“Originally, I’m from California and moved to West Jordan while I was still in high school. I never thought I could go to the University of Utah, just because I thought it was out of reach for me. But I applied, just threw it out there, and when I got in, I received a scholarship, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m here. I’m going to make sure I can have the best experience I can and really make my best out of this opportunity.’
When I first started my freshman year, I really had no idea what an internship was or what experiences I could get. But I joined their (Goff Strategic Leadership Institute) Explorers Program and got an internship with PBS Utah coming out of my freshman year, which I thought was insane. The experience I had before was just doing social media for my church.
Starting my sophomore year, I got a job here at the U Career Success Center. So that was a huge part in emboldening me to just get more involved because I saw these amazing people I was working with and I saw Goff was giving me these tools and it became, ‘OK, if they have faith in me to do this and they’re giving me these tools, I feel confident to move on to other things and take over the “Hey You” podcast or help out with the marketing club.’
‘Hey You’ is a career-focused podcast where we interview different professionals from different industries. We just learn about their career journeys and then also what advice they have for college students. It’s real people, real experience for them. Our goal is to meet them where they’re at and find their interests, and then from there, make episodes that match them. We want to make sure that students, when they go and explore different career opportunities, can feel confident knowing that they have this information from our podcast.
One thing that I’ve really loved is being able to help people. There are a lot of amazing career coaches and amazing people here who have done a lot to mentor me and help me. They’ve given me a lot of advice. When I first came in, I didn’t even have a resume, I didn’t have a LinkedIn, I didn’t have any of this stuff. That wasn’t stuff that was on my mind. But then they really showed me the importance of it. They encouraged me to get involved on campus and find new opportunities, not only to just find experience but also to find what really matters to me. And that was the biggest thing that’s helped me out now, it’s just their encouragement to find out what I like and what I don’t like.
That confidence that comes from them and from the real experience that they’ve given me over the past few years has been a huge help for me. From a career aspect too, not just from a personal aspect, but career too, it’s set me up a lot in a lot of ways and helped me to learn valuable skills and just learn how to communicate and truly find out how to help people.”
—Diego Alvarez, Goff Institute Explorer