The Signal
The goal of this project is to highlight both failures and accomplishments of people at Penn that
wouldn’t normally show up on a resume, and to promote the message that we are more than our resume,
our GPA, our internship, or our job. The Signal is currently sharing anti-resumes of Penn alumni
and students in an effort to promote discussion and reflection on what failure really means.
We recognized that Penn could be a stressful and intense place. We created Squirrels Without
Morality as a light-hearted medium for students to laugh at the absurdity of Penn's culture
sometimes. The original deck has ~200 total cards. Our card ideas come from the creativity of our
team and from the Penn community, from comedy groups to procrastination experts. We also conducted
in-depth research from quality sources such as the OUPSCC (Meme) Facebook page and Under the
Button. In its first print/release in Fall 2017, all 250 pre-order decks were sold out, becoming a
hit across Penn’s campus. A reprint of the original deck was released in Fall 2018, and an expansion
pack is expected for Spring 2019. (Note: Squirrels Without Morality is a work of satire. It is not
intended to offend anyone.)
This year, we are working to produce videos inspired by the Jubilee Spectrum series with Penn students as
participants. Students from a specific community will be asked to express their opinions on a spectrum
(from strongly agree to strongly disagree), regarding several stereotypes and beliefs about/within their community.
They will then be prompted to discuss their responses. We aim to uncover the diverse beliefs within an
individualized group, and to break down stereotypes in the process.
Based on the format of the popular YouTube Series with the same name, Hot Ones is a Penn-Centric video project
where upperclassmen share their unique experiences and fascinating stories. Faced with 10 spicy hot sauces from
the original show, and 10 even spicier questions, we aim to take a look at their pure, unfiltered insights into
life at Penn, Pre-Professionalism, and wisdom on how to balance the components of school.
During the spring of 2018, we used student career and internship data provided by Penn
Career Services to create a visualization of the different paths that the Class of 2017 pursued
over their four years at Penn. In the visualization, bands of varying width represent the number
of students that entered a certain field each year. The purpose was to find out what students of
each school did at their jobs and summer internships and whether or not preconceptions about
the "most popular industries" were true. The resulting product showed a surprising amount of
diversity in the paths chosen by students, with the largest bands in each school being "Other,"
indicating that there are many more students that pursue less mainstream paths than expected.
We
shared these results with the Penn community
in the hopes of providing students with more insight and background while they consider future
professional opportunities.
Roundup of projects from the first year since the founding of The Signal.