College Will Help Me Reach My Career Goals

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Nicholas Pollock.

MIHEC Student Profile: Nicholas Pollock

My dream job is to do cross-promotions for upcoming movies with restaurants, grocery items, and merchandise. When I was a kid, I loved watching TV commercials, sometimes more than the shows. Now, when a new movie comes out, I go to restaurants that have promotions tied to the movie or stock up on groceries that have movie characters on the label. When the Garfield movie came out, I made a display in our freezer with the Stouffer’s lasagna boxes.

When I think about my career goals, I want to work with a good team of people who accept and encourage me. I’m looking at promotions, marketing, visual merchandising, entertainment, tourism, and hospitality. I’m taking graphic design classes through my transition program and also did a two-week training program with Hands-On Hyatt. I worked in the Event & Banquet Department, where I got to try out working in a hotel to see if it was a good fit.

I’m in my second year of a transition program, and when I'm done, I’d like to go on to college. I think college will be a safe place for me to learn how to be an adult and a great place to make some friends.

Friends are important to me. I met a lot of friends through Club Unified Student and adaptive sports. I was on an adaptive team from 8th through 12th grades, and now I play with Special Olympics. I also recently joined Best Buddies and went to a Minnesota Twins game with them.

When I started thinking about college, my mom and I went on the Think College website. We looked for schools that offer promotions and hospitality classes and then Zoomed with the colleges. We’ve toured two schools, and I’m going to tour more. I’ll probably have to go to a different state for college because most colleges near me are small religious schools, and I prefer a large public college.

To prepare for college, I’ve been working on life skills, like cleaning up after myself and managing a budget, and also on being a good roommate.

I asked our super-friendly bank branch manager for advice on how to improve my social skills. He said to say hello, notice something about others, and comment on it. He also said to get out there and be around as many different people as possible. And that’s what I’m going to do.