About Me

Hi y’all!

My name is Paulina and I am senior studying chemical engineering. I am originally from Spain but I moved to Texas before I started high school, so I’ve been in the states for the past 9 years. I love everything about Texas, except maybe the humidity and the 100 degree weather we have for about 6 months a year. It is definitely different than South Bend. An interesting fact about me is that I have lived in 4 different countries. My dad works in the oil and gas business so before we moved to Houston permanently, we used to move around quite a bit. Although I really didn’t see the benefits when I was younger, I can now say that I am very thankful for the experience I had. It has allowed me to be fluent in 3 different languages and it has taught me to appreciate all the different cultures and be more open minded. It was also really cool to be able to try different foods specially since trying new foods is one of my favorite things to do.

Anyways back to chemical engineering. I have always loved chemistry and Math so I knew in high school that engineering was something I wanted to pursue in the future. I took an Intro to Engineering class my junior year of high school and although we didn’t really do anything related to chemical engineering, it made me realize that chemical engineering is what I wanted to do. Chemical engineering is a very broad science and we learn about many things including computer science. Although we do not do a ton of coding, we do have to learn the basics in order to be able to understand how to program certain engineering devices, like those used in chemical plants for example. I will be graduating in May so this year will be a fun year for job hunting. I want to work as either a consultant in the energy industry or as a process engineer in the food industry.

I decided to take this class even though I am not a computer science major because I think the topics and ethical issues discussed in this class are relevant to all types of engineering and is something that is important to know as a future engineer. As engineers it is our job to find solutions to everyday problems that society has and many times we are faced with ethical issues. I think one of the most pressing moral issues that computer scientists are facing is the issue of privacy. In the last few years cyber security has been something that comes up everyday on the news. Who decides when it is okay to get the information out of a phone without permission or when is it okay to release private information to the authorities? These are issues that are very important now a days and that most people have concerns about. I am very excited to learn more about the ethical and moral issues engineers face and also to learn about the different opinions my classmates have.

 

 

Patents

A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by the government to an inventor for a period of time. According to the podcast, these rights are usually good for 20 years and they provide the inventor with a way to protect their ideas. Basically, for 20 years if anyone wants to use your ideas they need to ask for your permission. The ability to have control of the market, encourages inventors to invent new things and innovate. Patents allow them to have ownership of the product and ensures that no one will be able to copy the product for a set period of time. While it is good that the inventor has ownership, it can also cause some problems because he can decide the prices for the product, and since there is no competition this can become a problem.

I think patents should be granted, but the time the patent is granted for should be adjusted. I think 20 years is a very long time and granting that much time has a bigger cost than a benefit. The inventor has a monopoly for all those years which can hurt the economy. There is no one to compete against him, so he can set the price he wants and abuse people. Also, it could slow down innovation as Tesla mentioned in the podcast. By not letting anyone use the inventors idea, there cannot be any improvements or advancements, so in the long run it can hurt innovation. I do believe patents are necessary in order to protect the inventor and make sure no one steals the idea and gets credit for it; to some extent they are necessary to encourage people to innovate and improve society. The problem comes when you grant that patent for 20 years, because then people who are really interested in the idea cannot really work on it and find ways to improve it. Innovation needs people who are passionate about the topic and who are willing to find ways to constantly improve that idea and make it better. There is always room for improvement and having a patent for 20 years does not allow for that.

After reading the articles about patent trolls, it seems to me like the patent system is a little broken. According to the article about patent trolls from Electronic Frontier Foundation, a patent troll uses patents as legal weapons, instead of actually creating any new products or coming up with new ideas. These companies buy cheap patents from people that need to make money from their inventions and use them to make money by suing people. The article Universities have turned over hundreds of patents to patent trolls, talks about a company called Intellectual Ventures that has over 30,000 active patents. This discourages innovation because they aren’t using the patents to create new products, all they are doing is suing people and try to make money that way. I think patents trolls should be regulated and if they have a patent they should be using it to create something new and innovative not just sue people.

Self-Driving Cars

According to the articles the biggest motivation for developing and building self-driving cars is safety. There are more than 33,000 people who die on US roads each year and data shows that an estimated 94 percent of crashes are caused by human factor (ARS Technica article). People also believe that self-driving cars will help with traffic and sustainability. Self-driving cars are belief to be safer than human drivers as they cant get distracted and can see things we might not pay attention to. Most people suck at driving so for some people having a car that can drive itself would be a dream come true. Also most of us don’t enjoy driving so it will be pretty convenient to have a self-driving car. The articles also mentioned that self-driving cars would be able to reduce traffic jams, since they can go at a constant speed and they can also be more efficient than drivers by saving gas. One of the biggest challenges, according to Matthew Lynley, is to ensure that drivers don’t over-trust existing autonomous systems. I think this is a huge problem that we can already see with back-up cameras. People have gotten used to the back-up cameras and now they don’t even look back before the back-up. If people over-trust self-driving cars they would start doing things like driving and texting and it could cause accidents.

Self-driving cars have many advantages as I have stated in the last paragraph, but they also have many issues, in particular ethical issues. How do you decide if the car was to hit a group of people and safe the driver or kill the driver and safe the group of people? These are things that people designing self-driving cars are struggling with. According to the Gizmodo article, people usually agree that a car with one rider should swerve off the road and crash to avoid a crowd of 10 people; but people also said they would not get in a car that was programmed to killed them if they were in that situation. A car cant look at a person and figure out what they are going to do. We as humans, have intuition and we are able to make predictions about things that could happen and react towards them. A car cannot predict if a person walking on the side walk is going to cross the street and this is a problem for self-driving cars, they like that sense of intuition.

I think self-driving cars have a long way to go. Programmers are going to be faced with many issues. I also think that self-driving cars are going to have an impact on the economy because people would be more likely to carpool and then less car will be sold. Also trailers could use that technology as well and that would affect a huge part of the economy. I think we as humans want things that are almost perfect, and like the Toyota article said, we have shown zero tolerance for injury or death caused by flaws in a machine. I believe it will take many tears before we have a car that can completely drive itself and keep the passenger safe at all instances. Self-driving cars are going to have to drive in a way that is predictable and in a way where they can take into consideration other drivers and predict what their next moves are going to be.

I think self-driving cars are really cool and I would probably want one in the future. I still think they have a long way to go and there are many challenges that we need to overcome. People cant over-trust this technology because i feel like even with a self-driving car, you have to pay attention to what is happening around you.  Also, what if you were in a rush and wanted to get somewhere fast? The self-driving car is programmed to follow speed limits so you wouldn’t have control over that. Or what if you had to go to the hospital really quick… again the programmed car would not let you do that. I dont think I am ready to give up my freedom just yet.

Artificial Intelligence

I have always thought of artificial intelligence as the ability that machines (man made things) have to reason and make decisions. The computer world article gives a different definition of what AI is, saying that the goal of artificial intelligence is to “enable the development of computers that are able to do things normally done by people. They want AI to be able to think exactly the same way people do.” I find this interesting because I think it will be a little hard to EXACTLY mimic the human mind, because no machine will be able to feel emotions the way humans do. We base a lot of our decisions on different factors, like fear, sadness..etc, and these are things that a machine cannot experience. The human brain is extraordinarily complex, with around 100 billion neurons and 1,000 trillion synaptic interconnections (Ruppert Goodwins), which makes its replication extremely hard, if not impossible. We don’t even know how every part of the brain works, so making a machine that can think and feel the same way we do is something that I find hard to do. We, as humans, have some intuitive abilities that machines will not be able to have because their decisions are based on data. Although I believe that AI and human intelligence are very different, I do think that both rely on past experiences to determine how to approach a certain situation.

Googles’ AlphaGo has proven to be a great source of artificial intelligence because of its ability to learn. The article from the Atlantic talked about how AlphaGo was tested by playing Go. Here, they could see that the machine could “learn to conquer anything easier than Go, which amounts to a lot of things.” AlphaGo showed people that machines could have the “ability to mimic human creativity and intuition.” I think it is very interesting how this technology has the ability to learn patterns and could potentially be used in important applications, like making diagnostics for different diseases.

I do not think the Turing test is a valid measure of intelligence, because it is just asking questions that could be programmed or learned by the machine. The Turing test is a test for intelligence in a computer, which requires that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using replies to questions put to both. On the other hand, the Chinese Room test is trying to proof that a machine can not understand knowledge, they can only copy it. Basically what this test is saying is that if a machine was left in a room and had to write back in another language it wouldn’t be able to understand the language like humans do. I don’t think this is necessarily true because in order for a human to learn a new language they need to learn patterns and things like that, which machines can do too.

I think there is a growing concern about AI. People are worried about what might happened to their jobs when everything becomes automatized. Although I think that AI is important for certain things, like diagnostic of certain diseases, I don’t think that they will be able to fully replace humans at any point soon. Machines can be great because they are able to perform certain tasks way faster than humans, and a lot of the times more accurately, but they don’t have certain human qualities like emotions. Humans are not just biological intelligence, there is a lot more to a person than that. We have a soul, we are able to feel and react to other peoples’ emotions, which is something machines can not do. The IEEE spectrum article made a good point by saying that “the most fundamental problem of AI is the problem of meaning. Culture is the essential catalyst of intelligence and an AI without the capability to interact culturally would be nothing more than an academic curiosity.” I think they make a good point because culture is not something that can be coded, it is the results of a learning process. Overall, I do think AI is an important part of technology innovation and are a great source of information that can be very useful in certain applications, but I do not believe they will be able to fully mimic humans because of the emotions humans are able to experience.

 

FAKE NEWS

“You are fake news”- something we are used to hearing from our current President. Trump seems to use this as an excuse for anything that he doesn’t agree on. According to the reading fake news is defined as a type of journalism that is misleading and contains things that are untrue. This is something that has been going on for a while on social media, but people have been paying more attention to it since Trump won the election. I think this is something that is very dangerous.

The amount of fake news I see on my Facebook is crazy. There is always someone posting something that has misleading information. To be honest this was particularly annoying during the election. My feed was full of news stories that contained fake information. I think this is annoying but also very dangerous because there is a lot of people who dont realize that this articles are fake and they think they are the true story. This is the problem with fake news, a lot of people dont actually realize that the information they are reading is misleading. People are very ignorant and they just believe what they see so social media should be careful about what they post.

The articles were very interesting and really explain the influence social media has on people. One article talked about all the misleading information that surfaced after the Vegas shooting, “In the crucial early hours after the Las Vegas mass shooting, it happened again: Hoaxes, completely unverified rumors, failed witch hunts, and blatant falsehoods spread across the internet.” They used Facebook to distribute misleading information because they know they can achieve a wide distribution.

Social media has a powerful influence on people and as the article from the economist said, “Facebook can transform people’s moods and political behavior.” This is why I believe that social media platforms like Facebook have a responsibility to make sure the news articles people are reading contain truthful information. Google actually ” kicked 200 publishers off one of its ad networks in the fourth quarter, partly in response to the proliferation of fake news sites. The ban was part of an update to an existing policy that prohibits sites that mislead users with their content.” Google thought it was important to make sure fake news didn’t spread and this is why they decided to block certain companies.

I think social media platforms have a responsibility to ensure that the news that are posted on their pages are true and contain real information. We are addicted to social media and “We used to get our news from the morning newspaper and the nightly news. Now more and more of us pull out our smartphones and look at our Facebook feeds” (Vox). People, specially millennials, get all of their information from social media so it is important that they make sure their information is legit. People are very ignorant and like I said before they will belief anything they see, so it is important for pages like Facebook to make sure they provide important and accurate information.

 

 

 

 

Project 3: The Privacy Paradox

For our project we decided to listen to the privacy paradox podcast series from note to self. The series consisted of 5 podcasts, with different topics and challenges. The podcasts were very insightful and had experts in the subject telling stories, as well as regular people talking about their experiences with privacy. It was very interesting to listen to the experts talk about what could be done to have personal privacy and how everything we do is recorded. Every podcast had a challenge that was meant to show you how you have no privacy and things you can do to improve it.

The challenges were definitely interesting. The first challenge asked you to look at the apps on your phone and see which ones were using your location or other information from your profile. I knew some of my apps, like Snapchat, used my location but I was very surprised to find most of the apps I had on my phone had access to my location and other data on my phone. Another challenge asked you to go to a website and see how protected your browser was. To my surprise my browser was not protected from ads or fingerprinting.  I think after doing the challenges I am more aware of what is going on, it was eye opening to be honest. I have definitely turned off the tracking location for all my apps and I have made sure my browser was protected. It was definitely creepy to find that so many apps were tracking my every move. Like one of the podcast said, it is the same thing as carrying a police tracking device.

I think choosing between personal privacy and technological convenience is not easy. I think we all struggle with this all day, specially young adults who are hooked to social media. I love social media, some would say I am even a little addicted, and when I use it I know people are tracking me and using my data. It is something I have accepted, I’ve accepted that if I want to use snapchat, facebook and instagram (free services), my data is going to be used for something. With that being said, I am not happy that I have no personal privacy. I dont think its right for companies to be using my data for whatever they want. In an ideal world I would have the option to choose who to share my data with, but that is not the reality. I think privacy is important and should be something that needs to be protected. I think there should be more rules that protect personal privacy. The problem today is that many millennials are so addicted to social media that they dont mind loosing their personal privacy if it means that they are going to be connected to the rest of the world.  It is a really hard choice for us to make on whether to stay connected with everyone or protect our personal privacy. There should be tougher laws that protect personal privacy and people should put more effort on finding ways to protect their privacy. It is not easy to protect your information but it is certainly something that can and should be done.

Net Neutrality

According to the article written by USA Today, net neutrality is the idea that “internet service providers should give consumers access to all legal content and applications on an equal basis, without favoring some sources or blocking others.” This comes from the idea that the internet should be a free and open platform similar to the other utilities, like electricity. So basically, this means that ISPs “shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks.” Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online. The FCC has rules that ensure companies don’t take advantage and prohibits them from blocking content they want.

As with any topic, there are always two different sides. Some people believe that “without net neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes” (save the internet). They could basically decide when to slow down the service and block anything they want. Others argue that internet service providers have a right to charge whatever they want however they want.

I think net neutrality is important for innovation. ISPs should not have the right to slow down their services when they want to or block certain websites to try to influence you to use a a service from a company that is affiliated to them. Additionally, not many people know that it’s the ISP slowing down their website and most of them tend to blame it on the site itself. For example, when you watch Netflix and the show takes forever to load, you would probably blame it on Netflix and say it sucks, when in reality you should be blaming the ISP. Not having net neutrality would have a big impact because, as one of the articles explains,”companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon would be able to decide who is heard and who isn’t. They’d be able to block websites or content they don’t like or applications that compete with their own offerings.” There would be no competition and they would be deciding the things we buy or the services we use. Additionally, many ISPs have products that compete with websites. A good example of this is Comcast and Xfinity services. If there was no net neutrality Comcast could artificially slow Netflix’s service so that the user would get annoyed and switch to the faster Xfinity service.

I believe that net neutrality is important for innovation and without it the big companies would influence people the way they wanted. Big companies, like Netflix, have the money to pay ISPs for a faster service if they see that their service is being too slow for the customer; but smaller companies don’t always have the means to pay ISPs off. Innovation on the internet needs net neutrality so that new businesses can have a chance to compete with the more established companies. If those new businesses aren’t given the same service as the bigger companies, then innovation on the internet would slow down.

Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood, according to google, refers to the ability of organisations to be recognized by law as an individual, bringing with it certain rights, protections and abilities that are enjoyed by human beings. But what exactly is a corporation? According to the dictionary a corporation is “a number of persons united in one body for a purpose.” The readings described that the idea of corporations being people has been around for many years. Elizabeth Bollman says that “having a corporation would allow people to put property into a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence, so it wouldn’t be tied to any one person’s lifespan, or subject necessarily to laws regarding inheriting property.” As described in the readings, corporations have been greatly successful in the United States because even if a partner dies, the corporation is able to continue.

Lately, corporations have seen their rights expanded. Two major supreme cases have been the Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. In the Citizens United,  the court ruled that the government could not restrict corporations from making political campaign contributions. The court based their decision on the freedom of speech amendment. I dont think corporations should have the right to donate to political campaigns and an obvious reason is that a corporation has the ability to donate a much bigger amount to a campaign than an individual can. If a corporation can make such a big donation, then it can have a great effect on the campaign and in the end it could alter the results for a candidate. The Hobby Lobby case gave precedent to corporations to be able to choose a religion and they were granted the freedoms that allow them to practice that religion. The reality is that corporations are composed of different individual with different believes, they are not a church. A church is a corporation were people join because they have the same religious believe, so it is right for them to be able to practice a religion; but for a profit corporation like Hobby Lobby it is unethical to make their employees follow their religion. As Kent Greenfield points out in his article, “the right is to protect the freedom of conscience, and only actual human beings have a conscience. (And only some of them at that.) There should be allowances for genuine associations of religious people, such as churches.” Since corporations are composed of multiple individuals it would be hard to show that they are a legit association of religious people.

The involvement of IBM in Nazi Germany is one case study that begs questions about corporate responsibilities. In 2001 the book IBM and the Holocaust written by Edwin Black, came out and became a best seller. Black basically blames IBM for knowingly helping the Nazis execute Jews. Although some people think the allegations made by Black in his book are unfair, others belief that IBM could be partially blamed. In his article Jack Smith says “the IBM Hollerith machine, a tabulating machine that ran on punch cards, was an essential tool for executing the logistical challenges of the Jewish extermination during Hitler’s regime in a world before computers.” It is hard for me to take a stand on whether or not IBM was helping the Nazis because there are so many conflicting articles. There is strong evidence on both sides of the argument so it is hard to know how much of it is true since it happened such a long time ago. But this case study makes me wonder if companies should be held responsible for the unethical use of their products and if they should stop doing business with people they believe are being unethical.

I personally dont think corporations should be held responsible if someone is making an unethical use of their products. While I dont think its they are responsible for the actions of other people, I do believe that they should pay attention to the types of corporations they are selling their products to. I do think that IBM had the responsibility to look at the people that were using their products and analyze if what they were using them for, was morally correct. In our culture today, corporations are held to a different standard, both socially and ethically, than individual persons. If corporations are given the same rights as an individual person, then they should definitely be expected to have the same ethical and moral responsibilities. Rights are given with the assumption that the individual will conduct oneself responsibly and their actions will be well thought with the common good in mind. Corporations need to have certain rights but they should not be given the same rights as an individual person, and if they are given the same rights then they have the same ethical and moral responsibilities as any human being.

Ads

I think that for the most part, everyone hates ads. They are everywhere! when you log into your Facebook account, your feed is full of ads; same thing with Instagram and other forms of social media. Even when we go to a website, we have to deal with multiple adds. Almost all the articles I had to read for this blog post contained ads.

I believe that all of us have experience some sort of targeted advertisement. A lot of people enjoy online shopping and most of the times, after you search or purchase something there are a ton of ads that pop up with similar items that you might like. Although most of us are usually not big fan of ads, I have to admit that the ads that pop up after you purchase something can sometimes be helpful and they usually show items that would totally buy. I know these adds can sometimes be helpful but most of the time they are really annoying and it is kinda of scary to think about how a website knows what you like.

I think most people know that by using the internet, in particular social media, they are allowing companies to look at their information. These articles made me realize that companies look at a lot more information that I thought. The extent to which companies target customers is shocking. For example, one of the articles I read talked about how Target new a girl was pregnant before she even told her family, so they started sending her deals for baby items. I dont think companies should be targeting people on such personal issues. Companies, like Target, use personal information to increase profits and like professor Ryan Calo said, “There may be nothing particularly embarrassing or personal about my vulnerabilities as a consumer, but I do not especially want to share them with companies so that I can be manipulated for their financial gain.” The problem with the ads is that most of the time, we did not give the company permission to look at our data.

There are instances however, when we willingly give companies access to our information whether we realize it or not. For example, when we go to the supermarket and we sign up for a rewards card, we are giving the company access to look at the stuff we buy. In exchange for coupons and rewards, we are giving away our personal information about the things we like to buy.

I personally get really annoyed when I have ads all over the place, particularly when I am trying to look at a website or read an article somewhere. I am also not a big fan of companies being able to target me and influence my decisions, so I have Adblock running most of the time. I know that I am using free services and that the ads that come up are the way companies make money; so I guess using apps like Adblock is not the most ethical thing to do. When I use Adblock, I am preventing companies from making as much money as they could. I know that many companies depend on their ad revenue to survive, but I do not want companies accessing my personal information about my shopping habits so I will continue to use Adblock.

Government Surveillance

The topic of privacy and government surveillance has been a controversial issue for many years. As technology advances, more issues arise regarding privacy. Most of the articles I read talk about the importance of increasing encryption to ensure that their customers information is safe and private to everyone. The customers privacy is the main priority for most of the tech companies and this makes them reluctant to create backdoors. This is an issue for the government because it doesn’t allow them to look at personal information from the customers. The government believes not having access to all the information is a problem when it comes to national security; but tech companies disagree, because they believe their customers privacy should be their top priority. There is a constant battle on whether the government should have access to backdoors or not.

After reading the articles I realized there are strong arguments made by both sides. On the one hand people that believe stronger encryption should be implemented believe that this will ensure their personal information is secured.  The creation of backdoors is something tech companies do not want to do because they believe it will make their product less secure and people could break into it. If we give the government access, how can we ensure no one else gets access? As one article said ” once the precedent is set, backdoors could be force into their code too and once a security bypass exists it could fall into the hands of criminals.” Backdoors would make it easier for criminals to access that information as well. Another issue that some articles talked about was that if we create a backdoor, how can we guarantee that the government won’t be looking at the information 24/7. The government might need a backdoor to access relevant information about a case, but how do we know they wont be looking at other things? The tech companies wouldn’t have control over how much information the government looks at.

On the other side of the argument, people say having a backdoor would ensure national security and will prevent tragic events. The government believes that it is necessary to have backdoor because it will allow them to prevent crimes like sexual assault, kidnapping and terrorist acts. They believe having access to the information will make the country safer and they will be able to arrest the criminals before they even commit the crime.

I personally don’t think the government should lessen encryption or create backdoors. I dont think having backdoors will necessarily make the country safer. If the government is allowed to look at the information, then criminals will find a way to look at that information as well. I do think there are instances were having a backdoor could be beneficial, like if a terrorist is going to set up a bomb and they only have 5 minutes to unlock their phone. In extreme cases like this, I do believe the government should have access to the personal information like a password. The problem with making a law about having backdoors is that tech companies and users themselves would not have control over their privacy. We wouldn’t know how much of our information the government is looking at or for what purpose. There would not be a limit about the amount of information they could access and this is a scary thing. I know people say you shouldn’t worry about this if you have nothing to hide, but I personally dont want the government looking at my pictures, documents or anything like that. To conclude, I think tech companies creating backdoors for the government will create more issues than it would solve.

Project 2: The Interview Process

For our second project we decided to do an interview process guide. We thought the guide is something we would’ve liked to have as sophomores and juniors. This guide should give insight about how to prepare for interviews, the resources available to prepare for them and some advice we think juniors could find helpful.

The document is set up as a brochure, so it is simple and concise. The first part explains what you should be doing as a freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. It is very important to start joining different organizations around campus your freshman year because it will allow you develop skills that you won’t get in the classroom. As you start your sophomore year, you should start looking at careers in your field and figure out what type of work you want to be doing. Sophomore year is also a good time to start attending networking events because even if you are not applying for an internship it will definitely be good practice. Junior year is a time when you should be looking for internships. An internship your junior year gives you the opportunity to see if you like a certain industry and a lot of the times, if you perform well during the internship you will receive a full time offer. In your senior year, you should be practicing case study interviews and be ready to apply to any full time jobs you might be interested in. As the document explains, interviews can be scary but there are multiple resources available that can help you practice and ace your interview. The career center is a great resource because it offers mock interviews and they are able to give you feedback that can help you get better at interviewing. There are several books available online and in the library that explain the interview process and give insight on what types of answers you should be providing. Lastly, friends and family members can really help you get better at interviewing by giving you feedback on your answers and your performance.

I think this guide could be very helpful for people going through the interview process. When we decided what to put on it, we all reflected on our experiences and came up with things that we wished we would’ve known before senior year. I think one thing I wish I knew before my senior year is the variety of resources available to help you find a job. I know it is your responsibility to look for jobs, but the career center is willing to help with anything you might need. I also wish I knew how tedious this process was going to be. Before my senior year, I thought getting a job would be as simple as doing a couple of behavioral interview. I know, I’m kind of naive for thinking that but people don’t really tell you how much you have to prepare for the process. There are phone screenings, first round interviews, case study interviews and assessments. The process is long and tedious and that is something I wish I would’ve known. I guess one piece of advice I would give a junior or rising senior would be to start the process early, but don’t get too caught up in it. Don’t let others stress you out, because everyone gets offers at different times and you will get an offer eventually. It is also your senior year and job hunting should not be the only thing you are focusing on. You should also be enjoying your time at Notre Dame.

There is a debate on whether or not colleges should spend more time on job training. I think the job hunting process and in particular the interview process is very stressful to many students because a lot of them dont really know what to expect. I dont think colleges should change their curriculum and adjust their classes so they are more directed towards specific jobs; but I do think that colleges should have a class required during their junior year that exposes students to the interview process. This class would allow students to see what it is expected from them at interviews and what they should be doing to prepare. By doing this, they would not be as stressed their senior year and it would allow them to really enjoy their last year at their university.