Back Into the Groove
Summer is over and in what seems like a blink of an eye we have all been thrusted back into classes, full force. We've only been back for 2 weeks and I am already overwhelmed. I have to start soon on my 20 hour project, write the proposal for my 90 hour project, find an internship for our clinical next semester, and still try to balance my classes with all of our homework. So far I think that my hardest classes are going to be Legal Aspects of Health Care and Systems Analysis, but I guess only time will tell how I will do.
I am also slightly nervous of graduating and being thrown into the "real world." Almost every day there is talk of sending resumes to employers and we are all on Web sites looking around at positions. In our HIM in Non-Traditional Settings class we had one of our program's alumnus come in and talk about her position at Cerner and how it was after graduation. I think that it made all of us feel a little better about the whole job search because she said that she absolutely felt prepared for her job after she graduated.
This semester, our Clinical Education 3 (CE3) is coordinated with our Non-Traditional class so we are able to see many different possibilities that will be available for us after graduation. This past Thursday I went to the UPMC Health System Information Services Division Decision Support Systems where we discussed all of the different systems they use in order to collect and analyze data. I was amazed that they are able to collect so much data for so many different facilities and they are able to have systems that coordinate with each other in order to be able to make the data to useable information. Our facilitator at this site also took time to talk to us about our job search and then she gave us some resume and interviewing tips that she felt confident in sharing with us in order to help us.
This upcoming week I believe that we are having someone from Career Services coming to our HR class in order to go over resumes and cover letters and then go over the upcoming career fairs with us.