Sophomores Boot Up for Bowdoin's 2025 Bootcamp

Sophomores Boot Up for Bowdoin's 2025 Bootcamp

By Rebecca Goldfine, Tom Porter, and Adam Bovie

The entire sophomore class arrived on campus last week to participate in the annual rite of Bootcamp-an intensive career preparation program that steers students toward the internship, job, or profession they want.

Bootcamp is one of the Office of Career Exploration and Development's (CXD) most ambitious programs. At the end of the week, each participant has a polished resume, LinkedIn profile, and sample cover letter in hand, as well as interviewing and networking practice.

Additionally, they have connected with alumni, explored their own unique skills and values, and considered a range of potential professions that might best suit them.

Alumni Panel: "Common Good and the Good Life"

To kick off the program this year, four of Bootcamp's most committed alumni-who have participated in this same Bootcamp panel for the last few years-returned to campus Wednesday morning for a discussion on what it means to balance achievement, purpose, and income over the length of their careers.

The candid conversation among trustee Katie Benner '99, Chris Omachi '12, Bree Candland '01, and trustee Joe Adu '07 set the tone for Bootcamp and for thinking about career engagement as a long-term, holistic endeavor, said Leah Hodder-Romano, assistant director of skills programming and operations for CXD. She took over organizing Bootcamp this year.

One way speakers do this is by describing their own winding and sometimes uncertain paths, filled with setbacks, steps forward, redirections, and reconsiderations. "The students hear that it's okay to not have it all worked out right away, from the friendliest people who are also deeply successful!" said CXD Director of Partnerships and Programming Bethany Walsh, who has overseen past Bootcamps.

Omachi is the associate director of business development and content marketing partnerships at Audible. Candland is a longtime social studies teacher at Morse High School in Bath, Maine, and Adu is the chief technology officer at Spectrum Ai.

Benner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, moderated the panel, framing her questions to encourage the alumni to share their thoughts about their jobs and the impacts they have had, the balances they've struck to achieve both personal fulfillment and healthy bank accounts, and the decisions they've made as they have sought meaning and accomplishment at different stages of their lives.

Team Time, Core Workshops, and an AI Hackathon

In their teams, students worked Wednesday and Thursday on developing insight into their personal attributes and interests and how these might translate to a career. They completed resumes and cover letters and brainstormed how to best answer common job interview questions.

They also participated in workshops on topics ranging from how to go about their job search to how to organize their finances. They attended panels and talks, a semi-formal dinner with an alumni speaker, and a networking event.

New this year was the voluntary all-day AI Hackathon, open on Friday to both technical and non-technical students. CXD has made a point in the last two years to incorporate aspects of artificial intelligence into Bootcamp, to help prepare students for a professional landscape that will be touched in every way by the breakthrough technology.

On Wednesday evening, the class gathered for dinner and to hear from guest speaker Morgan Rielly '18, who is serving his third term in the Maine House of Representatives. Rielly spoke about one of the catalysts that drove him into politics-the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist's rally in Charlottesville, Virginia-which happened while he was abroad.

"I remember watching it on television: images of cars running into a crowd, sending people flying and killing one person. Nazi and Confederate flags and the president at the time calling them 'some very fine people,'" he recalled. "I have never felt so homesick. And on the flight back, I started to ask myself how am I going to make my piece of the world better, not just for myself, but for the people around me."

Rielly decided to start at the state level, and was elected to the statehouse in 2021.

The hackathon

Visiting Lecturer in Computer Science Christopher Martin, who ran the AI hackathon, said the goal of the daylong event was to give undergraduates an opportunity to practice developing software backed by AI, which is rare at this level since it is so costly.

With the help of Bowdoin's Dale Syphers and Erik Pearson, Martin outlined a few "optional guided pathways" for attendees on how to best leverage AI while building applications. "My ultimate hope was that they could use the event as an opportunity to finally try that thing they have been wanting to do or research that topic they were super curious about," he said.

"Many people are scared about the future of developing software with the rise in AI," Martin added, "so we wanted to help shed some light on the reality of what it is really capable of and best-use cases. ...I hope the day sets a precedent, allowing us to do more things like this moving forward because it will be such valuable experience for their careers and will just further set them apart as Bowdoin students."

"We were super lucky to have such a great turnout [for the hackathon] and so much assistance from the campus and the community. That type of collaborative space is truly amazing-we had faculty, upperclassmen, campus staff, industry alumni, and learners all coming together to help one another grow and build what they were interested in!"

-Christopher Martin, visiting lecturer in computer science

Humanities Majors: Charting Your Career Path

On Friday, students were able to choose from a lengthy list of more narrowly focused workshops, including one on how humanities majors can leverage their education into a job.

"This is the time to focus on your value as humanities majors, to recognize those values and articulate them," said Amy Steigbigel, CXD senior associate director. She introduced the panel who led the session, which included Nadia Celis (Romance Languages and Literatures and Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies), Meghan Roberts (History) and Maggie Solberg (English).

The professors invited humanities students to "connect to their future" by focusing on the skills they have that are highly valued by employers.

CXD Executive Director Kristin Brennan kicked off a brainstorming session, in which small groups of sophomores got together with team leaders. Students were asked to consider the top skills shared by the 5,000-plus Bowdoin alumni with humanities majors.

" I was surprised by the relationship between the humanities and the world of business. It's a lot more symbiotic than I thought."

-Daedalus Arnold '27

"One category, for example, is building relationships, and a common experience humanities students share is having to incorporate respectful critical feedback-for instance, workshopping poetry or visual art-which is essential in the workplace," Brennan said.

Team leader Marc Rosenthal '25, a math and Hispanic studies major, noted that the definition of critical thinking and analysis, which involves sound reasoning to make decisions about what information to include, sounded like the very definition of essay writing.

At tables, student dug into examples of how the humanities also build communication skills, creativity, management (of people and projects), technical ability, and technique-think of the technical effort needed to stage a theatrical production!

Attending sophomores found the activity enlightening. "I was surprised by the relationship between the humanities and the world of business," said Daedalus Arnold '27, commenting on the number of LinkedIn profiles of humanities alumni raising resources for organizations, both businesses and nonprofits "It's a lot more symbiotic than I thought."

Sophia Hammond '27 said the workshop made her realize that institutions are just run by people at the end of the day and that is why her humanities experience shapes the potential for her own leadership in any organization. "Just like people, every institution is flawed," she said, "and as humanities majors we're trying to be experts on humans and how they think and feel."

Establishing "My Bowdoin Network"

"Rejection is redirection"-words of advice from Neiman Mocombe '26 to sophomores seeking guidance on how to navigate the world of job-seeking and internships.

The religion and visual arts major knows this from firsthand experience. An internship in the world of fashion public relations last summer left him thinking he might prefer opportunities in journalism or arts communications this summer.

Mocombe was at a networking reception on Friday afternoon in Smith Union, where sophomores mingled over coffee and snacks with team leaders to learn more about their internship and job search experiences. "When you get a setback, just keep trying," he said. "By refining your cover letters and resumes you'll become a better applicant."

The program ended with a large networking event in Smith Union.

These words resonated with Stella Johnson '27, who said she came away from the Bootcamp experience with a firm conviction to "try a lot of different things because bad experiences are as useful as good ones in helping you figure out what you want."

Team leader Miles Berry '25 spoke with sophomores about the importance of looking beyond their majors when it comes to finding a career. "Pursuing an extracurricular activity or personal interest is just as important as academics and just as relevant to employers," Berry said. "While having an English major has certainly been indispensable in developing my writing and critical thinking, my work as a managing editor on The Bowdoin Orient, combined with my personal interests in food, art, and photography, have been key to securing my last two summer internships at magazines."

Max Blakeney '27 spoke to Berry and other team leaders about opportunities in journalism and the arts. "I garnered some really insightful industry knowledge," he said, including the importance of checking a company's human resources policies as well as building a portfolio of personal written work for potential employers."

But perhaps the most important takeaway from the whole bootcamp experience, added Blakeney, is that he has "way more skills" than he thought he did.

Photos by Michele Stapleton.

Published January 24, 2025