Category Archives: Mia

Summer Transitions

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As I’m writing this, I’m facing my last week at my internship. The summer feels like it’s gone by in a blip. I’m doing a lot of wrap up—documenting the processes I’ve used so they can be continued, teaching a new analyst how to use a tool, creating slide decks for my two final presentations. The transition will be pretty abrupt for me. This Friday at 5 or so, I’ll leave work. Sunday morning I’ll drive down to southern California to visit with relatives, and then I’ll move back into Scripps on Tuesday for RA training. These last few weeks have been super busy, since I’ve been trying to cram in seeing all my friends and family around my normal work schedule. (I’ve had to sacrifice my daily workout, but hopefully Tiernan will be open when I get back).

I had a great, lengthy conversation with my manager yesterday about life choices and grad school and career options. She’s been tremendously supportive and appreciative of my work, and I was happy that she validated some of the unusual choices I’ve been making.

1.       Taking lots of math and economics, even though I’m all humanities on the inside: My manager got her MBA (while getting an MSW) for the same reasons — people who have quantitative or technical knowledge have power. I don’t want to let anyone mansplain why a policy I support isn’t economically feasible without the tools for refutation.

2.       Not returning next summer to my current internship, even though it’s well paid and at an organization I eventually want to work for: My manager (and my mentor, and my mom) stressed that internships are about exploration, and while they’d welcome me back, they understand that I want to figure out where I fit best.

3.       My semi-secret, maybe-probably-won’t-do it-but-maybe-I’ll-try-anyway dream of becoming an economist: My manager actually just assumed that path might be on my radar, since I’m interested in being a research assistant after graduation. It feels too big for me, and there certainly is a chance that I won’t make it all the way. I’m no math genius, and economic research is heavily math-based. Six years in a PhD program is a long time, and might conflict with babies and other life things. But there’s no danger in trying. It’s not as if I’ll be unqualified for any other jobs because I’ve taken too much math and econ. I can still go into policy, tech, teaching, or anything else, because of the magic powers of liberal arts education. At the moment, being an economist seems pretty appealing, because your work can involve theoretical research, policy focused research, and teaching. We’ll see if I survive multi-variable calculus!

I’m excited to switch gears next week for RA training. I’ve missed Scripps: the sunshine, the people, the beauty. I’m hoping that as much as I’ve stretched my analytical thinking at my internship, I’ll stretch my interpersonal intelligence in the next few weeks.

Women in Technology and Leadership

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When I told people where I would be working this summer, I got several warnings that my organization–big, old, traditional–would be an old boy’s club. It has nothing in common with a hip young company where you might expect to see innovative feminist practices sprout up. But what it does have are tons of women working in technical roles: as developers, architects, data modelers, and QA testers. Also, there’s a surprising amount of women represented in leadership roles within the IT department–program managers, directors, vice presidents (one of which is a Scripps alum!), group and senior vice presidents. It wasn’t just my team, in the more frequently lady-inclusive world of project management, where my manager and almost every member were women. There were smart ladies everywhere!

I’ve taken two key points from this unexpected environment.

1) The extremely varied but effective leadership styles of the women I saw in leadership are a toolbox I can use to develop my own.

2) Big organizations, as unhip as they are, can be more supportive and inclusive of women and marginalized populations than startups, because they are so deliberate.

Leadership styles: 

When I first started work, trailing behind my manager to many, many meetings, I was blown away by the authority and directness of the women leaders I saw. These women are fierce to question vagueness, to correct information, to redirect discussion, and to stake their claim. These are qualities I’m sure their male peers shared, but I was fascinated by the women. Part of this is just my subconscious, culturally constructed created view of femininity. But my appreciation was also based on my lived experience as a frustrated loudmouth in a sea of girls who seemed more polite, more attractive, but also so quiet! I don’t know whether it was debate, my hippie church, my feminist mama, or some genetic factor that made me stand out in middle school and high school as that girl in class. I was (and basically still am) a know it all, a chatterbox, a teacher’s pet, bossy, annoying, blunt….the list goes on. But in these meetings, unlike in class, it was considered helpful, appropriate, and impressive for everyone to speak decisively and directly on the subjects they owned.

Obviously, in most of these meetings, I wasn’t the subject matter expert, so I didn’t speak up. But when I do know something, and no one else shares it, I chime in. This didn’t happen from nowhere; I was imitating the behavior I saw from effective female leaders.

The universal factor I saw was authority, as I’ve mentioned before. But apart from that, I saw different women use a variety of styles and tactics to lead.

Empathy: This is an old stereotypical lady strength, but I’ve seen women who embody this value without losing their toughness. For example, our chief product owner frequently backs up her points by referencing the impact it would have on her reports, the product owners. Managers and officials who make a point to understand and be appreciative of their team’s effort are well-liked and well-respected.

Fear, Accomplishment, and Major Decisions?

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I’ve spent the last few weeks obsessing about a project. It was very detailed and involved organizing a lot of very technical information. I’m bad at details, I was scared of making mistakes interpreting the technical details, and generally spent a lot of time freaking out in front of my spreadsheets. (Not to mention complaining to my sister, mother, significant other, bestie from high school, Scripps friends, etc…)

But the last few days I’ve been in a meeting at which the fruits of my labor, cards visualizing the development scheduling of different applications’ pieces of interfaces, are displayed all over the wall. My cards are driving the discussion, and as intended, getting moved around and edited. I’ll be updating the spreadsheet to keep track of key changes. Despite my fears of being known as the intern who messed up the big meeting, I’ve been getting a lot of great acknowledgement from my team and the larger project for my work.

This has become a bit of a pattern for me, both in my blog posts (sorry for the repetition!) and in my personal life. I think that I am not up to a challenge, but I am. I imagine every permutation of failure, work really hard, and then…don’t fail. This feels good. It might not be the most efficient or reasonable way to get work done (I wish I could skip the self-doubt part) but it does work for me. And this process, silly as it may sound, is actually an improvement personally from a time where I would get stuck in my worries and never overcome my fears.

I think I’ve gotten better at getting through my crisis worry mode because of practice. Successfully taking math, a subject that reduced me to tears in high school, has acclimated me to tackling the unfamiliar and challenging. I know how to work through the scary stuff, even though it still scares me. The way through is just lots of work, lots of time, and lots of questions. It sounds obvious, but it can be terrifying to do all of those things when the possibility of failure, and all that effort wasted, looms.

I’m a firm believer that practice makes perfecter (clearly I haven’t quite achieved perfection in grammar). Thinking about this habit in my work life and my academic life has helped me solidify my plan to major in Mathematical Economics. Economics fascinates me, and math both interests me and scares me out of my wits. But I want to keep on practicing working through that fear, because out in the working world, I’m going to encounter problems that seem unsolvable. I want the toolkit to face those problems down.

Perception and Professionalism

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This post was prompted by a discussion with my mentor, who was also on the panel for my phone interview. She was describing why they chose me, and made a comment that unnerved me a bit. She said that at first it seemed strange to do just a phone interview, but she saw now that in some ways it was more fair.

I wasn’t sure what she meant–was she referencing my height, my disability… or even my nose piercing? I knew the sentiment underneath was positive–that they loved my phone interview, and that my supervisor was very happy with my performance–but I was scared, and even slightly shocked by the implication that I would not have gotten the job with an in person interview.

I don't wear this dress to work. But the rest of me, professional or not, is pretty inescapable.

I don’t wear this dress to work. But the rest of me, professional or not, is pretty inescapable.

 

It never seriously occurred to me that my persona–tiny, quirky, and as I tend to say, vaguely disabled, could be dragging me down. I think of myself as professional: I try to be tactful, appropriate, and focused at work. I don’t show lots of skin, debate politics, or talk about wherever I danced or slept the night before.

At the same time, I want to be me, not bland corporate worker #237. I do have a nose stud, I dye my hair, I’m politically active, and I was raised with an ethos that many would describe as hippie-dippie. Of course, I know it’s not professional or appropriate to bring all of my experiences and identities to every situation. I try to walk that line as best I can. I don’t want to sabotage my reputation professionally or academically, but I’m also critical of the homogeneity of “professionalism”. A lot of advice to young people about being professional really seems to be telling us to hide who we are if we fall at all outside the norm.

Right now, the way I’m handling this is to be politely myself. I wear appropriate clothing, but my business casual is perhaps slightly on the earthy side (I have a lot of scarves.) I’ve tried to wear more makeup and sheath dresses, but I feel uncomfortable and less confident when I don’t look like myself. And ultimately, my professional strength depends on my confidence. It doesn’t matter how great my ideas are if no one hears them. And to my surprise, despite all of the ways I don’t resemble a generic young professional, people listen to me at work because I know what I’m talking about. They see that I work hard, that I ask questions, and that I speak with clarity and confidence.

I’m getting to know myself pretty well–my weaknesses (real and perceived by society) and my strengths. I can compensate for my weaknesses and capitalize on my strengths. That doesn’t stop me from freaking out occasionally, but it helps.

All Organizations Are the Same

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I’ve had wild flashes of deja vu during meetings at my internship this summer. The intense discussion of detail, the intricate dance of stepping up and back, the subtle alliances revealed in body language and tone…they all bring me back to an experience that should be worlds away from my formal internship at a big serious organization. When I was in high school, I was deeply involved in my religious organization’s regional youth group. The denomination itself was wildly liberal, and the youth organization was created to be empowered, intentional, and essentially self-governing. I held a succession of leadership roles starting at age 14 or so, first at events, and eventually on our governing body. These roles haven’t been on my resume in years, but they have so much to do with how I approach the professional world. It turns out the same dynamics exist in discussions with managers and executives about software development, and between 10 teenagers deciding how many gender-neutral bathrooms to have at overnight events. Effective participants make arguments based on principle balanced with logistical practicality. They reference and agree with people with similar arguments to build coalitions. Effective facilitators make the objective, agenda, and rules of a discussion clear. They try to draw every stakeholder into the conversation, focus on decisions and action without cutting off needed discussion, and keep the meeting running efficiently. I’ve had several more formal experiences of public speaking, argument, discussion, and facilitation–in debate, as a youth commissioner in local government, and in class presentations–but the basis of all my instincts for meetings come from the extremely casual district church youth council. Sometimes I get nervous about formal business etiquette, but I’m never afraid to speak up when I have a legitimate opinion based on my knowledge and the organization’s values. That’s a gift I owe to a bunch of teenagers with firm beliefs and ripped jeans.

Organizing discussion groups. We used markers; some businesses would use powerpoint.

Organizing discussion groups at a youth conference. We used markers; some businesses would use powerpoint.

It’s not just meetings, either. All of the organizations I’ve been involved in–from church groups to small museums to government advisory bodies to large organizations–are ultimately made up of teams of individuals. People are people, regardless of business culture or whether you’re talking about decisions that affect youth overnights or huge software projects. When I talk to people about their career path, I often hear of unexpected changes across role and industry. The reason they can pull off these changes is that organizations and problem-solving are very similar wherever you go, even when the problems themselves are very different. It’s a fun feeling, to be reminded of my 15 year old self when in a meeting or just talking about a problem with adult professionals. It’s also reassuring for someone as career-indecisive as me.  I’m grateful that what I have learned and will learn in the future about human dynamics, problem-solving, organizational change, management, and really great meetings will apply wherever I end up.