Student Spotlight: Vicky Pavlou

Click here to find out more about Chile's English Open Doors Program
Chile is a beautiful, wonderful country. Would you like to live and work there after graduation?
by Ann Abbott

 Just a quick, quick note to say that I was delighted when Vicky Pavlou sent me an email yesterday telling me that she had been accepted into Chile's "English Open Doors" program. Hurray!

Here are a few words from Vicky:
"And if you have other students that are looking into something similar this program is nice because even though you are a "volunteer" they provide health care, housing, meals (you can chose to be with a host family) and a $100 stipend per month. So it is not like other programs were you pay a high fee for them to place you."
In addition to all the other ways that Vicky is a perfect candidate, I believe that her hands-on work within our Spanish-speaking community during "Spanish in the Community" and "Spanish & Entrepreneurship" makes her stand out from among the crowd of applicants.

And as a follow-up to the wonderful networking project that my Business Spanish students did this semester, I'd also like to state that Vicky has used LinkedIn to connect with a another former student of mine who did this program in 2006. That's the way networking should work!

Take note, students:
  • Make a good impression on your professors so that they can write great letters of recommendation for you.
  • Take classes with an experiential component--even if they are "just" an elective--so that someone can speak to your professional skills, not just your academic ones.
  • Looks for international opportunities--and take them! There will never be a better time for you to live and work abroad than right now, right out of college. And that experience will lead you to opportunities you cannot even imagine right now.
  • Network, network, network. If someone had the same professor as you, took the same classes as you, went to the same university as you, those are all ways to phrase your introductory sentence/paragraph so that you can find common ground. Once that common ground is established, it's more likely that the other person will respond favorably.

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