There are less than five weeks until seniors at the university graduate. Whether students choose to continue their education to earn a higher degree, work full-time or take some time to figure their plan out, graduation can be frightening.
University graduates from the spring 2024 and 2025 spoke with the Chimes on what their experience after college has been like.
Heather Smith, who graduated in the spring of 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry, currently works at Hikma Pharmaceuticals in Hilliard, Ohio as a pharmaceutical research and development scientist, but she recently accepted a promotion to be an associate scientist within the same company. Hikma makes generic medicine for name-brand medicines that don’t already have a generic option.
Mike Yuhos graduated in spring 2024 with a Bachelor of Music in music technology and specialized in bass performance. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a career in music. “I’m trying to play gigs, but I’m also trying to record,” Yuhos said. “I’m trying to write music with people. Sometimes that means I’m a hired gun, but other times it means that I am creating music myself and then bringing that to other people … I make and write my own [Electronic Dance Music] … so I earn streams that way.”
When he’s not recording electronic dance music or playing gigs, Yuhos teaches bass guitar lessons at Guitar Center and works at an audio-visual equipment rental store.
Clare Ashcraft, another spring 2024 graduate, earned a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing with a minor in philosophy. She currently lives in Dayton, Ohio, where she works remotely as a project manager and media analyst for AllSides, an organization that reports on how both left and right-leaning news organizations are covering political news.
Ashcraft also publishes pieces monthly on Substack, a self-publishing platform mainly used for non-fiction pieces, such as newsletters and blogs.
All three graduates attended the university for all four years.
“As soon as I got [to the university], I tried to build the type of community I wanted to see, so I was starting student organizations,” Ashcraft said. “I got set up here and dug my heels in a little bit.”
“There was really nothing that made me want to leave,” Smith said. “It felt like a lot of students were unhappy with their experience, which I could get; not all of the amenities were top tier … honestly, I had a really, really great time and enjoyed my experience, and I felt like it could have been a lot worse.”
For Yuhos, the music tech program is the main reason he chose to attend and stay at the university. “It wasn’t offered anywhere else because it’s a specific program that brought together the music performance world and the music technology world without [students] having to double major.”
Smith also found the university’s academic programs to be crucial to getting her to where she is now, specifically her upper level chemistry classes regarding instrumentation. “I find, in my job now and talking to my co-workers that went to school [in] other places, [that] they did not have classes that prepared them in the way that [my classes] prepared me.”
Smith, Yuhos and Ashcraft all had jobs lined up before they graduated. Smith found hers in late April, a few weeks before the graduation ceremony. She said that the university’s Career Development service was vital to helping her get her job, and she feels the service is an “incredible resource” and a “hidden gem” of the university.
Yuhos spent his last semester already in Nashville for an internship for university credit, and that was his way into the city. “It was [a] way to justify being here without knowing anybody, and I made so many contacts through the recording studio that [I] interned at.”
Ashcraft first started at AllSides as an intern after her first year at the university. She then continued working there part time and started full time after graduation.
While it was easy for all three graduates to figure out what they were doing after graduation, current seniors may not have that same experience in finding a job. “I’m hearing from a lot of people graduating right now that they can’t get a job anywhere,” Smith said, “and I know quite a few people I graduated with — they couldn’t [get hired at] a chemistry-related job … It’s easier to get a job whenever you have the experience; it’s just [that] getting the experience is really hard.”
Ashcraft shared similar beliefs about field-related experience. “Work experience or internship experience is really valuable, even if it doesn’t lead to a job, like mine did. I think it’s just valuable to show that you want to work [and] you have a good work ethic.”
While Yuhos has two jobs to sustain himself, his main passion is recording and performing music, and he hopes to do those full time someday. He seems to have no plan to ever stop pursuing his dreams, and he offered the same advice for soon-to-be-graduates.
“Follow what you really want to do; your bachelor’s degree does not define who you are,” he said. “A bachelor’s degree is supposed to make you a well-rounded person. Follow your heart; follow what you want to do. You have the slip of paper. You’ve graduated, and that will put you in the door … that will allow you to enter the room, but then once you’re in the room, you can do what your heart desires and not just what your degree says that you need to do.”
