Educating Yourself: Beyond the Classroom
It’s safe to say that school can become very overwhelming, especially now that finals are quickly approaching. With school being our main priority, it can be hard to stay up to date on the latest trends going on. No matter what your major is, it is important to try and keep up on the latest financial trends and stay up to date on what’s going on in the world. This can help to make you more marketable by allowing you to better conversate with recruiters about what they are doing to adapt to current global challenges.
A great way to balance studying and educating yourself on the news is to use your study breaks to read up on what’s going on in the world. One great newsletter I would recommend subscribing to is the Morning Brew. The Morning Brew is a free online news subscription that will keep you updated on various topics each week, ranging from how the financial market is currently doing, to food, to technology, and even to politics. The reason I personally like The Morning Brew- other than it being free- is because it gives you a broad range of information that can be easily read in five minutes. They send out the email early every morning, so it’s a great way to start your day- as opposed to scrolling through social media right when you wake up.
Listening to podcasts is another great way to stay up to date with what’s going on in the world. Podcasts are great because they can be listened to in place of an activity, where you would usually listen to music. Try listening to a podcast on your next drive to the grocery store, or the next time you go for a walk or a run. You could even pop on a podcast while you are cleaning your room. Some business podcasts I recommend are:
This podcast is hosted by Victoria Devine, a millennial money expert. She uses this podcast to share her tips and tricks for financial freedom.
This podcast is hosted by Jack Kramer and Nick Martell- employees for Robinhood Financial LLC. They break down their top three business stories each day all in 15 minutes.
This podcast is for people looking for financial advice. Listeners can call in and receive financial advice from Graham Stephan, a real estate investor.
This podcast is actually owned by The Morning Brew Company. The host, Swan, addresses the stories behind the headlines you’re reading. You can listen to the Business Casual podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Overcast, Castro, Pocket Casts, or RSS Feed.
This podcast is a spinoff of the popular book “Freakonomics”. It is an American podcast that discusses economics in general terms, hosted by journalist Stephen Dubner.
This podcast is hosted by Dave Ramsey, a finance author and speaker. This podcast airs Monday through Friday and is three hours long. It was actually ranked in the top five radio shows of 2020. This podcast is definitely more of a time commitment to listen to, as it is pretty long; however, you could easily listen to 30 minutes of it a day and space out watching the show over the course of a week.
This American podcast claims to be “The Economy Explained”. It is hosted by NPR and is also a blog that uses creative and entertaining dialogue twice a week discussing top stories happening in the economy. They also have a spinoff, “The Indicator,” which is a shorter but more frequent podcast that focuses on a specific topic in the economy at the moment.
This podcast is hosted by two best friends, Joel and Matt, who work for iHeartRadio. Each podcast, they discuss how handling money in a purposeful way allows you to live a richer life.
My last piece of advice on educating yourself outside the classroom would be to specifically research the companies you are interested in or expecting to work for. It’s good to be up to date on what the companies are currently doing so when you do go to networking events, you can talk to them about how they’re handling certain situations. This will let the recruiters know that you are interested in the company and have taken the extra step to research how they are currently doing. This will also help you better transition into your internship or job once you graduate, because you already know a little bit about the challenges you will be facing.
Educating yourself beyond what you’re learning in the classroom will help to make yourself more marketable and better prepare yourself for your transition into the real world post graduation. Even just watching the news every night before bed can help you stay up to date on what’s going on in the world. As future business women, it’s crucial to try and keep up with the markets and economy so that you can apply what you’re learning in your classes to real world situations. This can help you better understand the material you are learning and allow you to actually talk about these topics with recruiters!
By Allison Gray
