Nichols offers a four-year Professional Development Seminar to help prepare yourself for life after college. At first when I heard about this class I didn’t think it was very necessary. When told about it freshman year it was all about time management and how to properly adjust to college. To my surprise, without this class I would have been completely lost. It provided me with all the skills to do well with all the classes I would be taking, along with a few pointers on how to start preparing for the real world.

Sophomore PDS is where I learned how to create a portfolio along with the proper way to compose a resume. This was very essential to me because sophomore year is when I was looking to find an internship.

I would have been so lost if I didn’t learn how to properly write a resume and cover letter. Friends of mine that go to different schools were completely embarrassed when seeing how well prepared I was and that they still had no idea what to do or even what a cover letter was.

For junior year, we are being introduced to a new type of portfolio that is done completely online. In my opinion this is one of the best tools the PDS program has come up with. Having it completely online, in my opinion, is a lot easier then carrying around the binder. Knowing I will have something completely different from the others applying for the internship will help the nerves a little bit.

In a PDS class, the topic of the importance of portfolios came up and if all the time and effort we put into them is worth it. With the examples my professor gave, I feel they are absolutely important; We need something to help us stand out from the others!  When my professor brought up that at her company a Nichols student was hired for a dream internship just because she brought her portfolio with her, a lot of students including myself quickly changed our negative opinions on this.

I can’t wait to see what else we will be learning about in the upcoming weeks!