Who doesn’t love scrolling aimlessly through social media accounts like @dogsofinstagram or @cats_of_instagram when you have some down time?

But did you also know that as a college student, you have valuable access to networking and job seeking opportunities through social media?

How much can you find out about a company in 280 characters or less (if they’ve got a Twitter account, that is)? Likely more than you think!

Many companies, organizations and universities are now connected to social media. Whether you are on the hunt for an internship, job, or exploring graduate school opportunities, following the social media accounts of places you’re interested in can tell you a lot about their mission, values, and community. This can first give you some insight into whether or not the workplace would be a good fit for you. Some companies and organizations might even use their social media accounts to advertise employment opportunities.

If you are preparing for an internship or job interview, the information you gather from social media can then be used to show that you’ve done your research and have a working knowledge of the company or organization’s practices and current ventures.

Having a LinkedIn account is a great way to connect with professionals working in the field you are interested in. Using LinkedIn, you can message professionals to set up informational interviews (i.e. - to learn about how they entered into the field or to learn more about their job). You could also use a site like LinkedIn to join interest groups and participate in online discussions related to your field of interest.

Twitter can also be a great networking tool, especially if you are headed to a conference or large event. Nowadays, conferences and events often have their own unique hashtag that participants can incorporate into their Twitter statuses. Not only does this enable you to see what other attendees are saying about the event, but it can also serve as a tool for scheduling meet-ups while the event is taking place.

If you’re going to leverage social media in this way, you want to make sure that your own online presence reflects who you are in a positive light. How can you do this?

1.       Participate!

Social Media done right is all about active participation. Don’t join only to sit back and passively scroll through other peoples’ posts. Add your voice and ideas to the mix!

2.       Brand Yourself

Tell people who you are and what you are about. Streamline your usernames to make it easier to search for you. Keep your bios concise, but make a point about your intentions. Make connections and post things that relate to who you say you are.

3.       Keep it Clean

Now a timeless rule in social media, make sure to conduct yourself professionally online. Think before you post- is this something you want your mom, professor, or future employer to see?

4.       Don’t Make it All About You

Go easy on the “selfies” and posts that only focus on you. Share a thought-provoking article. Advertise for an upcoming event in your local community. Re-post items from those you follow.

Upcoming Events:

LinkedIn Profile Checklist

LinkedIn UMBC Alumni Page

The Career Center will also review student LinkedIn accounts by appointment.

Check out and follow these UMBC Social Media Accounts!

Office for Academic & Pre-Professional Advising Instagram: @umbc_advising

Facebook

Instagram: @umbclife; @umbccampuslife

Twitter

Bonus Links:

45 Things to do on Social Media to Find Jobs by Erin Greenawald

https://www.themuse.com/advice/45-things-to-do-on-social-media-to-find-jobs

Study: Over 68% of Students Use Social Media in Internship Search by Michael Schramm

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/07/14/most-students-use-social-media-in-job-internship-search/

How to Brand Yourself on Social Media by Jasmine Sandler

http://www.fastcompany.com/3036488/hit-the-ground-running/how-to-brand-yourself-on-social-media

Trainees should bring at least one PDF document (or digital file) from their course materials to review. Direct instruction will be provided for both creation of an accessible document and remediation of inaccessible content using common authoring tools including Microsoft and Adobe products.  For questions or to RSVP, contact Andrew Drummond, SDS Assistive Technology Specialist at adrumm@umbc.edu or reserve through the myUMBC event site, https://my.umbc.edu/groups/sss/events/58426. Space is limited.

Before you leave for Spring Break, you’ll need to do a few things.  Following this checklist below will help to reduce the risk of fire, minimize pest problems and increase the security of your room and its contents.

• Unplug all appliances and extension cords from electrical wall sockets.  Exception:  You may leave refrigerators and fish tanks plugged in after checking to make sure electrical connections are safe… that is, not running under rugs, not hanging loosely out of the wall, or plugged into a thin extension cord.
• Turn off all water completely.  Make sure faucets and shower heads are not dripping.
• Clean your bathroom well.  Suggestion:  to avoid a stuffy bathroom when you return, leave your bathroom door open to allow air to circulate.  Make sure it’s okay with your suitemates before leaving the door unlocked.
• Remove all trash/recyclables and dispose of it in the trash room or in a dumpster.
• Check your window to be sure it is securely locked.  If you should find your window unlocked and cannot lock it, notify your RA or FXIT (x53948).

• Leave blinds and shades open except for first floor – first floor rooms should fully CLOSE shades or blinds

• Feed your fish and water your plants.  Remember, you won’t be able to get back in until 12 Noon on Sunday, March 25.
• Turn off your lights.  If you’re the last one to leave from your suite, make sure the bathroom light / fan is off.  Also turn off your alarm clock.
• Remember to pack any medications or others necessities you might need.
• Lock your door and take your key with you.
• Tape this checklist to your door on your way out.
• Secure your vehicle if you are leaving it on campus.

Your RA will conduct a pre-break inspection of each room.  Please help save time by following checkout procedures.

Communities reopen Sunday, March 25, 2018 at noon. If you have any questions feel free to contact Residential Life at 410-455-2591.

Program coordinator Amelia Meman reminisces about her feminist friendships and analyzes how these relationships foster empowerment and powerful networks.

This Women’s History Month, the Women’s Center was inspired by feminism’s legacy of collective action. While feminism is very much based in the personal and individual, it is also a movement built through the camaraderie, collective consciousness, compassion, and connections between people. That’s why, this March, the Women’s Center is celebrating feminist friendships. That’s also why I’m writing this blog post.

Every time I come to think about this theme, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, because I immediately think of the bonds I made at UMBC that have continued on. More on this later, but I’ll tell you this much: nothing brings you together, like the hot crucible of simultaneous existential crises via The Patriarchy. Our angst-ridden mental toil aside, describing a friendship as “feminist” might feel weird to some people, but I wonder what it means to those it resonates with.

For me, it’s not about the friends who encourage me to burn my bra and always validate my decision to not shave–although they also do that. It’s also the friends who affirm me and remind me that I am a person with power who deserves good things in the world. My feminist friends go to rallies with me and talk Butler with me, but they also are the first to watch Neighbors 2 and they’re the best at recommending sci-fi and fantasy novels.

The personal is political… and the political is personal

I think that all of my relationships are political. This is probably by virtue of being a feminist and a philosophical thinker, but it’s also because my friends are my political allies. We are constantly thinking about the political power that comes with being women, being queer (AF), being trauma survivors, being white and/or people of color, being (dis)abled, etc. and being radically together. We’re friends who empower each other to live when so many other things in this world act to kill us. We’re constantly navigating privilege and oppression, and we get a lot of things wrong. We teach other, call each other in. We are committed to the process of constantly learning how to be better humans to one another and all of the people we interact with.

Does anything scream friendship more than this group shot of the Great British Baking Show judges?

So when I say that the personal is political, I mean that things we like to keep in private (i.e. whether or not we’re having sex, what kind of sex we’re having, birth control, abortions, survivor status, etc.) are personal experiences that are also–with feminism–political. Rather than continue to make the prudish world of vanilla, purely procreative sex comfortable, feminists talk reproductive justice, use the words “vagina,” “penis,” “vulva,” “anus,” etc. Those things that people would rather sweep under the rug? We dig those out and we burn the rug.

Just so, the political is personal. This, for me, is feminist friendship. My unity and belonging with other feminists is tied, not just to our affinity for one another as funny weirdos, but also to our political mindset. As we dance, we move toward liberation. As we laugh, we banish the silence pressed into us as women and femmes. As we eat together, we feed each other the love and power we deserve.

The political is personal, because my liberation is tied to theirs, and we both know that as we watch the latest season of The Great British Baking Show.

Shine theory

So as we move throughout Women’s History Month and think about all of our herstorical sheroes who give us life (often literally), think about those friends that are around you who make you shine brighter. Whether that’s your mom, your professor, Oprah, think about the women who inspire you.

Take a breath, and think about your best memory with that person. How did you become friends? What do you all do best together? How do you feel when you’re around each other?

Seriously take like 15 seconds to meditate on that.

Alright, now you can come back to me.

Didn’t that make you feel shiny?

In the Women’s Center, we like to talk about shine theory. Jess is the one who introduced me to this concept a while ago (see her awesome UMBC Women Who Rock series), but basically, shine theory is a lens through which we can think about friendship. Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow (of Call Your Girlfriend) coined the term “shine theory” in an article on powerful women as best friends. Friedman wrote: “when you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her. Surrounding yourself with the best people doesn’t make you look worse by comparison. It makes you better.”

Friedman and Sow add that in its simplest form, shine theory is this: “I don’t shine, if you don’t shine.”

Feminist friends, to me, push you and support you so that you can shine as bright, if not brighter, than them and we all get a little better for it.

GWST-ers 4 Life

I would be remiss to not note that the thing that brought some of my best, most steady feminist friends together was our journey through the UMBC Gender and Women’s Studies Department. We were knit together through a shared affinity for feminist politics, and I know I was able to find myself through them. Not because they showed me a self I wanted to be, but because they allowed me to actually BE the person I always wanted to be.

It wasn’t all hearts and rainbows and radical self-care quotes from Audre Lorde. It was a lot of shit. We went through heartbreak together, we grieved together, we powered through classes like beleaguered Weather-people in a hurricane. In queer theory, we read Michel Foucault’s interview, “Friendship as a Way of Life,” in which he lays out this idea of queer community:

The notion of mode of life seems important to me. Will it require the introduction of a diversification different from the ones due to social class, differences in profession and culture, a diversification that would also be a form of relationship and would be a “way of life”? A way of life can be shared among individuals of different age, status, and social activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalized. It seems to me that way of life can yield a culture and an ethics. To be “gay,” I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the bisible masks of the homosexual but to try to define and develop a way of life. (p. 137-138)

Being “gay” or “queer” or, in our case, “feminists,” is not about defining who we are, but about creating a way of life that suits our needs and that is, potentially, radical. When the institution is so often your oppressor, molding new culture and ethics through friendship becomes a way of also creating new futures and pathways that the institution did not initially have open to you. For example, I don’t know where my self-confidence would be without my therapist and the power of my friends, but I know that the impacts of sexism, racism, ableism, etc. were limiting my self-confidence, and when I learned about myself as someone who was strong and capable of loosing that sort of weight, I was able to achieve more and better. I have a job, I’m pursuing my (very high) educational goals, I’m publishing this blogpost; this is all enabled through this alternative way of life that teaches me that I have power, I am power, and that my friends and I disrupt oppression.

Feminist friendship, shine theory, all that glorious glowing goodness that brought us together–it created power.

So the next time you think about your friends, your shiny people, your feminist sheroes, think about the power you all cultivate and bring forth by being your badass selves together. Think about how that power can grow with you and the friendships you share. Think about what your perfect world would look like for you and your feminist friends–and then make it. 

More resources, if you’re interested:

Michel Foucault, “Friendship as a Way of Life”

Dan Willey, “Gay Hair”

Gaby Dunn, “It’s A War Out There: How Queer Female Friendships Can Save Us All”

Cori Wong, “Feminist Friendship” TEDxCSU

Make feminist friends and build up your network at our Women’s History Month celebration on March 28th from 6 pm to 8 pm in the Skylight Room! RSVP via myUMBC!

STUDENTS: For the first time in 10 years, the UMBC Men’s Basketball team has earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament! Can’t stand to miss out on the action? Here’s how you can catch the Retrievers live in Charlotte!

Please review the options to decide how you’ll watch the Retrievers on Friday!!

Want to take the UMBC Fan Bus and lodge solo? Option 1 is for you!!

Option 1: This package provides a game ticket, transportation, and lodging for 1 student at a rate of $104.00 per person.

Want to take the UMBC Fan Bus and lodge with friends, take a look at Options 2, 3, and 4!!!

Option 2: This package provides a game ticket, transportation, and lodging for 2 at a rate of $52.00 per person. When you register and purchase your ticket, please be sure to submit the name of your requested roommate. Important: All students must purchase a ticket and submit the name of requested roommates.

Option 3: This package provides a game ticket, transportation, and lodging for 3 at a rate of $35.00 per person. When you purchase your ticket, please be sure to submit the name of your requested roommates. Important: All students must purchase a ticket and submit the name of requested roommates.

Option 4: This package provides a game ticket, transportation, and lodging for 4 at a rate of $26.00 per person. When you purchase your ticket, please be sure to submit the name of your requested roommates. Important: All students must purchase a ticket and submit the name of requested roommates. 

Roadtripping with friends and finding your own lodging, just buy a ticket and sit with us!!!

Option 5: Game ticket only at $25.00 per person.

Now that you’ve reviewed all of your options, buy your tickets here: http://UMBCTickets.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=1636  

Additional Details:

1. Upon registration and ticket purchase, you will receive a confirmation email that will include an itinerary, instructions on how to retrieve your tickets, and other pertinent details.

2. If selecting to room with friends, please be sure that all friends register, purchase a ticket, and submit the names of requested roommates. Please note: You will not receive a confirmation email if all parties do not purchase a ticket.

3. The UMBC Fan Bus will be departing campus from The Commons Loop (near The Commons Garage) at 9:00am on Friday, March 16. We will travel to Charlotte, NC in time to see UMBC vs. UVA!

4. If you are purchasing a travel package, we will be staying at The Best Western Plus, Pineville-Charlotte South. It is located at 9825 Leitner Drive, Pineville, NC 28134. The bus will arrive to the hotel at approximately 4:00pm. You will have time to settle in and unpack before needing to be back on the bus by 5:45pm. We will then depart for the arena. Your game ticket gets you access to the Creighton vs. Kansas State game at 6:50pm, as well as the UMBC vs. UVA game at 9:20pm. If you choose to not attend the first game, you will be dropped off at the arena with the option to explore Uptown Charlotte on your own until the game begins. The bus will depart shortly after the end of the UMBC game, at approximately 12:00am. Communication about departure will be shared during the trip.