Reflection

                Recently, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Sumaya Villanueva. I believe this opportunity was a great one because Dr. Villanueva is responsible for guiding around twelve thousand students on their academic journey and she took out time of her busy day to meet and talk to us to inform us a little about her journey to John Jay and how she can and will help us. The first thing Dr. Villanueva mentioned what that she started out as a Public Relations and Mass Communications major but after taking some advice her brother gave her she turned to marketing and business. Sumaya quickly learned that she and math did not get along very well and if she wanted to keep in “A” in all of her classes she would have to walk away from marketing and business. After switching back to her old Public Relations major, Dr. Villanueva realized that she had an entirely different image of what public relations majors really do. She thought that in this field you were to plan parties but in reality you were responsible for managing an image. The one problem Dr. Villanueva had with this was putting the company’s or person’s values before her own values. Again Sumaya was stuck at a crossroad but before she knew it she had grown a new interest. She became interested in sociology through the sociology class she was taking in order to complete her GenEdu requirements. Before she knew it she was taking Sociology class after another heading onto the path of a Sociology Major.  What Dr. Villanueva loved the most about sociology was how people could potentially change the world and society through this study and programs that involved this concentration of study. Although she loved this major Sumaya says, “It’s like I had the little devil and angel on my shoulder. My brother was the little devil telling me I would never get a job.” For this reason, she began to ask her professors and people in the sociology department how and where they went in order to get a job as a sociology field. She then decided to pursue a Doctorate degree in Sociology with a concentration in social psychology. She attended the University in Michigan by getting into several different programs because of her excellent grades.  And yet again, Dr. Villanueva found herself stuck at a crossroads. Sumaya described it as “publish or perish”. She explains that she was too far into her Ph. D to walk away from it so; she “stuck it out.” Once Dr. Villanueva was done with her Ph. D and out of college she explains that in order to find a job she followed the traditional route by going onto a website filling out an application followed by attaching her resume. Once this method did not work for her she began to do informational interviews. During these informational interviews Dr. Villanueva would ask the person what they liked about their job and what they didn’t like about their job. Slowly but surely, she began to create her own network. Through this method she landed her first job at a Community College. Once Sumaya worked at the community college for a total of about five years, she made the decision to apply for an opening job at John Jay College. What intrigued her about the position at John Jay was that she would be able to start from scratch and basically go anyway with this program. She now has experience for eleven years now and she explains that she now knows the reason that the tradition method did not work for her. She says, “I had too much education. I was over qualified and under experienced.” She also says that she believes what helped her the most were her transferable skills which include, communication skills, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills, just to name a few. She believes these skills can be acquired by engaging in the college community through joining student clubs, athletics and internships.