Volume: 59 Issue: 24
APRIL 27, 2016
driftwood.uno.edu
POST-GRAD JOBS ARE THERE, IF STUDENTS KNOW TO LOOK job may not be easy for those who wait until the last minute. College career counselors encourage students to focus on preparing for their futures throughout college. UNO students have access to information and services on campus that can give them a jump start on their plans for the future. Career Services, an office located in the University Center, offers many services to students regarding career readiness, j o b searching and placement. One ser-
BY CHLOE GAGNON News Editor Every May, graduating college students are faced with the pressure of finding a job to support themselves and it gets harder with the growing qualifications, number of graduating students and increased costs. According to the National Association for Colleges and Employers (NACE): “Employers expect to hire 5.2 percent more new graduates from the Class of 2016 than they hired from the Class of 2015.” While this seems like good news, finding a
vice offered to students is their online database where employers post internships and job offers. “In the system we have several thousand employers that are active and they post jobs all the time,” said Celyn Boykin, director of career services. Graduating senior, Teresa Fleming said: “I took my mediocre resume to career services and they helped me fine tune it and build it and make it a little bit more professional.” Boykin went on to say: “This department in particular is not a place where students should come in their senior year or the semester that they’re graduating. This is a development process so this means that freshmen need to start developing the career skills that they’re going to need going into the workforce. There are going to be more opportunities
for students who prepare themselves. If you wait longer, closer to graduation, after graduation, it’s going to be progressively harder for the student.” Mindy Jarrett, another graduating senior, does not have a job lined up. She said: “I feel like it should make me nervous to not have a job lined up after graduation, but it doesn’t. [I’m] just Peter-Panning my way through life. Like I don’t want to grow up.” Fleming, who does have a job lined up immediately after graduation at Margin Recovery International, said, “I have to pay my own way so it was really important for me to have something lined up. I think the main thing is that it relieved a lot of stress for me to focus on finishing strong.” Continued on page 7
UNO Finals Fest finds success in first year BY ANNA GOWIN Features Editor If you found yourself on campus this past Friday evening, you might have noticed more than the usual murmurs floating over from the Amphitheater. Those deliberate, student-generated sounds belonged to Finals Fest, the first music festival that took place here at UNO. Michael Roussell, the originator of Finals Fest, said the idea for the festival came to him because of the Amp’s location on campus: “I felt like the Amphitheater was under-used and really that something like a music festival would be a great use for it.”
Roussell said that he and a team of six (Everett Fontenot, Bruce Menesses, Alexis Tewelde, Jared Buck, Ben Gothard and Roussell himself) managed to pull together the event in less than a month. “The most complex part has been organizing with the university and working with their rules,” Roussell said. This includes plans to have food trucks present at the event, something they were told would be allowed to happen up until a few days prior to the event. Roussell said, “We were getting the green light on the trucks from everyone…but Business Affairs stopped us cold. They didn’t really give us an explanation other than it was against
their policies.” So the concessions provided at the event were paid for out of pocket by Roussell and other Finals Fest staff members. The crew also hand screen-printed all of the shirts that were sold that night, with a logo designed by Tewelde. But even with all of those hurdles, Roussell said that, “Really the process has been relatively fun with only a few mishaps.” The team also greatly utilized social media in their efforts to reach students and New Orleans residents at the peak of spring festival season. “Ben [Gothard], the leader of our social media campaign has been on top of really getting the word out about
the event,” said Roussell. The fruits of their labor were realized April 22, when student musicians, artists and art lovers filled the Amphitheater for a night of fun. Student artists set up to do live painting at the top of the hill, next to merchandise tables and food. All while a lineup of bands performed on stage. “We wanted to showcase a lot of musical acts from UNO... as well as finding a headliner that had a pretty established fan base,” said Roussell. That established band was West Without, an indie-rock outfit from Baton Rouge. Continued on page 11