Networking When Youre an Illini

Networking When Youre an Illini Whats great about Illinois  is that not only do we have a great academic atmosphere, we have a great atmosphere for professional development. From The Career Center  to Career Fairs, the university  helps Illini of all ages and majors opportunities for post-graduation employment and career readiness. Over winter break, the College of Media, which Im a part of because Im an Advertising major, held a Connecting Students and Alumni in the Windy City event. The event was held for all students  in the College of Media. It was held in the Illini Center in downtown Chicago. It was such a cool and beautiful building, and you can really feel the influence of our  university  there. The day started off with a keynote address from Dave Kissel, an industry veteran who works at DDB, a large advertising agency in Chicago. McDonalds is one of the  accounts he works with, so his job must be super fun. His keynote address was empowering because he told us that we are uncommon because we are Illini. So when you become an Illini, you will become uncommon and special individuals! After that keynote address, there was this really insightful panel full of College of Media alumni called Things I Wish I Knew When I Was in College. The really big insight I got out of it was that they wish they learned how to code. Illinois  is fortunate to house one of the best computer science departments in the country, so knowing that convinces me to take a basic coding class here. The rest of the day there were breakout sessions with different alumni sharing advice and insights about their jobs and the industry. At the end of the day, we went to Elephant and Castle, a restaurant in Chicago, to practice the skills we learned from the alumni and got to network with even more alumni from the industry and from the university  for the rest of the evening. The networking event made me proud to be an Illini and a part of the College of Media. What was even nicer was seeing the mass numbers of alumni from the 70s and even from a few years ago giving back to their Illini community. I want to do the same when I graduate in 2018. Daniel Class of 2018 I’m an Advertising major in the College of Media. I’m from a northwest suburb of Chicago called Buffalo Grove. I chose Illinois because it was the first university in the entire world to offer an Advertising major, which is pretty cool!