I chose one of the preset designs and configured it to meet my needs. The front of the card states my name and my tagline. Words make for a cleaner tagline than phrases or sentences about your abilities. Keeping the number of words in your tagline low allows it to be more impactful.  I chose the following:

• Engineer - I am an advocate for women + minorities in STEM and proud of my engineering degree. 
• Volunteer - I volunteer for various social causes and would love to get involved in more.
• Learner - I love to learn and connect with people who are willing to teach me something new.

My personal card has three things on the back:

• my website to demonstrate some of my work outside of my profession
• my email which is a link to me in a more formal way
• my cell phone number which is a link to me in an informal way

While some experts say that you should add a picture, I felt that linking my website allows someone to see my face again if they find that necessary.  Social media handles can be included if that is more applicable to your work but in general, my volunteer work contacts need a phone number to call for help and an email to send confirmation details after the conversation. Whatever choices you add to your design, make sure you spellcheck before saving the final design and paying for the cards!

Always twinning with Amanda!

I have passed my selfie crown to Mary now - she is a pro!

Captured in our favorite place - a machine that always gave us some troubles!

Boss#1: Christina

This program got me into hiking for exercise - I went hiking in Cinque Terre and can't wait to do it more in the US!

If you haven't guessed by the name of this post, I am now off program from my wonderful job and I am going to start in Wisconsin as a Quality Engineer for my company. It's been a super hard decision but I think for a couple of years, it's the perfect place to grow my skills and learn more about the automotive field. I am currently moving and sorting out apartments but know when I have that all figure out, there are some posts coming as a lot of these things are part of my 101 in 1001 days list!!

Typical American Work Outfit

1. People will wear the same clothes two or three times in a week.

The first time that I saw this, I was surprised. A man who I worked with wore the same outfit two days in a row. At first, I thought maybe he doesn't have a lot of work clothing or he didn't have time to do laundry for the week. One of my friends here informed me that it is nice to wear the same clothes if they are not sweaty because it is more environmentally friendly and laundry here is expensive. Another coworker informed me that for clothing that you wear to work, it is better to buy something high quality and wear it a lot than to buy something low quality and have to replace it more often. If I buy three really nice work outfits for the season that can be mixed and matched, this is much better than to buy 5 or 6 low quality outfits.

2. People tend to dress very casual unless there is a customer or a big meeting.

It is very common to see guys wearing t-shirts and jeans with sneakers to work. The women tend to wear blouses, jeans, and cute shoes. One thing I like about the casual clothing style here is that it fits everyone very well - the pants are the perfect length, t-shirts are wrinkle free and fitted, and the shoes are in very good condition.  If there is a customer in, the men tend to wear a button-down shirt, nice tailored pants, and nice shoes with a matching belt. The women tend to wear skirts or something similar to the men. Overall, it's very fashionable.

3. Individual style is appreciated.

One thing that I love about here is that you wear what you want and no one is really judging you for your outfit. For example, some of the women and I are wearing skirts though we go on the floor. I have some nice steel-toed loafers that go with many of my dress and even if it is different for people, they say nothing about it in a negative way. In the US, I would never wear a skirt on the floor because people would be judging me in some way. It is also nice for the men - for example, the shipping manager always wears all black and everyone embraces his style with open arms.

Overall, I love how they dress in our company's typical manufacturing setting more in this plant than in the US. I plan to take all of these cool style practices and slowly implement them into the plants in the US. I truly believe that when you can dress in a way that makes you happy, you are much more productive at work and in a much better mood!

Before moving to this rotation in Bruneck, I went to San Francisco and blogged about the impact that I had on me as a person.  During my time there, I realized that I needed to learn how to code and integrate coding into my daily work life so that I would not lose the skill. This worked out really perfectly for me timing wise because working in a company that prioritizes Industry 4.0, we are all about learning from the massive amount of data that we collected on a daily basis to improve our efficiency. Using the data to make meaningful statistical analysis is something I do in my daily life but to cleanse data for use in data science applications or in dashboard making is a new skill for me!

Finished this glittery beauty today. It finally feels real that I am graduating 😭 #psugrad

A post shared by Taylor Lacey (@taylornlacey) on May 7, 2015 at 3:29pm PDT

At almost two years post college graduation, I wanted to share three things that I've learned working in the real world.

1. The biggest thing that you can do to further others in life is to give your time and mentor others. I have had the greatest mentors in life - whether it was women older than me in school or executives I've met at work. All of these people give me great advice and teach me skills to further my life in the work place. My work mentor just taught me the best ways to do conflict management and one of my mentors and friends taught me all about STEM outreach. For me, I give my time to the Girl Scouts, NSBE, or whatever organization can use my skill set to further advance its members. Sometimes it is an early Saturday morning or an after school activity, but you will never regret spending the time to help others get a foot in the door or in STEM.

2. Figure out your post graduate style. I know when I got out of school, I was not sure what kind of clothes that I needed for work. I work in manufacturing so I generally dress pretty casual but when we have a customer or corporate in the plant, I dress business casual and when I have work functions or recruiting, I dress formal. I bought so many things that I have given to Goodwill but I have finally found what I would say is my work style. I wear a lot of dressier pants and wear a shirt that fits the occasion. What works for you and makes you happy is what you should wear to work and in life.

3. Network, network, network. All of college we spend meeting new people in clubs, at parties, and in class. There are a ton of people that you have connected with in life.  I try to connect with anyone I know at the same conference or the city I am traveling to currently. I try to see all of my best friends once a year and my family as much as possible. I am such a huge advocate of keeping relationships alive but I also realize that sometimes you have to exfoliate those toxic friends or negative people from your network so that you can meet new people. If you can find balance between these two things, you will basically win at life.

When I was young, I did a tech camp after 9th grade. It changed my whole mindset about wanting to be an engineer. Since then, I try to do STEM volunteering whenever possible. In college, I did Girl Scout Saturdays with PSU WEP. When I first got to the Greater Charlotte Area, I knew that I wanted to find someplace to do STEM volunteering to give back to the community.

I started volunteering at Discovery Place at their Fossil Day in late 2016. I had several tables to rotate through during the day and I loved the activities that we did with the kids. My absolute favorite activity was the above pictured Thumbprint Dinosaurs. We had several samples and we taught the kids how to make something similar or let them just make their own new kind of dinosaur. Activities like this are cheap, fun, and with the right encouragement get a ton of smiles and build confidence in the kids! It was such a good way to start my volunteer experience at Discovery Place.



After that, I started working with Maggie Connelly to run the Girls in STEM weekend programs. We had different activities for each level of Girl Scout. The brownies usually do crafts and we do a lot explaining with small activities. The older the girls get, the more freedom we give them and incorporate more technology! My two most favorite activities were teaching yoga to the girls during a wellness themed Saturday and stop motion dinosaur videos with for a technology themed day.  There are so many things you can do for free or on the cheap if you have technology to rent or borrow. In this case, we used the other areas of the museums items but in real life, I will check into borrowing tech from colleges.

For everyone. networking is crucial to getting a dream job straight out of college. I know that without the networking I did throughout my 4 years, I probably would not have gotten my full time offer. Networking is crucial because the people in your network can vouch for you. In my case, networking got me the foot in the door, I killed the interviews and ended up with an awesome job. To me, there are two types of networking. There are networking events where you go solely to make friends with others in your field or above you versus networking with friends or older students at college in major specific clubs. They are totally different in my opinion and I have tips for either situation.

Networking Events

When at conferences, they often have mixers where you can just chat with other professionals in your field. For these events, I like to prepare by reading some recent articles about the conference or if within your company, brushing up on some of the newest technology. If there is a lull in the conversation, you can save it with bringing up something that most people should have a basic to advanced understanding of from work.

Second, bring business cards but be selective about who you give your information to at the event. Not everyone you meet deserves a card and that sounds very harsh! Make sure that you are giving your information to people you clicked with because that is the best way to connect and keep in contact. It is important to make connections but you have to maintain them or they will fade.

Networking in General

If possible, try to reconnect with everyone at least once a year. This means sending an email, a text message, having a phone call or meeting in person. One of the key lessons I learned is that you don't want to hear from someone when they want something. You should have a good enough relationship that you can reach out whenever for advice or new job prospects but this only works if you maintain your connection with that person.

Make sure you become friends on Linked in and start to endorse each other for skills if you know the other person is proficient. It is really crucial to have endorsements when you look for a new job or internship so keeping on top of that part of your Linkedin profile will keep you in the game.

How do you maintain and work your network?

While getting my degree, I knew that there were a lot of options for full time jobs. Very typical option straight out of college is to just get a full-time job in your field of study.  A lot of my engineering friends are plant team managers or in charge of large amounts of money at financial firms or consultants in various fields like healthcare or IT. These are jobs that are very well-paying but focused on a single area. For example, a consultant in healthcare may get different projects within health care but there is not a set deadline for projects to end or a guarantee they will do different things in each project.

With an industrial engineering degree,  you can work in many fields:  engineering, financial management, consulting, or analysis to name a few. I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be in manufacturing after my last internship thus that narrowed my focus a bit. I did not want a full-time job that boxed me into one role right away and that's where rotational programs come into play.

A rotational program is a full-time program where you switch jobs every certain amount of months to try out as many positions as possible within the company. In each of these rotations, you'll usually have a project or two to manage while getting the flavor of the site or plant you're located. For example, my rotational program is most likely four 6 to 8 month long rotations at different plants around the world. My friend's boyfriend's rotational program is three years and three locations. Another friend of mine it has all of her rotations within one plant but for different businesses and areas within that location.

This is my best girl friend from high school. Well, one of two. I love her so much! JC, you rock.

Lili - my internship friend - and I volunteering at the Boston Pride Parade

That's all I have to share for now but for anyone who needs anything, my email is always open.

On Campus



Where to Eat

Where to Stay

There are three hotels in the near area - The Atherton which is so nice, The Nittany Lion Inn which is like the creme de la creme and the Days Inn which is nice and has Mad Mex - a bar and restaurant attached.  I would suggest picking one of these when you visit because you can park your car for free in one of the parking garages nearby and walk around State College which is the easiest way to travel in the town.

Engineering People to See

There are a ton of great people to talk to as a prospective student.  For the women, Cheryl Knobloch is the best - she is seriously one of the nicest and good hearted women I have met at Penn State. For the Multicultural Students - Wayne Gersie, Helen Edson and Jamie Weaver will be your lifelines. I love them all so dearly for everything that they do for NSBE and for my various clubs in the college. Email these people two weeks in advance and get on their calendars for face to face time during your visit.