The Opportunity Hub is the greatest building block that I have in terms of my professional academic development. They want you to succeed professionally and I really felt that every time I engaged with the Hub, I left feeling more confident in myself than when I came in.
My name is Ally Schultz. I'm from Wallace, Michigan, which is in the U.P., and I am majoring in political science. The University of Michigan was always a dream of mine 'cause growing up my family, they were all huge Wolverine fans, die-hard Wolverine fans.
When my family found out I got into the University of Michigan, they were very excited. There were lots of tears. I found out before Christmas. So, we had like a big family photo shoot that was happening and everyone was crying. My dad was crying and that was the first time I've ever seen him cry before. Honestly, it was, it's a core memory. It was a great day. Everyone was so happy.
Being a first-gen college student, I did feel like I was behind in terms of, like, professional development and academic development.
All my other friends, their families, have gone to college before. I definitely felt like there was a distance between me and them and just in terms of resources and opportunities that they had at their disposal versus what I had.
I heard about the LSA Mentorship Program through a Hub email. It was appealing 'cause I'm like, I have the opportunity now to like take this really wide-scale thing of networking, which is so scary and, like, put it down on a more intimate level.
One-on-one with the UMich alumni and I joined it thinking like, okay, I'm gonna graduate in spring. I thought I was gonna graduate a year early and I was gonna go right into law school because that's what I thought I wanted to do.
And then when I got matched with my mentor, Jenna, she just helped me think about everything. Like what do I actually want to do? Why am I graduating early? Like, what am I necessarily in a rush to get into even when I don't really seem that necessarily passionate about law school.
She was very supportive about the whole process and she was gonna help me put together my applications and everything. But at the end of the day, I just remember, like, after one of our meetings just kind of sitting there after we both had logged off, just be like, do I really want to go to law school? Like, is this actually something that I'm meant to do or is this something I'm ready for right now?
So, I ultimately just came to the conclusion that like, although law school might be in my future, I don't think it's in my future right after undergrad and I just felt like a really big weight lifted off my shoulders and I'm really appreciative of Jenna for that because if it hadn't been for our conversations regarding that, I would've never realized that's not necessarily something that I wanna do right now.
I told her that I got invited to apply for this peer facilitator position and she was like you need to jump on that. If they reach out to you, like, that's a great sign. That means that they want you to work for them. We worked on my resume, we did a lot of interview prep and she just, like, really helped instill a lot of confidence in me.
You do well academically, you wanna do research professionally, like why would you not be a great candidate for this job position? So, now I teach a seminar. I currently have 20 to 30 students who are going through the undergraduate research opportunity program.
Currently, I am writing a political science honors thesis, which is a very daunting task. And because throughout doing this thesis process and these other, like, international development and economic development classes that I've taken, I've really established, like, a passion about it and I'm excited because I think that's gonna, like, over time maybe, like, bring me back to, like, higher education, maybe get a master's degree or even a J.D., but maybe just in the future. But, I want to go into something like trade policy and economic development.
The journey at the University of Michigan has been unique. I just remember coming in, I was so excited, so proud of myself and in complete disbelief that I even got in and I was just, like, riding this high of, my family is so proud of me, like, this is gonna be great.
I'm gonna go and I'm gonna meet all these new people. And I came here and it was everything I expected and more in all the good ways and, like, sometimes the intimidating ways you kind of look around and you're like, okay, like what do I wanna do? Like what do I want to study? What is like my next direction? I feel like everyone is kind of making moves to advance their career or they're looking to grad school, that sort of thing. So, like, going through that throughout undergrad of what am I actually interested in? Why is it so much different than what my friends are interested in? How do I navigate those differences?
Using the resources at the university – I just feel like it helps so much. It brought so much clarity when I latched onto the Hub and you, like, used the Hub and LSA Connect, all those things. That just opened a whole new door of not even, like, professional development, but personal development because if it wasn't for, like, these resources that I took advantage of, I wouldn't have this kind of calmness and confidence that I have going into graduating in the spring.
I'm just especially appreciative of, like, everything that they've done for me and the Mentorship Program for, like, giving me such a great mentor and a great resource for me to always fall back on at any stage in my professional development.
