Junk in the Trunk of the Week – College Advice

Penelope Trunk, Yahoo’s Brazen Careerist, has her back-to-school related advice column, luke-warm off the online presses (from last week) of Yahoo! Personal Finance. Her column is entitled, “Your Career Path Starts in College.” Here are her 8 tips to bump you into prime set position:

1. Don't stress about your major.
Physical Kinesiology is not just for outside linebackers anymore.

2. Recognize that law school can be a crutch.
Unless you want to be a lawyer, or a politician, or several other things.

3. Help your parents organize their network.
Her advice is to invite all your parents’ friends and frat brothers’ parents (and their friends) to LinkedIn. I guess they’re already on Facebook?

4. Join the cheerleading squad. Really.
Here’s Penelope’s entry:

Cheerleaders are great salespeople [they make me want to buy the classiest light beers]. It's probably self-selecting [the girls in high school willing to put out] -- after all, introverts don't run onto the football field at halftime and jump around [at least the people in the band have a useful skill blowing things that make melodic noises].

But when companies recruit at colleges, they often cater to cheerleaders in the same way that they cater to athletes [with a well-stocked hors d’ouevres table?]. Both types are high-performers [she forgot the quotes] in the workplace, so join a team [the Florida State Seminole Receptacles] to do well in your career -- and, yes, the cheerleading squad counts as a team [A literal, non-ironic viewing of “Bring It On” changed Penelope’s life] .

5. Make time to read "Getting Things Done."
Just look at where it got Citi.

6. Learn your strengths.
“Discover your strengths and practice applying them consciously,” like fashioning cafeteria foods/items into bongs, finding people to willingly touch your leg, and building your repertoire of Kings’ drinking game techniques, including:
- questions (the trick “how does this work again?” is douche-tastic yet effective)
- rhyme (end your sentence with “orange,” try to avoid getting one thrown at you)
- categories (all time favorite – “reproductive organs that start with the letter P,” go!)
- investigative “Never Have I Evers” (never have I ever wanted to hook up with someone giving a “Never Have I Ever”)
- rules (every time someone uses a definite article, they take off a definite article of clothing, with a self and dude exemption).

7. Take a class in positive psychology.
Like the most popular class at Harvard right now. (Psych 1504 taught by Tal Ben-Shahar - only offered in the spring)

8. Learn to be vulnerable.
The pre-cursor to Penelope’s ‘expect harassment, and stay cool’ in the workplace.

Your Career Path Starts in College [Yahoo Personal Finance]