My (Newly Discovered) Career Values

Hello everyone! I recently took a career values test. The objectives, as outlined by the website, are: “To define factors affecting your career satisfaction; to determine the intensity of your feeling about these factors; to determine areas of value conflict and congruence; and to apply learnings from the Values Card Sort to your career decision.”

Here I’ve listed my top values, which fell under “Always Valued”, and the way the test defined each of them. Of course, these values may shift as I get out into the real world and get to test out different job situations, but for now I think they will be helpful to consider as I research and begin applying for different jobs.

1. Works with others: “Have close working relations with a group and work as a team to common goals”

2. Moral fulfillment: “Feel that my work is contributing to ideals I feel are very important”

3. Friendships: “Develop close personal relationships with people as a result of work activity”

4. Influence people: “Be in a position to change attitudes or opinions of others”

5. Honesty and integrity: “Work in a setting where honesty and integrity are assests”

6. Location: “Find a place to live (town or geographic area) conducive to my lifestyle, a desirable home base for my leisure, learning, and work life”

More and more I think San Francisco would be a great location to have a job and be living right out of college. Then again, so would London, Beirut, and quite a few other places…  (thanks to ams-net.org)

7. Diversity: “Work in a setting that includes individuals of diverse religious, racial or social backgrounds”

8. Knowledge: “Engage myself in pursuit of knowledge, truth and understanding”

9. Creative expression: “Be able to express in writing and in person my ideas concerning job and how I might improve it; have opportunities for experimentation and innovation”

10. Help Society: “Do something to contribute to the betterment of the world”

11. Public contact: “Have a lot of day-to-day contact with people”

12. Job tranquility: “Avoid pressures and “the rat race” in job role and work setting”

13. Change and variety: “Have work responsibilities frequently changed in content and setting”

I found my results really spot on, and encourage you to take the career values test yourself as you continue to reframe the way you’re thinking about careers and your career path. If you feel comfortable, I’d love to hear which values came out as most important for you in the comments below.

(thanks to legacyproject.human.cornell.edu)

Have a great week all!

What is this thesis thing?

My lovely friend Sanskriti proudly posing with her finished and bound thesis.

As fall semester draws to a close, seniors writing a fall thesis finish their last edits, get their 30-, 60- or 90-pagers bound, and post photos with their finished work on Facebook  while everyone writing a spring or two semester thesis looks on enviously. All of this has me thinking about what thesis is and why it’s important for us as undergraduates. Plenty of schools don’t require seniors to write theses—in fact, many of my friends at Pomona don’t have to write them simply because there are too many students in their major for the professors to read all their theses.

The crew at CMC’s Fountain Party for fall semester. Congratulations!

Last week was CMC’s Fountain Party, held both fall and spring semester on the day all CMC thesis-writers submit them to their readers. On the way to my 1:15 class, I stopped by the fountains outside the Hub to say hi to lucky CMC friends. They were seriously celebrating with extremely loud music, bathing suits, water guns, and the like. Someone tried to dump a trash can filled with water on my head and I had to run away, but it was incredibly heartwarming to see people celebrating such a huge accomplishment. Of course, it also reminded me that I’m not even close to finishing my mine.

Since looking at Scripps as a prospective student I’ve been aware that I’d be writing a thesis as a senior. It’s built up each year as senior friends go through the grueling process and we see them zombie-ing around campus after days of no sleep. I remember particularly last year, when looking in at different rooms in Browning and Dorsey in preparation for room draw, seniors excusing the state of utter chaos in their rooms with a single word: “Sorry– thesis”. But it must mean different things for different people. I know plenty of people who see it as simply a hurdle that must be jumped through to graduate. For others, it’s a chance to explore more fully a subject that truly intrigues them.

I’m hoping Columbia will be impressed with my thesis!

So what does thesis mean for me? As I think more seriously about applying to graduate school, I view thesis as something that could be very beneficial in applying and actually getting in. Especially as my thesis heavily incorporates ethnographic research I conducted myself while in Beirut this summer, I feel (and have been reassured by a number of my professors) that it will be an asset when applying because it will demonstrate my skills with and dedication to Anthropology in the Middle East around the topic of religion, something I’d like to pursue in graduate school. For this reason, and because I find my thesis topic endlessly fascinating, I am planning on trying for Honors in Middle Eastern Studies. I feel lucky to have the opportunity that is this thesis thing. Thanks, Scripps!

Some Memes to Lighten the Mood

Hello all! This week instead of getting into anything too heavy, I thought I’d get creative and make a memes for your enjoyment. Those of you who are Middle Eastern Studies majors, who applied to fellowships, or who are in a similar point in their career search will understand especially well. I’ll let the crying lady, successful kid, and grumpy cat do the talking.

Edward Said, who’s monumental work identifying and unpacking the concept of Orientalism, hugely important to Middle Eastern Studies among other disciplines, comes up again and again in essentially every class I take. You can’t get away from Said, and by sophomore year it had become a joke between my Middle Eastern Studies friends.

Anyone who used the Fulbright Embark Online Application has to understand grumpy cat’s frustration.

And anyone who’s ever had a resume understands how darn time consuming it is to get them formatted perfectly.

That’s all for now folks. I hope my memes made you smile! I’d love to see any of your memes related to the job/internship hunt or anything else. If you’ve never made one before, try it–it takes all of 30 seconds. Have a great week.

4 Tips from an Interviewer (Me!)

In past posts, I’ve talked about different aspects of the interview process (including some outfit suggestions over on Poonam’s blog). However, I realized I’ve only briefly touched upon my experience with interviews from the other side of the table, so to speak. I work in Scripps Admissions about nine hours a week interviewing prospective students for the class of 2017. While the standards I hold high school seniors to are (probably) not the standards we are all likely to be held to in the slew of interviews we’ll be having this year and post-graduation, there are still some general thoughts and tips I’ve collected that I think are applicable to any interview. As we all know, there is no one type of Scripps student, and the prospies who really leave a lasting impression on me are all very different, but tend to share a number of qualities.  They are…

1. Knowledge of subject: Sometimes, I’ll talk with someone who is interviewing on a whim, meaning usually that they were at one of the other 4CS, saw Scripps and fell in love with the campus, and happened to snag a walk-in interview. But generally, people who are interviewing have visited before, have gone on a tour, or read all about Scripps in Fiske’s guide, so I expect them to have some knowledge of Scripps and be able to discuss why Scripps appeals to them. The same applies for any sort of interview—whether for an internship, job, or grad school, you should be able to tell your interviewer why you contacted his or her organization specifically. Identify some key aspects of the organization they’ve made clear they are proud of (easily found on their website) and bring those up in your interview. When students mention interest in the CORE program and in interdisciplinary learning, I know they’ve done their research.

Luckily for prospies, the beauty of our campus is something we’re really proud of, and it’s not too hard to research! (credit education-portal.com)

2. Preparedness: Knowledge of subject is part of this, but preparedness means more than just knowing about where you’re applying. Preparedness also means thinking about what questions you might be asked and preparing answers. This is not to say that pausing a few seconds after you’ve been asked a question to gather your thoughts is a bad idea, but that having an idea how you might answer some basic questions will help you stay articulate, clear, and not repeat yourself or talk in circles. Be prepared, stay calm. We are extremely lucky to have CP&R around to prep us with mock interviews for just this reason. Take advantage of the fabulous staff!

3. An ability to string everything together: This is something that I think we really learn to develop in college, but whenever I interview a high schooler who has already begun to weave a narrative for herself I am impressed. Being able to link your education, extracurricular interests, and hopes for the future looks good to an interviewer. A prospective student I interviewed recently did this well: she would begin discussing an high school activity that she’d been interested in since she was very little, and in the middle of her passionate explanation it would naturally come out that that she was captain of the team, or club. This happened throughout the interview, and it proved to me that not only that she filled many leadership roles but also that she had come into them organically because of her passion for what she was involved in. Be able to present a whole picture of yourself. Thread the things you talk about together so as to not come across as having become involved in things simply to pad your resume, but because you are really passionate about them.

4. Confidence: The previous three play into this, but generally exuding an aura of confidence in yourself can never be a bad thing. If a prospie obviously believes in herself, I will too. If you can communicate that you possess capabilities above and beyond what are required for the job, internship, or graduate program you are interviewing for, that confidence might just be what sticks in your interviewer’s mind.

(credit snellingnj.com)

Many of you have probably already had enough interviews that you also have some tips you’d like to share! What are some of those things you wished you’d said or done in an interview and now always make sure to remember? Have a great week all!

 

Looking Forward to New Homes

Editors note: this post was written before Hurricane Sandy struck. Our thoughts are with our alumnae, Scripps families and the millions of people who are affected by the storm this week.

Lately, whenever I visit somewhere I’ve never been before or haven’t been in a while, I view it with a very certain eye. Once I finish up with my fellowship work, I’m going to get down to business applying to jobs all over the states and in a variety of international cities. So when I spend 5 days in New York City, like I just did for fall break, I’m seeing things and exploring different neighborhoods knowing that I might be drawing on my experience in a year when I’m deciding where to live for my job in New York. I find this incredibly exciting!

Certainly no views like this in Claremont, eh?

I had an absolutely great time in New York with my boyfriend, his family, and number of other friends from CMC. We got to explore much of Manhattan, the West Village, and Brooklyn, where a friend and Scrippsie alum had just moved into a new apartment. It was rejuvenating to be in a city, lights on, lively at all hours, with an infinite number of events and activities every day. It was certainly a sharp contrast to Claremont life and made me miss London, where I studied last fall, dearly. There is so much life within a city and I found myself really looking forward to getting to move to one next year—mastering the public transportation system, picking favorite coffee shops to read in, and starting to regularly check the TimeOut page for different fun cultural things. This weekend I saw posts for a dog Halloween costume parade and a 100-woman drum concert on the subway, among many others.

The crew at a Giants v Redskins game, my first experience with professional football!

Spending time in a big city also helps me clarify what I need to be happy with a living situation. I lived in two places during my time in London: one in a sweet neighborhood and less than a block away from a large lovely park with lots of trees and nature and one in central London across the street from King’s Cross Station, all cement and buses and traffic. I now know that I would be happier living in a more residential area rather than smack in the middle of downtown (luckily I probably wouldn’t be able to afford the latter anyway), and need to have some sort of green place to walk and stretch and small clean air nearby. This is also necessary for me to make a big dream of mine, having a dog, a reality. Of course, wherever I live needs to be close enough to the subway and to buses to make the downtown and other areas easily accessible.

Who wouldn’t want to live across the street from the NY Public Library? It’s such a beautiful building!

What about you, fellow senior Scrippsies? Where do you fantasize getting a job after graduation? Are you thinking of a big city or do you want to live somewhere a little less hectic, loud, and bright? Would you live abroad or are you planning on staying in the States? Have a great week!