Welcome!

Dear Reader,

Hello and welcome to my blog! With this blog I hope to give you an insight into who I am and a glimpse of my goals and aspirations. If you are looking to potentially hire me as an intern, I hope that this blog will give you an idea of how I will benefit your organization.

I graduated from Ridge High School in 2006, at the top 15 percent of my class. I was also very involved in our schools National Honors Society. I am currently a Junior at The College of New Jersey, part of the class of 2010. I am a double major in Communication Studies and Italian Studies. I self-designed my own Italian major to encourage my passion for the language and culture. I just returned from a six month (January 2010-June 2010) study abroad program in Siena, Italy at L'Universita' per Stranieri di Siena. I have returned fluent in Italian and with a in-depth knowledge of the culture.

At The College of New Jersey , I am the Vice President of Lambda Pi Eta, the Communication Studies honor society. LPH holds many events for communication studies students, such as internship panels and job fairs. I also work for the college as a conversation hour leader of Italian 101 and 102. During the fall semester I worked in an Independent Study with Dr. John Pollock, a Communication Studies professor here at TCNJ , as his Public Relations associate to publicize his Health Communication program. Together with two fellow students, our goal was to generate more of an interest in the Health Communication Concentration that TCNJ offers. This independent study is a off-shoot of my Public Relation's plan from my PR class during the spring 2008 semester. To put our plan in motion we began a club, The Public Health Communication Club, of which I am now President, and have encouraged students from all disciplines to become involved. We also put together a speaker's series, with our first speaker Dr. David Oshinsky, a pulitzer prize winner, who came to speak about his novel "Polio: An American Story."

After college, I am interested in attending graduate school for either Public Relations or Social Marketing and Health Campaigns.

With my passion for Public Relation's and Italian, I hope to one day work for a company in which I can be both the PR agent and the liaison for international business.

This is just a quick look at my interests and some of the work I have done thus far in college. The posts that follow include more information about my interests and some of the work that I have done! Thank you for taking the time to read through my blog!

Sincerely,

Megan

Resume

Here is my most recent resume.
Please take a look at my accomplishments thus far. I hope to expand this resume with an internship experience as well as a study abroad program. I also hope to attend graduate school after The College of New Jersey. I would like to apply for a graduate program to study either Public Relations or Social Marketing and Health Campaigns.

Work Experience

Over the past few years I have had my different work experiences. Since the beginning of my college career some of my jobs include: working at New Millennium Bank as an assistant to the Vice President, working for the College of New Jersey as a conversation hour leader for Italian 101 and 102 students, and most recently working as a caretaker of three young children. For me, the most rewarding job I have had thus far was acting as a caretaker for the children. This past summer I worked from May until the end of August, Monday through Friday, for the Ghandhi family. I watched after a four-year-old boy throughout the day, helped take care of twin one-year-olds, and aided in organizing the house. Working with children every day taught me responsibility, patience and strong leadership skills. I have worked with children since high school when I worked at a summer camp for kindergartners for 3 consecutive summers (2004,2005,2006). My experience with children has taught me many important life lessons that I am able to carry with me into my life here at college, and hopefully later on in the working world. Please see my resume above for more in-depth details about my work and academic work experiences.

Here is a picture of me and the four-year-old boy that I watched after this summer.

My Interests

Before introducing examples of my academic achievements , I would like to share my wide variety of interests. I am especially interested in travel. So far, I have been to many different countries including: Ecuador, The Netherlands, Sweden, Mexico, England, Canada, and Italy. I have a passion for exploring the world and an undying interest in learning how other people live. I feel that through my travels I learn many important life lessons. 

I especially learned a great number of life lessons when I traveled to Ecuador in April, 2004. I had primarily gone on this trip as a scientific journey to research The Galapagos Islands. Before reaching the Galapagos, my school group and I traveled around Ecuador, primarily the capital city: Quito. Here, my eyes were opened to the immense poverty and hunger that the Ecuadorians suffered. It made me realize how great-full I am for all of the opportunities I have been granted with in my life. It also made me want to help fight poverty throughout the world. Not only did I learn about the people, I also learned about our environment and how important it is to protect our earth. While exploring the Galapagos Islands I saw how global warming has affected the wildlife. There were many animals that once lived on these islands, but now due to the changes in environment, no longer live in this habitat. I am a strong believer in protecting our earth and feel that it is important for every human being to do their part and to take a stand against pollution.

My Photography:

I also have a strong interest in photography. I have been taking photography classes since my freshman year of high school. I find that still images show the true beauty of the subject and allow the viewer to create their own personal story about the image. Last year I entered my photograph, "Mannequin Garden" into a photography contest at George's Camera Shop, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. My photograph was judged by professional photographers and won first place ahead of forty other photographs. This was a great accomplishment for me because my photograph was compared to the photographs of other professional photographers and students who have been photographing longer than I have. The first of the photographs below is my award winning image. The others are examples of my favorite works titled: "Fire Escape", "Never quite as it Seems"and "Barn Man".

Examples of my work

Here is my public relation's plan from last semester in Professor Jacob Farbman's PR class. This is one the projects that I take most pride in. As previously stated, I am currently working to implement this plan for my professor, Dr. John Pollock. 

Public Relations Plan
Public Relations PowerPoint

Also, my first semester of sophomore year I co-wrote a research paper on the Cross-National Newspaper Coverage of Sexual Education with Jennifer Higgins and Dr. John Pollock. This paper was accepted to NJCA (New Jersey Communication association) where it was presented at Marymount Manhattan College in March 2008. It was also accepted to NCA (National Communication Association) where it will be presented on November 20, 2008 in San Diego, California.

In addition, I recently completed my first ten page research paper in my class of Italian 312: Italy since the Unification. I researched the Italian Emigration to the United States and talked about the immigrant's journey, the reasons behind leaving their homeland, the hardships they faced when they reached America, and how this emigration changed the structure of the typical Italian family. If you speak Italian, please take a look!

L'Emigrazione Italiana negli Stati Uniti


Thanks for taking a look at examples of my work! I hope this provided you with an idea of my work ethic and demonstrated how I am a high striving student.