#44: Fall asleep on a couch at Graham Memorial

I’m going to be honest and say that I didn’t discover Graham Memorial until this, my very last semester at UNC. Which is a shame, because I’m now obsessed with Graham Memorial. Davis and the UL are more functional than beautiful and even Wilson Library is made up of tables and chairs. Graham Memorial is my favorite because it’s a gorgeous building with comfortable seating. Let’s be honest, more students go there to nap than to study.

Graham Memorial has one large room with floor-to-ceiling windows, deep leather couches and a plethora of comfortable armchairs. There are fireplaces on either end of the paneled room and a grand piano in one corner.

Photo credit: the Daily Tar Heel

Napping on one of those couches is heavenly when you have a couple hours between class and have stayed up way too late working on a paper. But if you need to get some work done, there’s a Starbucks in Graham Memorial (yes, this is the definition of the perfect library) offering coffee and snacks.

Where is Graham Memorial? It’s just off Franklin Street on the upper quad, next to Alumni Hall and across from Silent Sam. It’s more of a trek than collapsing in the Union, but why would you settle for a wood and metal chair when you could sink into cushiony bliss at Graham Memorial?

 

Old Well Ranking: (8 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• You need to take a nap on one of those leather couches. The armchairs are comfortable enough for a catnap but the couches are the best for napping. Trust me, you’ll regret waiting till your senior year to discover your new favorite place on campus.

#69: Explore all the coffee shops in Chapel Hill and Carrboro

There are not a lot of things I love more than coffee. Caffeine is what got me through four years at Carolina and will probably continue to be what gets me through early mornings every working day of my post-grad life. As a result of this obsession, I’ve been to basically all the coffee shops in not only Chapel Hill, but Carrboro and heading towards Durham as well. So which place has the best coffee? Which coffee shop is good to work on group projects at? Where can you stay all day during a finals week study session? I can tell you the answers to all of that.

Open Eye Cafe:

Open Eye is by far my favorite coffee shop in the area. The seating is a wonderful mish-mash of old armchairs and metal chairs and school benches, and if you get a seat by the window or the wall, there will be a plug nearby for your computer charger. Their coffee is excellent and so is their tea, and there’s a large selection of cool pastries if you get hungry during a marathon study sesh or heart-to-heart talk. The music can get kind of loud – I always bring earphones and often drown it out with my own music. I’ve spent all day in Open Eye before working on take-home exams or writing long papers. It’s an ideal study space especially because there’s a Wendy’s within walking distance across the street if you’ve been studying past dinnertime. They stay open until 11 p.m. ( midnight on Fridays and Saturdays) and the way they kick straggling customers out is by playing The Final Countdown at top volume while cleaning up. If Open Eye were closer than Carrboro I would probably spend a good fraction of time inside its cozy walls.

Go here for: extended study sessions during finals week or midterm season.  

I recommend: a cappucino and a fruit tart

Caffe Driade:

This is probably one of the artsiest coffee shops I’ve been to. It’s down Franklin towards 15-501 and it’s just past the point you could probably walk to. While the coffee I had there was good, I had to wait in line for 30 minutes before anyone even took my order, much less made my drink. The inside seating was really minimal (like five tables) and if I’m remembering correctly, the WiFi was either difficult or impossible to get on. Outside the back is gorgeous, but I’ve never been at a time when it’s not freezing or rainy so I’ve never sat outside. Although it was tiny inside, there were plenty of people studying alone at small tables or sitting with a friend.

Go here for: studying solo or when you’re feeling artsy

I recommend: I think I had hot chocolate while I was here and it was chocolatey and delicious

Looking Glass Cafe:

I’m going to be honest and say the extent of my experience with Looking Glass was about 10 minutes of sitting before I decided that the atmosphere was too uncomfortable and not conducive to studying. It’s essentially three big concrete rooms that has the mish-mash furniture feel of Open Eye, but doesn’t work with the warehouse-like feel of Looking Glass. Although the space was big, there weren’t many seats available. Maybe I came on the wrong day because it was rainy, but I opted for an packed Open Eye over staying here to study. I know plenty of people who love Looking Glass, but it’s just not for me.

Go here for: the outside looked pretty cool, so maybe try it on a sunny day

I recommend: I didn’t actually drink anything here but I hear they have good food/pastry options

Vinyl Perk:

While this coffee shop is tiny – there were two or three 2-person tables in a small room next to stacks of vinyl records – it was really cool to study in. The owner of Vinyl Perk was very friendly and told me his life story as he made me a french-pressed cup of tea. Choices are limited here as they pretty much just serve straight coffee or tea, but the music is great as whoever’s working is also in charge of choosing what records to play.

Go here for: studying solo or a musical coffee date

I recommend: my cup of tea was excellent but I’m sure their (local!) coffee is also great

Straw Valley Cafe:

I went here for the first time on a warm August day because I wanted to sit in the sun and drink coffee at the same time. Straw Valley is a really cool space – imagine a giant, single-story house with plenty of open spaces and courtyards intermingled between enclosed rooms. I can imagine seating getting limited during the winter but it was an amazing place to go in August and September. There are no/very few outlets outside and there’s also no WiFi outside, so it’s definitely not a place to go if you plan to use your computer for anything other than typing a paper for a couple hours. It’s perfect if you have a lot of reading to get done though, because it’s quiet and there’s plenty of space to put your feet up. They also have a dinner menu and a wine list if you’re looking for more than just a casual coffee stop.

Go here for: uninterrupted reading time or when you don’t want to be distracted by social media

I recommend: I honestly don’t remember what I got here, but potentially an espresso? They also had some pretty good cupcakes and an excellent apple turnover

Johnny’s:

This may be cheating a little because Johnny’s is primarily more of a local grocery store than a coffee shop, but they do sell coffee and other drinks and have a cool seating area, so it counts. I first discovered Johnny’s because the crepe truck (my favorite food truck in all of Chapel Hill) is parked outside on Sunday afternoons, but it’s a great place outside of the food trucks it attracts. There are a couple round tables that you can pull up a random selection of chairs around (I’ve fit 8 people around a table before) and a long room in the back with benches and tables. Johnny’s is essentially like a little house except with a lot of local snacks and groceries, along with a counter where you can buy food and coffee. It’s also the least likely to be crowded during weeks when coffee shops are full of studying students.

Go here for: beating the finals week crowds, Sunday brunch with crepes or a big table to spread out your class notes

I recommend: pair your coffee with a crepe – go Sunday at lunchtime and get the Florentine or a banana/strawberry crepe with Nutella

The Daily Grind:

Any student who’s been studying at the UL or Davis way past dark appreciates the absolute miracle of having coffee available on campus late at night. The Daily Grind is an independently-owned business located on the right side of student stores, and they’re open till 11 M-W, and 9 TH, so just enough time to grab a caffeine fix as you hit a slump in studying. There’s not much seating inside or outdoors, but it doesn’t matter because you can grab an extra-large caffeine fix and take it to the library, or an iced coffee for people watching in the pit.  The coffee is great and you can also pick up a quick snack (Med Deli and Cosmic Cantina both provide them with wraps and burritos to sell) or bottle of water instead of traipsing to Walgreens.

Go here for: a late night library coffee fix or a pick-me-up to go with lounging in the pit on a beautiful spring day

I recommend: the creme brulee mocha is my all-time favorite, but they’re also known for their Red Eyes

Starbucks on Franklin Street:

I can’t resist those caramel macchiatos. Starbucks is obviously a staple everywhere you go (except apparently at NC State – how do they survive?) and the one on Franklin is always crowded. By which I mean there’s a 50-50 chance you’ll get a seat unless you go at a totally random time. Despite how crowded it is, I go to this Starbucks embarrassingly often – mostly on coffee dates with friends or running in between classes. There’s a big table in a back room that I didn’t find out about until my junior year, but if you walk past the bathrooms all the way to the back, you could find a place to sit even if the rest of Starbucks is full.

Go here for: coffee dates, quick coffee runs for a pick-me-up between classes

I recommend: obviously caramel macchiatos, caramel flan lattes and mocha frappucinos with an added banana

Caribou on Franklin Street:

Although everyone says the coffee at Caribou is probably better than Starbucks, I’ve never really found a drink there that I’ve been as obsessed with as I am with Starbucks. The reason I go to Caribou is for group project meetings – there’s an amazing room there where you can close the door, there’s a giant table, lots of plugs and the walls have chalkboards and whiteboards on them for brainstorming. Even if you can’t get that room, there’s always a higher chance you can get a table for more than two people at Caribou than you would at Starbucks. During the winter, there’s a fireplace with a crackling fire that definitely makes me feel relaxed while studying. The final pull of Caribou is that there are a very few parking spots right in front of the building, if you’re driving there.

Go here for: group project meetings, winter studying

I recommend: a turtle mocha

While writing this post I checked coffee shops in the Chapel Hill area on Yelp and was surprised to see the number of places that I have yet to try! I’ve heard great things about the “epiphany biscuits” at Jessee’s Coffee in Carrboro – apparently you normally get a creative breakthrough along with your carbs. Have any recommendations for me? I’d love to hear them! Comment and let me know if there’s a coffee shop in the area that I just have to go to, especially as finals week is coming up.

#19: See a star show at the Morehead Planetarium

It’s senior week – cue the nostalgia. It’s the very last week of class for the class of 2014, and I can’t believe four long years of classes have gone by so fast. The senior marshals put together a week of events to celebrate/mourn the fact that we’re graduating, and I’m taking full advantage of all the things they’ve planned. Last night’s was a show at the planetarium, which was conveniently one of the things on my bucket list that I still hadn’t done. I have vague memories of coming to Morehead on a field trip in elementary school (freeze-dried astronaut ice cream from the gift shop was obviously the highlight) but I’ve been here for four years, walked across the sundial in front of the planetarium countless times, and never gone in to see a star show.

The sundial in front of the planetarium

Some fun things I learned about the Morehead Planetarium from the guy giving the show/Wikipedia:

• It opened in 1949
• It’s one of the largest and oldest planetariums in the United States
• It was designed by the same architects who designed the Jefferson Memorial
• Astronauts train at the Morehead in celestial navigation (or how to pilot a spacecraft if their navigational systems go out)
• Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions all trained here

The show they gave us was called “Carolina Skies” and it was supposed to reflect the stars that we’d see when looking up at the sky from Chapel Hill. The guy giving the show was really funny and pointed out multiple constellations, planets and well-known stars. It was awe-inspiring, especially when he zoomed out, away from the earth, from our solar system, and even from our galaxy and we saw how tiny the world we live in actually is. The girl sitting behind us was really into aliens and kept thinking she spotted aliens as we zoomed backwards, even asking the guy running the show where alien life was located (she was definitely not sober.)

Another senior in my sorority who we bumped into after the show said the show gave her perspective on graduating, because whether we live, die or get a job, the universe will continue without us. I’m not sure if that’s the takeaway the senior marshals were hoping for, but the star show was definitely inspiring.

As luck would have it, I noticed on my Twitter feed a retweet of a Time magazine article about the Lyrid meteor shower that was occurring that night. I immediately texted my friend Michelle, who went to the star show with me, and we decided that we had to use our newfound stargazing skills and go find some meteors. We drove out to the middle of nowhere in hopes of avoiding light pollution and lay on blankets in a park field near Jordan Lake. It started to get cold, so half an hour was about all we could stand. We spotted a bunch of the constellations that we’d seen earlier in the star show, but no meteors, unfortunately. Still, it was cool to see the real-life stars that we’d seen on the projection earlier that day.

Old Well Ranking: (5 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• Confession time: I’m really nerdy. Michelle and I were probably embarrassingly excited that we got to go to a star show and cheered really loudly when we found those constellations when stargazing later on. I absolutely loved the star show and I think anyone who’s ever dreamed of astronaut camp or gets really excited about cool academic things would too. If you don’t, you’ll probably think it’s boring. It’s up to you whether this is something you need to do while at Carolina.

#11: Meet Sarah Dessen

If you know me at all, you know that I’m a total bookworm. I have always loved to read, ever since my parents taught me how to read at age 3 because I just couldn’t wait to read stories to myself any longer. After I blazed through the entire children’s section at my local public library, I moved on to the natural next step: young adult fiction.

One of my favorite YA authors was Sarah Dessen. Her writing was engaging and real, creating characters that I could relate to and tackling issues that I could see any of my friends potentially dealing with. There are some authors who can write in a way that draws you in until you fall headfirst into their world and stay there until you emerge, dripping with the details of the book and unwillingly breathing in the air of the world in which you live. Sarah Dessen is one of those, and I loved reading her books.

Even cooler, Sarah went to UNC and taught in the creative writing department for awhile. She still lives in Chapel Hill with her husband and curly-headed daughter, and her books are often based in a fictional town that’s pretty similar to Chapel Hill. In interviews she’ll talk often about how much she loves Chapel Hill and UNC – and it shows. I’ve wanted to meet Sarah Dessen for awhile and put it on my bucket list to meet her before graduation.

Earlier this semester, she was on campus giving away free books. I saw her tweeting about it and sat in my longest class of the day squirming in my chair, waiting for the professor to let us go so I could race down there with my friend Katie and see if she was still on campus. Sadly my dedication to my studies meant I didn’t get to meet her that day, but when I saw that she was coming to Flyleaf Books last Thursday, I knew it was probably my last chance to meet her before I graduated.

Flyleaf Books is an independently owned bookstore that’s just off MLK right next to Foster’s Market. I’ve been to Flyleaf a couple times before, once for a book signing with Stephanie Perkins and Maureen Johnson, another two of my favorite YA authors (props to Flyleaf for always having such stellar authors visit) and I definitely recommend it as a place students should visit, if for no other reason than to take advantage of the really cool author events they always have.

Sarah and Jenny Han, another YA author, were doing a reading at Flyleaf for the release of Jenny’s newest book, “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before,” which I read the morning of and loved. My roommate Rachel and I showed up a couple minutes before 7 and got a cool gift bag complete with stickers, notebooks and necklaces themed from Sarah and Jenny’s books. Sarah introduced Jenny and interviewed her before allowing Jenny to read from her latest book. Then the audience asked questions which Sarah and Jenny tag-teamed answering. It was really cool to hear from them about their writing process and watch them bounce off each other as they discussed similarities and differences in the ways they write.

After, Sarah and Jenny both signed books for anyone who would stand in line. I bought a hardcover copy of The Moon and More, Sarah Dessen’s most recent book, which she signed for me along with a poster that they had in the store. I absolutely loved her dress – it was Carolina blue and exactly what I was looking for in a graduation dress (which I’m currently on the hunt for.) She was really sweet and I absolutely loved getting to hear her talk about writing her books – definitely a worthy bucket list item for me!

#58: Paint a cube in the Pit

I’m a member of Phi Beta Chi, an associate Panhellenic sorority on campus, and every fall and spring, we have recruitment to find new members to join. In order for potential new members to find us, we have to publicize through the typical on-campus ways: flyers on bulletin boards and in dorms, through social media (for a couple weeks over a hundred of my Facebook friends will have the same profile picture) and of course, painting the cube.

The cube is a group of three large blocks of stone in the pit, where students congregate. Each has four sides that student organizations can pay $10 to rent out for a week or two so they can paint something about an event they’re hosting.

I’m not the most artistic, so we left the designing of our cube to my friend Katie, who’s a graphic design major in the J-school and super creative. Pretty much all that volunteering to help paint the cube means is getting up early, wearing old clothes and trying to fit four people around a small surface in order to paint everything on. Because of Katie’s amazing painting skills, our cube looked great!

Old Well Ranking: (4 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• It’s really cool to see something that you’ve done while you’re walking around campus – and to know that everyone else is seeing it too. However, it takes a lot more time than you’d expect to paint and can be hard to plan for unless you schedule the cube over a month in advance.

#16: Tweet at a UNC varsity athlete (and have them tweet back!)

In comparison with some people, my obsession with the UNC basketball team is pretty minor. I don’t follow them around, I’ve never asked for their autograph and I haven’t ever had a photo of them as my iPhone lock screen.

But I won’t lie and say I didn’t run back to my apartment and tell all of my roommates when Joel James and I had a conversation in the laundry room of Rams 5, or tweet about it when I ran into Marcus Paige on the stairs of my building (how cool is it that I live in the same building as the basketball team, really though?)

My shining moment when I connected with a basketball player on Twitter was kind of the result of me being creepy: random loud music was playing when I was on campus and there weren’t any accappella groups singing in the pit or speakers anywhere I could see. Then I noticed that J.P. Tokoto was walking in front of me and music was booming…from his backpack? Obviously I was curious about what music he was loving enough to share with the whole campus, so I tweeted at him.

I was sitting in my next class when I got a fun notification: @AirPierreTokoto has favorited your tweet! I was still reeling in shock that someone with 28,000 followers had even noticed my tweet when this popped up:

In conclusion to this, you should have learned two things: 1. I am cool enough to have a basketball player tweet at me, and 2. Lorde remixes are the kind of music a UNC basketball player (and the rest of campus around him) listens to before class.

 

Old Well Ranking: (5 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• You can obsessively tweet about how much you love the basketball players after they make a game-winning shot, but everyone else is doing the same thing at the same time, and you’ll get lost in the flood. (The number of tweets I saw about Marcus Paige after the NC State game were insane.)
• I’m not condoning creeping on the basketball players, but I’m also not saying that it’s an unsuccessful tactic.
• Live in Ram Village if you want to ride the bus to class with basketball players and see them on a casual basis.

#25: Become a member of Local 506 and see a show

I’ve been to a bunch of concerts at Cat’s Cradle, the quintessential Chapel Hill (though it’s technically in Carrboro) concert venue, but I’d never been to Local 506 until one of my newest favorite bands came to Chapel Hill in November. I discovered Brooklyn-based American Authors through Pandora while I was in New York last summer, but didn’t get to see them in concert while I was in the city. When I heard that they were coming to Chapel Hill, I knew it was a chance to go see them and check Local 506 off my bucket list!

Local 506 is a much smaller venue than Cat’s Cradle (it says the fire code limit is 250 people, but that would completely pack the room), and it requires a membership from everyone who attends a concert. Why? In order to sell liquor in addition to beer and wine, North Carolina law requires Local 506 to be classified as a private club. Memberships are only $3 though, and you can show a photo of your member ID on your smartphone in case you forget or lose your membership card.

I’ve walked past Local 506 more than a few times on my way to Carrboro or to grab a slice of pizza at IP3, which is next door, but I’d never been inside until this concert. There’s a bar in the front and in the back, a room with a stage that’s pretty similar to the setup at Cat’s Cradle. When my roommate Melissa and I bought our memberships and tickets, the guy with the cashbox thanked us for coming out.

“We didn’t have many people buying tickets online so we were hoping more people would just show up,” he told us.

Now American Authors have hit Top 40 with their song “Best Day of my Life,” but in November they weren’t so much as verified on Twitter yet. In fact, they weren’t even headlining the tour – a Swedish band called The Royal Concept was (though American Authors played after them and played more songs…so I’m not sure what happened over the course of the tour.) I’m going to be a shameless hipster and just claim that I did actually know this band before they were famous.

There were only about 40 people total at the concert, so Melissa and I had a great view even though we rolled in after the first opening act had started their set. There was a group of very drunk teenage boys in front of us, one of whom was really into the whole show, screaming the entire time as if each band was his all-time favorite and constantly taking videos in between gulps from the largest can of PBR I’ve ever seen. Misterwives was pretty much a girl who looked like a very hipster Demi Lovato with a wreath of flowers in her hair singing with her equally hipster band. The Royal Concept came out next, which I thought was strange considering that they were headlining the tour, and then American Authors took the stage.

If you like concert videos, here’s a video of American Authors playing a song from their CD, released in early March. It’s from this concert at Local 506 and I found it on YouTube.

Because the venue is so small, everyone in the audience was probably within arm’s length of the band, and it was a fun atmosphere even if only about half the people there knew any of their songs. I personally really love American Authors; they’re one of my favorite bands and they did not disappoint in concert! The band was super active and fun and put a new spin on the songs from their EP that I’d listened to hundreds of times. I got to hear some of my favorite songs and get a sneak peek of their then-forthcoming album, Oh, What a Life! Also the lead singer looks like Adam Levine – definitely not something to complain about.

Old Well Ranking: (6 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• Take a picture of your Local 506 membership card as soon as you get it, so that you can forget about having to bring it with you as long as you have your phone.
• Concerts don’t seem to sell out very often unless the band is well-known by UNC students, so you can buy tickets online or just stroll in on a whim.
• Cat’s Cradle is the concert venue that most UNC students have been to, but Local 506 seems to be less popular. It’s a smaller venue so more popular artists will probably be at Cat’s Cradle, but Local 506 is a great place to go for more obscure bands or ones that are still on their way up in popularity. I recommend it because the limited space lends itself to an intimate atmosphere. If you really want the UNC experience though, a concert at Cat’s Cradle is the way to go.

#1: Ride a full circle of the P2P route

As a first-year, I had no idea what any of the UNC acronyms meant. CCI, SRC, UL? These random jumbles of letters didn’t mean anything to me, though they now mean a. clunky Lenovo computers that are constantly getting fixed, b. the place with Zumba classes and c. the library on campus where you can pull an all-nighter. P2P was probably the first acronym that I learned about because I’m sometimes lazy and choose riding a bus over walking around campus.

P2P stands for point to point, and it’s the bus that travels a route around campus and to Franklin Street from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m. I’ve used it to get home from late nights at the library when I don’t want to walk back alone in the dark or from group project meetings on campus, but it’s most often used by students coming home after a night out on Franklin.

Riding a full circle of the P2P is not something I’ve done since freshman or sophomore year, but it’s hilarious to sit in the same seat over the course of the route and watch the bus fill up and then empty with students carrying heavy backpacks and girls wearing skinny jeans and wedges. Also, if you get lucky, you’ll get on the P2P that’s blasting music. I once rode a P2P where the whole bus sang passionately to “Breakeven” by the Script, and recently half the bus serenaded me on my birthday.

Major throwback to these two quality photos of me and my roommate Melissa on the P2P sophomore year, because apparently even riding the bus is something that needs to be documented in college.

   

Old Well Ranking: (3 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• You’re going to ride the P2P at some point in your college career (unless you’re super into exercising and constantly have a friend with you so you don’t have to walk home alone in the dark) and riding it all the way around one route seems kind of pointless, because you’re not going anywhere.

#12: Get covered in paint at the Holi celebration on Polk Place

One of the things that defines UNC as a university is its commitment to diversity and to social justice. As a result, student organizations on campus run the gamut and bring together people of similar political, religious, ethnic and social backgrounds. Holi Moli at UNC is just one event thrown by organizations at UNC that celebrates diversity and multiculturalism.

Holi is a Hindu festival held in the spring that is known as the festival of colors, and Holi Moli is the UNC version of this festival. Students gather wearing white t-shirts and purchase packets of colored powder to throw at each other in celebration. All of the students crowd together onto a tarp and after a countdown from 10, throw powder into the air and towards their friends.

My first time participating in Holi Moli was my junior year, which was held on Polk Place.

But I couldn’t turn down doing Holi Moli my senior year and miss my last chance at UNC! This year I was reminded of how much fun Holi is – waiting on the tarps packed in with hundreds of other students, yelling out the countdown and that first minute when there’s so much colored powder in the air that you can hardly breathe and the sky is blocked out by clouds of pink, green, red, yellow and purple. Last year there was more water – people with hoses spraying water over the crowds, beyond just the tubs of water there for people who want to fill their color packets with water to make the color stick more. But this year the color drifted in clouds over the students bunched onto the tarp in a celebration of springtime.

An Instagram from @uncchapelhill’s account

My last year participating in Holi Moli UNC! This year it was held on Hooker Fields.

 

Old Well Ranking: (8 out of 10) 

Recommendations:

• Wear cheap rubber flip-flops. Whether you kick them off at the edge of the tarp or wear them through the celebration, they’re going to get coated in the mixture of water and dye that looks a lot like blood (the red dye takes over) and that won’t come out of your Jack Rogers.
• If you plan on participating in Holi Moli multiple years, you can reuse the same shirt as the color stain won’t be incredibly permanent, and you can add more color each year!
• Showering right after Holi Moli helps with getting the stains off your skin. If your hair is blonde, you run the risk of temporarily dying your hair – last year I had a pink streak like Avril Lavigne for two weeks. Double-shampoo it all out of your hair because it will stain!
• Holi Moli is a fun event at UNC, but more than that, it represents UNC’s culture of ethnic celebration and is something I definitely recommend that UNC students experience.

 

 

How to be Hirable

One of the perks of being an intern at Capstrat this semester is getting to interact with the Capstrat employees. It’s so cool to talk to different people at Capstrat and learn about what they’ve done in their lives – a lot of people have come from big cities like NYC or Chicago, and plenty have worked at some of the biggest PR agencies out there. Some have worked in journalism, politics, sales. They’ve all come from different places and have different hidden talents and abilities. (It doesn’t hurt that a lot are Carolina fans.) After hosting the 8th Annual Student Networking Night, all of the interns went for drinks with Karen Albritton, the president of Capstrat, which was a really great experience.

On Tuesday, we had the unique opportunity to go for dinner with Ken Eudy, CEO of Capstrat. He started Capstrat himself from scratch with just one partner, and has built it up to the agency it is now – employing a couple hundred people, working for big clients like Duke Energy, Deloitte and Lenovo, and owned by Ketchum, one of the biggest and best public relations firms in the world. He’s been incredibly successful and has hired many people who have gone on to be equally successful.

At dinner, we asked him what advice he would give to us who were mostly graduating seniors as we set out on the job hunt. He told us that he gets asked the question of what makes someone hirable so often that he’s condensed it to a list of 6 things that he keeps on his iPhone. (Disclaimer: I came up with this list from memory two days later so hopefully it’s accurate.)

1. Be intelligent.

If you’re smart, you can make up for a lot of other things you could be missing as a job candidate. Don’t know a lot about social media or technology? If you’re smart, you can jump on Twitter or pick up an iPad and know your way around pretty quickly. Unfamiliar with graphic design or the Adobe suite? If you’re smart, you can take a crash course and be on the same level as everyone else in less than 24 hours. Never written a press release or a blog post before? If you’re smart, you can figure it out with a template. Being smart makes you able to do your job, even if you’re thrown into a task that you’ve never done before.

2. Be passionate.

What you can’t make up for by being smart, you can by being passionate. The best PR professionals are the ones that are actually interested in the type of work that they do. They are constantly upgrading to the latest technology (or drooling over it if their paycheck can’t finance that) and keeping an eye out for the newest in social media and digital advances. They follow the news avidly and want to know what’s going on in the world, up to the minute. They’re creative and will spend their free time reading, drawing, having new ideas and making them come to life. Passion means that while there are some things you do for work that you don’t particularly enjoy, as a whole your work reflects what you’re truly interested in – what you care about and would be interested in even if you weren’t paid to be interested in it.

3. Be a good writer.

Writing is essential to PR. It is to many careers, but public relations is all about communicating a message to an audience, so if you’re going to be working in PR, you have to be able to communicate effectively. This manifests itself through the basics – having good grammar and spelling abilities and knowing the ins and outs of PR writing are a must. But being able to communicate in a way that grabs people’s interest and persuades them that your opinion is right will make you an exceptionally strong PR professional, as persuasion really is the reason why any client would hire an agency.

4. Don’t be afraid of change.

The world is constantly changing. He mentioned that when Capstrat was first founded, email didn’t exist. Pause to think about a world where PR professionals are trying to promote brands and companies to a world where you can’t send off an email or a Facebook message to let everyone know what’s going on. As a 90s kid whose earliest memories include sitting in front of a giant desktop computer and listening to the dial-up tone as the little yellow America Online man jumped across the screen to get me on the internet, I can’t fathom being a functioning adult without being able to send a message that could be instantly received. A lot of people are resistant to change, afraid to switch from Windows XP or sticking with their iPhone 3G even after it’s rendered obsolete by Apple’s faithful software and hardware updates. People who embrace change are excited about the possibility of new technology, new ways of doing things and the fact that in another 25 years, the world could have changed as drastically as it has since the beginning of the 90s.

5. Never be outworked.

Plenty of people work late in PR, from early in their career when they’re trying to get ahead to when they’re heads of departments or even agencies and have so many responsibilities that leaving at 5 sharp is impossible. I personally am prepared to spend plenty of days in the office after the 5:30 rush home. But that’s not what the point of not being outworked is. Work hard, play hard is a common mantra, but it’s one that people who work for a PR agency exemplify. While they’re at work, they focus on the task at hand and they do it well. They’re efficient and they’re dedicated on top of being creative and innovative. But when they leave, they pursue their other interests. They have families and love lives and are fans of bands and sports teams and members of book clubs and fitness groups – and as I mentioned before, they’re so passionate about the world around them that they’re involved in those things too. Never being outworked sometimes means staying late, but it always means working hard, fast and well while you’re in the office.

6. Be kind.

This one is more Capstrat-specific, as there are plenty of jerks who have made it to the top of the career ladder without worrying about whether or not they’re kind. But the saying that you can get more flies with honey than with vinegar is true. People are more likely to want to hire you, to work with you on a campaign, to cover your event or to share ideas if you’re kind. People who aren’t can pull themselves up and be successful, but they’re doing it alone. And often they won’t get quality results because people either don’t want to work with them or won’t give their best because they feel so antagonized. Be kind, if for no other reason than it can help you be successful.

 

I personally am a huge fan of organized lists because it gives me something to accomplish, and this one was even better because I related to everything he said – I can write well, I’m smart and can learn things quickly, I hope I’m kind and I’m very passionate about PR and keeping up with the world around me. It’s different from the normal list of how to get a job – work a bunch of internships, network constantly and build a portfolio – but it’s a great list of characteristics of what makes a PR professional not only hirable, but successful as well.