committee, member, Fall 2008
Pi Beta Phi Skit- 22 girls personally selected, member, Fall 2008
Interests include: Dancing, running, rollerblading, skiing and writing

Those few pages in the textbook opened a whole new world of “things to know” when constructing a resume. I learned quite a bit while reading this chapter. For instance, I was not aware of the purpose of an objective and when or when not to include one in your resume. When I began, I was also somewhat skeptical of whether I was allowed to include any of my high school information in my resume and while reading the chapter I soon discovered that it is expectable up until senior (acceptable as a freshman or sophomore) in college when you future employer does not care if you were president of the Chess team your junior year in high school. Another little fact that I found interesting was that the date is the least important piece of information and should always be listed at the end of the description and your resume should NEVER exceed one page. This chapter helped me organize my accomplishments into three categories (Education, Experience and activities/interests) and provided examples that helped me along the way. My resume still consists of a great deal of my high school accomplishments but I am hoping that will change shortly as I progress through my college career and obtain more experience through internships and hopefully studying abroad in London or Florence the second semester of my junior year.

NOT FOR ME…

It is not that I find this job to be the most unappealing job offered in the text but it is one that I definitely could not pursue a career in. This is the job of a MEDIA PLANNER. First of all, I am technology challenged and this job requires a great deal of computer skills. This job also involves a great amount of creativity and while I do have some creative juice in me, I would definitely consider it not my strongest suite. I prefer the more management side of advertising. Working with all of the digital information and consumer tracking does not interest me. I also do not find it particularly appealing to stare at a computer screen all day. I would much rather be out working on hands-on tasks that directly work with the client. A media planner's job involves a great deal of analyzing data and trends of consumers. Rather than being the one who gathers the research, I would love to be the person who is in actual personal contact with the client because I am a very social person and would love to be given the opportunity to work one on one with all types of people. “Good media planners are creative thinkers who know how to use numbers and research to help justify their choices. It’s strategic thinking in its purest form” (Morrison 116). This quote does not describe me AT ALL. Math and numbers has never come easy to me and I have also struggled with problem solving quite a bit. I am far better at reading people on a social and personal level rather than reading their thoughts through number and statistical trends. With this being said, I am looking for my future job to involve direct interaction with the client. I feel as though this job would not give me these social opportunities and therefore, is NOT the job for me.

MY FAVORITE… AND HOPE TO BE FUTURE JOB!

MY GOAL: Out of the six job descriptions discussed in the chapters of the text, I found that becoming an ACCOUNT PLANNER may be the best match for me. Account planners are the “social scientists” of advertising. They are the main connection to the client and are in charge of discovering the wants and needs of consumers. I am a very personable person therefore allowing me to be particularly good at reading situations and being empathetic and aware of how others around me are feeling. I also consider myself a very social person and interacting with people is what I love to do. This job would allow me to use my social skills to reach the business goals of the company. I think that I am going to go towards the management side of advertising and this particular job in the advertising field is business oriented. I find this job to be very interesting because they are the ones who magically make everything come together in the end. I am very organized and always follow deadlines. I do not procrastinate and get things done in an orderly fashion. I also am aware that this job entails being the one who presents the idea to the client. I have always been a very persuasive person and I do not get stage fright. I am a person that voices my opinion and is not afraid to speak up. I also am the one who will stand and present ideas to a room full of people without hesitation. My dream is to be the one that makes a meeting an overall success by pitching an idea that works and being confident in doing so. This job would allow me to be apart of the social aspect of the company by being able to personally interact with the clients while also tying me to the management side of advertising, which is where I hope to be in the near future.

Afterthesemessages.com REVIEW

I have never been on the afterthesemessages.com website before so I thought that I would take a look at it tonight. The featured review was entitled "Don’t Vote" and the client was Declare Yourself. A quick summary of this ad is basically that it featured many different celebrities who all in their own words said to not vote. They used the tactic of reverse psychology in hope that stating that we should not vote that people would do the exact opposite and participate in the election. I'm not sure that this strategy of promoting the election does it for me. I feel like this backwards way of portraying this ad it bizarre and should be put in a way that is more straight forward and honest. We always talk about how honesty and respect for the consumer is a key virtue in advertising and I think that this review does the exact opposite. It disregards respect for the consumer and I think that the ad should be the featured celebrities true opinions and feelings on why they think that people should vote. But I do understand in one sense that by continually saying that we shouldn’t vote people would think to themselves "why shouldn't I vote?" and in turn vote. This may have been an effective ad for some people but I personally would not have aired a vote campaign by using this technique of reverse psychology.

The 2008 Presidential Election

The final polls for the 2008 presidential election was 53% Obama and 46% McCain. I don’t want to go on about my personal political views but I would like to point out all of the negativity that was publicized over the last month. Whether it was over college student’s facebook status, on T.V or an article in a newspaper. People were bashing each other left and right, which kind of puzzles me because in the end we are all supposed to be on one side and represent America TOGETHER. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I think that we should look at the positive and over everything stand by one another and represent our country.

Dreams

Do dreams have meaning? I don’t know whether or not to believe the things that I see online when I try and look up my current dreams. Honestly, I think that dreams are just thoughts randomly put together from throughout the day. But who knows? A part of me does want to believe that dreams do have some truth to them. Maybe it’s our subconscious’s way of telling us something and the only way it can get through to us is through our dreams when we are asleep. I guess we will never know but I think we should all for the fun of believing, take dreams as a look into how we are really feeling. Even though that we have no real proof of their accuracy and true meaning from now on I’m going to take a deeper look into my dreams and I think that you should do the same. Who knows, it may be fun.

Lately, I have been taking a lot of pictures. I am not in any photography classes or anything but I have always had a million pictures laying around my room either in picture frames or cut up neatly placed into ribbon boards hanging on my walls. I like the feeling of catching the moments that you know you will probably never get to live again. Taking pictures makes me feel as if I can capture the way I was feeling during the picture and every time I look at it, it brings me back to that exact time and place. Being surrounded everyday by the people who are in my pictures puts me at ease. It makes me happy for some reason. I guess it’s the comfort of knowing that I have people who really care about me and when I look at all the pictures I am reminded of all the great times that I have had with them. Pictures capture moments and emotions and I think that’s why I find them so fascinating.

My opinion on how we should live our lives...

“Live like there is no tomorrow, sing as if no one can hear, love like you have never been hurt, dance as though no one is watching you.”

I know this is a very well known quote that you hear a lot but I have always loved it. I think it’s the perfect combination of inspirational words that explains how we should live our lives. Take each day as it comes and don’t worry what others think, do what you want to do and do it for yourself. LIVE YOUR LIFE.