Developing Your PowerPoint Presentation: Part Two, The Logical Outline

Premise: The University of Pennsylvania offers a world-class online academic experience

Proposition: Joining a club at Penn greatly benefits your experience and opportunities as an online undergraduate

Reason 1: Joining a club provides communal connection and creative opportunities beyond the classroom
Evidence: My personal experience writing and designing for The Penn Moviegoer allowed me to connect with a diverse range of other writers and film enthusiasts across the student body, create a large body of written work which supplements and has augmented my academic writing, and has afforded me the opportunity to become a better writer now with a published series of articles. Leveraging this work and its relationships has helped me to become a more effective writer, allowed me to become published beyond Penn, and helped me get clearer about what I want, and what happens after graduation.

Reason 2: Joining a club allows returning students to give back, and creates access to a more diverse group of experiences
Evidence: Many virtual students are returning students. They are often deep into their careers, are parents, have traveled, and have fascinating life stories. These online students know the road, but many physical undergraduates are less traveled. Joining a club affords on-campus students the enormous benefits of virtual students’ life experiences. I have spoken at several physical and virtual events at Penn, answering questions about how to apply more effectively for jobs, how to get an internship, how to build a body of work which might be attractive to an employer, what to write on LinkedIn, and much more. These are all questions of adulting I wish I had asked thirty years ago when I was first an undergraduate student. If clubs have benefits for joiners, then joining also affords returning students the opportunity to use their life experience to give back.

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