Students were invited to sit down with peers and graduate students to discuss future career plans and goals. Tables were sectioned off by career path with complementary refreshments.

The annual Pre-Professional Mixer in the Skutt Student Center Ballroom gave an opportunity for various Creighton professional school students to answer questions from and give guidance to undergraduate students. More than 80 students attended the event on Nov. 6, which featured catering by Sodexo.   

 Creighton’s School of Medicine, School of Dentistry, School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, School of Law and Department of Physical Therapy were among those represented.  The questions answered ranged from undergraduates asking about what types of programs they should get into, what kind of coursework they should take, application processes and preparing for professional school.  

 Noah Schaefbauer, a College of Arts and Sciences junior on the pre-law track, organized this year’s mixer. As a student senator, he said his goal was to spark meaningful dialogue between graduate students and those hoping to follow in their footsteps.  

 “I want them to ask questions about what grad school is really like,” Schaefbauer said. “You know, whatever program that is. So, they can, one, discern if that is truthfully the right path for them, and then two, just learn more about it. … If that’s something you’re super passionate about, it’s so cool just to hear from somebody who’s there.”  

 Schaefbaur said he hoped to give undergraduate Creighton students an honest perspective of what graduate school looked like; to accomplish that, he wanted attendees to be prepared with gritty questions.   

 “They [need to be] willing to hear and ask about the hard parts of those programs,” Schaefbaur said. “I would love to hear from law students, like, ‘What makes you cry?’”  

 This year’s mixer also included a new feature — a representative from Creighton’s Career Center. Schaefbauer said the addition was meant to encourage students to take advantage of the resources already available to them.  

 “[The] Student Senate as a body has had a lot of requests from students saying, ‘Hey, we would like resume help. We would like help with cover letters,’ [and] career discernment-type stuff,” Schaefbauer said. “So, we’re always like, ‘Hey, the Career Center, it exists.’ A lot of people have the assumption that the Career Center is only for, you know, business students, but it’s not.”   

 As both a student senator and Career Center employee, Schaefbauer said he wanted to use his position to bridge that gap.  

 “But that was something that I put in there just because I work at the Career Center, and I know their resources … That was my little, I guess, twist to this event.”  

 This year marked Schaefbauer’s first time planning the mixer, but he said the planning process was smooth thanks to collaboration across different pre-professional tracks.  

 “What I said when we started organizing this event is like, ‘Hey, if I can get one person for each pre-professional track, I think this will be a smooth organization process,’” Schaefbauer said. “And that’s exactly what happened. Everybody – our pre-PT people, our pre-med people – was able to get students from their respective grad programs. And then I just had to reach out to the law school.”  

 Because of the way the event was put together, it was more dynamic than previous pre-professional events, according to Schaefbaur.  

 “It’s the most successful one because in the past it’s been one professional, two professional organized event[s] per school … there might be some stuff that’s just missing,” he said.  

 Schaefbauer said the feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and he estimated close to 100 total participants throughout the evening. Dental and medical students were especially well represented, he added.  

 But even if some students were unable to attend this catch-all event, Schaefbaur encouraged students to look for more specific events related to the professional path they are on.   

 “Honestly, what people need to do is they just need to look at the SLIC newsletter and see, ‘Hey, this is a pre-law event. I’m a pre-law. I should go to this.’ I think a lot of the time – I know I’ve been afraid to go to these events – but they’re so lax.”  

Schaefbauer said events like these not only provide practical guidance but also help students build confidence and community.  

 “Especially grad students, they’re so excited to talk to undergrad because they were undergrads once too. They were in, I guess, our shoes,” Schaefbauer said. “People just need to not be afraid to go to these events. These are really, really helpful for learning and growing in your passions and your future interests.”