UIC Newsletter

• Oct. 2020 (Vol. 5 No. 1)
• Oct. 2019 (Vol. 4 No. 2)
• Mar. 2019 (Vol. 4 No. 1)
• Sep. 2018 (Vol. 3 No. 2)
• Mar. 2018 (Vol. 3 No. 1)
• Sep. 2017 (Vol. 2 No. 2)

NEWS AND ACTIVITIES

UIC Alumni Career Talks

On 25 May (Sat), the UICAA, the UIC Career Development Center, and the UIC Office jointly hosted the UIC Alumni Career Talks (formerly the UIC Career Fair) in Eugene Lounge at Daewoo Hall Annex. This has been an annual event since 2012 exclusively for UIC students where currently enrolled students get to hear their seniors’ first-hand experience in the perspectives of career preparation and orientation. UIC has a great network of alumni with a wide range of occupation all over the world. Hence, UIC Alumni Career Talks is a special opportunity for undergraduate students to have a glimpse at the life postgraduate.

What is the appeal of this event that urge the attendance of nearly a hundred students on a Saturday afternoon of a beautiful spring day? We surely worry about our future path with many possibility as well as unknowability. Yet, why would a career talk be more reassuring than thousands of available advices that can be easily found online? It is because they are from our seniors, our school alumni, who just a few years ago were in our position, who also attended UIC and might have had the same hope, dream, future vision as well as worry as we do. Since that may be the case, the venue was packed with students from early on, the questions board was crammed with questions written on yellow note, and the room was filled with eager discussion from the thoughtful sharing and the curious questions continuously exchanged for the fleeting 3 hours of the session. The 3-hour period was not a short time, yet it seemed to be insufficient as many students stay after the talk to ask the alumni more questions. The event seemed to be great help as all the concern bothering the students are somewhat relieved by the considerate answer and advice from our seniors.

This year, we get to hear the talk from our alumni from different field such as finance, banking, sale, marketing, IT and academia. Though their sharing varies as their experience and their occupation differs from each other, they all emphasized how the experience they have at UIC was a significant contribution to their future career. The learning experience of our school gives us many unseen advantages that can be great edge to our career preparation like our high performance in two or more languages, our critical thinking being trained through countless challenging reading or our presentation and discussion skill. Our major might matter a lot and might not matter at all since it might merely indicate our intellectual interest out of the whole university experience. The undergraduate experience can add up to so much more than that as it can provide us with many opportunity, connection and understanding of ourselves. We need to learn and know about ourselves, our strength and weakness to find a suitable career path. Hence our time at UIC, if spent wisely, will give us just the necessary resources for our future.

Listening to the talks from the alumni, we can help but feel relieved as well as encouraged to make the most of our college life. We are thankful that our alumni spare an afternoon in their schedule to go back and give us thoughtful and sincere advices on the crafting of our future.