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THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2014
PAGE 4A
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TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to (785)289-8351 or at kansan.com
My doppelganger has offended so many of my friends by not returning their wave #HowRude
Thanks, no thanks Mother Nature, for that free monthly pregnancy test.
Cap and gown? More like nap and frown. (shamelessly stolen from BuzzFeed)
Editor's Note: This made it because you cited your source, not necessarily because it was funny.
How many girls does it take to clog a shower drain with hair? One, AKA my roommate. I'm taking a shower, but my feet are taking a bath.
I have looked for a reason we don't have sunflowers and I honestly don't know why not. The best I can come up with is they take up a lot of space.
"Must get out of bed. Must get out of bed." Two hours later..."Ahhhh, I'm never leaving this bed."
No! This is Patrick!
Filling out class evaluations makes me nervous. The end is near.
If you snore loudly, please stay out of the quiet sections. Some of us are trying to sleep.
Is there an award for the biggest unread announcements on Blackboard?
Editor's Note. You might get a failing grade depending on what the announcements say.
Did anyone else see the crazy awesome clouds over campus? I was both excited and terrified.
Gon on a bus dry at one end of campus and got off at the other end and it was raining. I'm sick of your shit Kansas.
Nomenclature the word just rolls off the tongue...Nomenclature Nomenclature Nomenclature.
It's OK that Myles Turner chose Texas. Bill would not have been able to motivate him here anyway.
KU police cars are so nice, too bad they never get any action.
I pulled an all nighter to watch more Kirsten Dunst movies. Seriously what is wrong with me?
Maybe there are no sunflowers because they're hard to control. Tulips stay in nice little rows; sunflowers like to live on the wild side?
There is a free showing of Mean Girls in Hashinger at 8 on Thursday. You can come, but if you're wearing sweats, "You can't sit with us."
PRO
LinkedIn helps students find jobs, connections
For most undergraduates, those naive cretins, the name LinkedIn means nothing. But for some of us upstanding adults, how we use that social media-based business website separates us into successful, career-driven wunderkinds and education majors
I'll throw you uninformed screwballs a bone. LinkedIn is a business networking site based on the social media model. Businesses and individuals create profiles to sell themselves to colleagues and customers alike. Think Facebook with no quizzes and everyone's a little bit too polite all of the time.
For a student who fully expects his fancy shmancy liberal arts degree to be as useful as a paper hat, LinkedIn never really crossed my mind. As far as networking goes, most English majors take the Ginsberg method: flinging copies of your mediocre poetry from the back of your bicycle as you zoom through the city.
Although I've been working on bucking a sticky reputation of "never admits he's wrong", I'll come out and say it this time: my first impression of LinkedIn couldn't have been further from the truth.
Applicants can shop themselves en masse. Companies can curate their requirements and image in real time. People in the same field can share tips, tricks and naughty jokes in private messages.
When I did hear the details on LinkedIn I asked myself why anyone would take the worst parts of social media and mix them with something even worse: advertisement. But honestly, the site makes sense. It reduces the painful process of getting a job into a manageable marketplace.
Look, we need to be completely honest with ourselves in this day and age. Being a yuppie is now the new norm. There's no such thing as being "discovered" in a coffee shop or making money on your small-business tire replacement shop that you run with your one-legged cousin without putting in the effort. The Internet is a beautiful tool and a cruel mistress.
Getting your brand out there isn't a quirk anymore, it's common practice. The excuses to not engage
your customers, associates and stalkers in a finely tuned, curated way are running out rapidly. LinkedIn isn't the perfect iteration of such a service, but we're in too deep with it to turn back.
more than 200 million people use LinkedIn. That's most of America if you cut out children and those darn millennial slacker leeches. The numbers alone are evidence of a business phenomenon. Ignoring it is tantamount to ripping up your tax returns check.
Think about it. Advertisement, branding and job searching are a lot like the Matrix. It's impossibly difficult to bust into the scene, but once you're in, you're golden. You become the Neo of insurance sales or artisan clog making.
Some claim that LinkedIn blurs the line of social media and business a little too much. As much as it pains me to say this, I don't think that combining those two things has been a problem. If anything, it made them a bit more tolerable.
LinkedIn is less about content and more about ease of access. It standardizes and simplifies a traditionally awkward process.
The business marketplace is painfully antiquated. Getting a job still requires you to sit and blubber about your personal history rather than an examination of your actual skills and experience in the field. When I look at LinkedIn's connection between business and social media, I see progress. The Internet helps you connect with friends, complain in YouTube comments and shop for adult products discreetly. Why can't it help you get a job?
Wil Kenney is a sophomore from Leawood studying English.
CON
Age gap makes LinkedIn pointless for job hunters
Each generation has a claim to fame. We, the millennial generation, are known to be tech-savvy and constantly connected. While social media may be all fun and games, it also comes with its fair share of risk.
In fear of being found by a college admissions office, high school seniors are fond of the name game — a popular tactic that involves a Facebook user changing their account name. While this may provide temporary comfort, it's not that simple to hide on social media. The risk factor only grows with us.
As college students, we luckily no longer worry about getting into college, but rather what happens once we leave. Securing a job requires monitoring our photos, posts and all of our actions on our various social media accounts, which soon becomes a bothersome task.
In an attempt to eliminate this constant monitoring, LinkedIn created its platform with the specific intent of promoting a professional version of who we are. The problem is that, while we can create what may be more suitable versions of ourselves, it doesn't mean that the other side, the one we feared would hurt our chances at college admission or a future job, ceases to exist.
LinkedIn defines itself as a businessoriented social networking service; however, the idea of fusing the two seems too contrasting. Can these two aspects, professionalism and social media, truly coincide?
LinkedIn seemingly struggles to find a balance. When I first created my LinkedIn page, the setup wasn't intuitive. I was uncertain what features to add, what to skip and what to include in order to properly
promote myself.
After hours spent perfecting my profile and ensuring that it looked professional and presentable, I ultimately concluded that my efforts made little difference, if at all.
Young people trying to use LinkedIn fall prey to the generation gap. I have found that the people I would want to connect with in a professional matter don't use the site because they are already secure in their position and those who do use the site are my peers that can't offer me much in terms of a job.
I can't see a future employer wanting to view a LinkedIn page that essentially regurgitates what has already been stated on a cover letter and resume, though I can understand a future employer wanting to view a Facebook profile that depicts who a person is off paper.
I think LinkedIn misses the mark because it merely provides us with a veil. Our social lives, and therefore our social media accounts, should reflect who we are or will be in our professional lives.
Those who hire us aren't looking to connect with us — they're looking to critique us.
Lyndsey Havens is a sophomore from Chicago studying journalism.
FFA OF THE DAY
10th anniversary of Mean Girls fell on a Wednesday. Everyone should have worn pink! So disappointed.
RICKY SMITH/KANSAN
I wish my job applications got accepted as often as my FFA submissions do.
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