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What Is Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship. What does that word even mean? To some it may conjure thoughts of innovation and business, while others might think of classes where a scammer teaches customers how to make a successful career by pretending to have said successful career. Unfortunately, the latter of these two is far too common nowadays, so I thought I would clear the air and describe what the Grove City College Entrepreneurship major consists of for anyone who (understandably) may not know what it is all about. Here are three different areas of education you will experience if you choose to study entrepreneurship.

1. Idea Generation

The first type of class you will run into as an Entrepreneurship major are classes that deal with the beginnings of businesses and how good ideas come to be. Believe it or not, since there are so many products and services already out there, coming up with a decent idea for a business that has not already been done can be quite challenging. These classes, which include Entrepreneurial Mind and Lean Launchpad, are perfect examples of classes that help students hone their venture generation skills. In Entrepreneurial Mind, students will learn about how to think of the need a product fixes before anything else, and in Lean Launchpad students will take the lessons learned from Entrepreneurial Mind and apply them in a Shark Tank like situation.

2. Business Core

The second group of classes students take in the Entrepreneurship major consists of the business core. These are your typical college business classes such as finance, accounting, and marketing. Although these may not be as exciting as other entrepreneurial classes, the importance of this curriculum cannot be understated and is a necessity for any student interested in entering the world of business after they graduate.

3. Entrepreneurial Effectuation

The last set of classes Entrepreneurship majors will take are the upper level capstone courses. It is hard to describe these classes succinctly, but if I had to choose one word, I would choose effectuation, the concept of using your own skill set and connections to create opportunities where you can reduce risk and produce a more consistent outcome. In other words, effectuation is where entrepreneurial ideas and reality meet. A good example of this would be to think back to when you were a teenager. You probably had some big ideas of what you wanted to do, but did not have the tools to do so. If you had a lawn mower, you might have done what you could with the tools you had and mowed lawns as your summertime job. That is entrepreneurial effectuation. As you grow older, you will learn more skills and your tool set will increase, but in reality some business ventures will be out of your reach, or at least way harder to produce than an opportunity that is at your fingertips. For these classes, expect a lot of presenting, writing, and real-life work in classes such as Business Planning and Healthcare Innovation, where Grove City College partners with a pharmaceutical company to provide students with job experience.

 

I hope this post helped you understand what classes make up the Entrepreneurship major at Grove City College. If you have other questions, or would like to find out more, feel free to check out the Entrepreneurship department website here. Whereas this post was about the classes of the major, the website will show you more of the events that the Entrepreneurship Department holds. If you are interested in a business major where you can express your creative side, I highly recommend you look into entrepreneurship.

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Facilities: The Grove City Free Weight Room

If you are anything like me, you will probably spend your first few days at Grove City College wondering when the gym will open, since you can feel your body getting weaker every second that you are not working out. Okay, maybe you do not feel like that, but maybe some info on Grove City’s weight rooms might help so you have an idea of what to expect after arriving to college. I will be covering the free weight room in this post, but, if you are into mechanical weights, there will be another post about that later.

First things first, the Grove City weight facility is split into two different rooms: a free weight room and a mechanical weight room. Of these two, the latter is often praised as better than the former, but over time I have learned to appreciate the Grove City free weight room because of the following three reasons:

1. Weight Racks

If you have some free weight experience, you know that weight racks are a hot commodity in every gym. A typical gym will have different types of weight racks meant for different exercises, such as squatting or pressing. Instead of having individual specialized weight racks, Grove City has eight squat racks with movable benches. This means that not only can you perform squats, but you can press and deadlift in the same rack, and since there are eight racks there is almost always one open. As if that was not enough, the weight room also has two Olympic lifting platforms as well.

2. Older Equipment (some of it)

This one might sound strange, but hear me out. Yes, older equipment is seen as a con by some people, but let me tell you, there is a great advantage to having older equipment. That advantage is the ability to bail and drop weights without feeling like you are damaging new equipment. All the weights in the free weight room can be dropped and no one will look at you twice. This is much better than trying to save face and hurting yourself in the process.

3. The weight room is free for students

Enough said.

 

I hope this article helped provide some insight into some key features of the Grove City College free weight room. If you have not tried weightlifting, I urge you to give it a shot. I hope to see you there!

 

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Tips for Senior Year from Recent Graduates

It does not take long for anyone to see that Grove City College students typically find the College through their relatives. I am no exception. Both of my brothers attended Grove City College before me, and both have been out in the real world for several years now. Bill is 28 and currently works for the WebstaurantStore, while Sam is 25 and works as an accountant for RKL. Since they are older and maybe even wiser than me, I thought I would ask them what tips they had for seniors in their last year of college. Here is what they said:

1. It is okay to not have a job

As senior year comes around, you will become more aware and worried about how many of your friends already have careers ahead of them. When you start to see this, it begins to feel like your friends have somehow “got it figured out” and you do not. This can seem frightening, but it is important to remember that they are still in the same period of life as you and college is just a small portion of what is ahead. As long as you can make up some excuse as to why you are better than them and your dad can still beat their dad in a fight, you are good to go. Just kidding, but just remember that life is pretty complicated and almost no one gets everything right on the first try. In fact, most students will end up with careers later in life that have little or nothing to do with their major. It is okay to not have a job right away, but do not lose faith in the process.

2. Practice common interview questions

Although it is acceptable to be jobless for a bit, you do want to put yourself in the best position you can for a career. A great way to do this is to practice some of the most common interview questions so you do not freeze up when they inevitably come your way. Here are a few examples:

“Tell me about yourself.”

“What are three words you would use to describe yourself?”

“What are your strengths/weaknesses?”

“Give me an example of conflict you have had in the past and how you resolved it.”

“If your dad and my dad were in a fight, who would win?”

You would be surprised how hard these questions are to answer, so make sure you are prepared.

3. Enjoy the last year

Since it will be your last year at the Grove, try to enjoy it as much as you can. It is unlikely that your GPA will change much as a senior, so make sure you stay focused on the important things. In a year or two you will not remember that test you took, but you might look back on being with your college friends as your best memory.

So, there it is! The last few tips you will ever need as a college student. If you keep these in mind, I promise that it will improve your senior year.

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Unconventional Study Tips

Close your eyes and picture this. A freshman shows up at Grove City College and is having a great time. Weeks go by without him/her even noticing, but then finally it happens. The day of reckoning. The freshman’s first test. Normally this would not be a problem, but this is not high school anymore, and the freshman does not know how to study. Well, maybe he/she knows how but is having a hard time doing what he/she has been told to do. He/she has heard it all a million times, go to the library, put in earplugs, and isolate yourself from humanity, but he/she just can not get himself to do so. Now open your eyes. Did I just describe you? If so, read on for Karl’s unconventional college study tips.

Tip 1 – Drink something

The first tip is to drink something. Anything. If you are like me, you probably think that studying is boring, and you would be right. It is. Sometimes you can not seem to stop your mind from wandering, and it feels like you need something else to think about that will not distract you yet provide your brain with brief moments of opportunity to think about something else other than studying. I have found that drinking something helps me focus on studying for longer periods of time precisely because of that. My personal favorite things to have while studying are non-caffeinated versions of drinks that wake me up, such as tea and coffee. You may find that although decaf coffee does not actually provide any caffeine boost, it reminds you of a time where it did and helped you feel truly alive, rather than feeling how you are right now in the middle of the night studying for a test.

Tip 2 – Just start

Studies have shown that people are more likely to finish a task they have started than if they have not started at all. This may sound silly, but there is something about the human mind that wants to finish something as soon as it is started. Instead of lying in your bed and thinking about studying, try sitting at your desk and opening your textbook. As soon as you do this, you are much more likely to actually study than the person who is thinking about studying in their bed.

Tip 3 – Study for 15 minutes WITHOUT DISTRACTION

When you first start studying, you will notice that it is easy to distract yourself in the beginning. Whether it is your phone, your computer, or your pesky roommate ripping Beyblades onto your head, it all seems more distracting in the beginning. Believe it or not, there is an element of momentum to studying. Once you study for about 15 minutes without letting yourself be distracted by anything, the next hour will fly by. Try it out, it feels amazing. Just make sure you do not let yourself get distracted by a single thing for those first 15 minutes or it will not work.

There you go, three study tips that I bet you have not heard before. Hopefully these help you study in the upcoming years, but hey, there is a possibility they will not help. The most important thing is to keep trying until you figure out what works for you! Never forget that.