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2018 Alumna Pearl Audon reflects on her experience at the Carter Center Executive Briefing

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Before graduating, I had the amazing opportunity to meet former US President Jimmy Carter and attend the 2018 Carter Center Executive Briefing Conference, thanks to the generosity of another Scripps alumna Ms. Barbara Bruner. Founded by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 1982, the Carter Center is a nongovernmental organization dedicated to alleviating human suffering through peace, public health, and human rights efforts to more than 80 countries. Each year, one Scripps student is selected to attend the conference to observe the inner-workings of the Carter Center, with a purpose of developing professional presence and meaningful connections. The Bruner Carter Center scholarship covers all fees including transportation, accommodations, meals, conference fees, excursions in Atlanta, and a two-day trip to Plains. Here, I reflect on a few snippets of my scholarship experience.

The Carter Center Conference began with an evening conversation, “Liberia Looks to the Future”. Experts summarized the Carter Center’s involvement in Liberia’s recent election and its training of a new class of psychologists. I was amazed by the eloquence and political expertise of the speakers as well as the attendees who chimed in during the conversation. It became apparent that most of the conference goers have established careers in government and health. Frankly, it was intimidating. However, I could not miss my chance to ring in on the talk, so I queried about the recent mental health program implemented in Liberia. For my question, I prefaced about my hometown, a community filled with Vietnamese war refugees, and how there was a gap between mental health clinicians/resources and those who needed them. Although it was just one question, this led to follow-up discussions with the attendees throughout the rest of the conference.  Most of the people around me were accomplished in their field, but it became less daunting once I put myself there, remained curious, and began to tell my story.

After two sessions discussing diplomacy in the Middle East and eradication of tropical diseases in Sudan, it came time to welcome Mr. President Carter for his talk. When he appeared at the door, I felt my heart palpitate that very instant; absolutely overwhelmed that I could be in the same vicinity with one of the most influential people in the United States. With President Carter now in the room, what did we talk about? In particular, many were wondering about his views on North Korea; hoping he can impart some wisdom. We think about the long-anticipated meeting between current North Korea and US leadership, but Jimmy Carter was actually the first former US President to visit North Korea back in 1994. The talk continued on with some back and forth questions from the audience about the food-shortages and nuclear testing in North Korea. Though the conversation revealed few plausible solutions, having President Carter’s talk be an open discussion on pertinent international relations was a rare opportunity for an undergraduate to participate in.

Trip to Plains, Georgia

Three hours south of Atlanta  you’ll find Jimmy Carter’s boyhood town of Plains, Georgia. Mr. Carter energetically welcomed us to his high school, childhood ranch, and church. We then enjoyed the city’s offerings of peach cobbler, car show, square dancing, historical monuments, and free peanut treats. Of all the activities in the town, I would highly recommend attending President Carter’s Sunday school at the Maranatha Church. It was a widely anticipated service with us waking up at 5:00 a.m. and standing in pouring rain to get checked by the Secret Service, but it was worth the wait to hear about the city’s faith.

Four days with the Carter Center proved to be an indelible and transformative experience. Not only did I meet incredible people along the way, I also had the chance to speak up about topics that were foreign to me. Above all, I am grateful for an experience I was not expecting: following President Carter’s trajectory from his upbringing in a humble town to his Presidency and, now, to his lifetime commitment to peace with the Carter Center. It gives me hope that even in positions of power, and as I proceed in my own life ventures, one can still continue to promote peace and the improvement of lives in one’s community and around the world. For this, I cannot thank Barbara Bruner enough for having me as her guest this year.

How can strengthen your application?

  • Before applying for the Carter Center Executive Briefing, familiarize yourself with CP&R and their many resources and events.

CP&R is an incredible resource available to help you with any aspect of your career development. One of their events, Coffee Chat with Barbara Bruner, is held at the beginning of spring semester and was very useful in learning about the Carter Center’s mission and how to fortify your application. Seeing that I needed to highlight various experiences in my repertoire to be a strong candidate, I studied abroad in Spain and participated in a public health observership in México. My summers were dedicated to enhancing diabetes programs, conducting my senior thesis, and partaking in many presentations. For these summer/full-year opportunities, CP&R assisted me through internship grant sessions, job search fairs, and resume editing events and ultimately, this helped me submit a strong application for the Carter Center Executive Briefing.

Getting to travel and visit companies (sponsored by CP&R!) with the staff pushes you to grow and represent yourself well in a professional setting. At every career event thereon, I look back at the invaluable skills of succinct questioning and self-advocacy I garnered from the San Diego Health, Research, and Networking Trek in Fall 2017.

  • Be informed and well prepared for the interview.

Whether you are attending the conference to focus on human rights, peace issues, or public health, it is important to show the selection committee that you are inquisitive, informed, and taking the interview seriously. To accomplish this, you must be prepared and dress professionally. I would recommend perusing the programs of the Carter Center. The Carter Center also offers internship programs year round which you can refer to in your interview, if applicable. Do your homework and demonstrate your interest!

All of the prior research and preparation help tremendously, but remember to never give up, have faith, and be your best advocate. Feel free to contact me about the scholarship, application, and/or interview process at [email protected].

Good luck!

Using Preparation, Practice, and Patience to Ace an Interview

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Have you ever been asked in an interview, Why would you make a good fit for this position? This question has multiple layers: The interviewer is asking you to not only describe your qualifications, but also to show how these qualities fulfill the position’s descriptions. Do you find this question difficult to answer, especially under a time limit?

I’ve struggled to answer this question concisely and efficiently. There’s a lot to unpack: Not only do you need to highlight your strengths and qualifications; you also have to show why your skills are crucial for the position and the company. To help approach this question, I recently compiled some (hopefully) helpful tips to respond (and be composed!) throughout the interview:

1. Do a little research. By finding specific information about the position and the company’s objectives, you can better understand what they most desire in their employees. The world-wide-web (specifically, sites like Glassdoor) are really helpful to gain access to potential interview questions, so you can be prepared in advance. The more you research, the less these questions will feel like curve balls!

2. Practice, practice, practice. Once you’ve uncovered these questions, prepare your responses! You can develop an outline by constructing thoughtful answers. Once you’ve created a template, rehearse to make the flow of your responses precise and natural!

3. Don’t underestimate your body language and posture! Interviewers can pick up a lot from how you carry yourself. Even the smallest things, like smiling, making eye contact, and having good posture, can make a huge difference! You can do a lot simply by exuding confidence in your physical stance, communicating clearly, and bringing a good energy to the interview.

4. Be patient with yourself. You’ve done everything in your power to prepare for your interview, and you’re feeling good about the interview thus far. Hypothetically, what do you do when a question arises that you’re not prepared to answer? When you’re put on the spot in an interview, don’t panic. You don’t need to respond immediately; sometimes, it’s better to take that extra moment to gather your thoughts than ramble just to fill the silence. And remember: you’re just having a conversation with someone who went through the same process!

At the end of the day, an interview is an opportunity to meet and connect with someone who shares your passions! So keep calm, have a genuine conversation, and don’t be afraid to show them what you’re made of! If you believe in yourself and your abilities, the interviewer will believe in you too.

My Worst and Best Internship Experiences

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(Part 1: The Obligatory Bad College Internship Experience)

Like most other college students, I have had the obligatory Bad Internship Experience. It was my first internship ever, working at an education nonprofit. Fresh out of my first year at Scripps, I had high hopes for the summer, and was woefully disappointed. However, finding out what didn’t work for me in a workplace was invaluable, and even helped led me to my current path in science, research, and writing.

Before going into the internship itself, let me tell you a little bit about what led me to this experience. When I first applied, it was early in the spring semester of my first year and I was panicking. Until that year, I didn’t even know what an internship was or why you’d get one. And now I was expected to find one all by myself? Coming from rural public school (well-regarded in my area, but still no prep school) I was a little shell-shocked by the level of career ambition I saw in my peers. But I’m competitive, and I wanted to prove that I too could be ambitious and have a prestigious internship. With no idea what I was interested in, where to start looking for internships, and believing myself not qualified enough anyways, I sent out applications to education nonprofits and summer camps because I already knew those existed and how to apply. Now, education is an awesome path– the problem was that I didn’t have much interest in education at all.

This blog post is about what I gained from my Bad Internship Experience- not about what made my internship so difficult. However, for context, I’ll mention a few of the things that were hardest for me.

There were the cliques, and the bad-mouthing that happened constantly among the two-dozen or so interns. Then there was the lack of organization, training or guidance provided to us before we were thrown in front of classes full of middle schoolers. Finally, there was the working late into the night, constantly picking up extra jobs, while I watched my coworkers get together and have fun. I was sleep deprived and lonely living for the first time by myself in a big city.

But there. That’s it for my complaining. I won’t to go anymore into what about this internship was so hard for me, because I am grateful for what it taught me.

It taught me the perhaps obvious life lesson that jumping into something out of sheer competitiveness isn’t always the best plan of action.

It taught me that, in retrospect, admitting that I didn’t know much about my internship options and asking for help from a faculty member at Scripps would have been perfectly fine (I’ve tried to do this ever since then).

It taught me that while lots of my peers are passionate about education, it’s not for me (hey, after all, I might have had the best summer of my life, and ended up pursuing education as a career).

It taught me that I find working in teams to be a challenge.

It taught me that living alone is hard, and that family and friends are invaluable.

Then there were the things that I liked about my worst summer internship, and what they taught me. For example, I treasured the one-on-one relationships I built with a few of my students who would stay and talk to me about science and life after class, and the biweekly restorative justice circle I led and the sense of peace and connection it brought me. These experiences taught me how powerful individual relationships can be when things are hard.

The following year at Scripps, as I began to explore my internship options for my second summer as a college student, I took all these ideas into account. And as a result, my second summer was the best of my college years…

(To be continued in my next blog)

Why I Don’t Consider Myself Smart

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It wasn’t until I was studying for my second exam during my first year at Scripps that I realized I was smart. Even though I had straight A’s all through high school while taking the hardest classes offered and being involved in many extra curricular activities, I never really considered myself smart. There were always people who did better than me on tests and I felt as though I always had to work harder than my peers to achieve the same level of understanding of the material. That was often frustrating and I equated it with the fact that they were smarter than me because they didn’t have to work as hard to understand something.

What I have learned in college is that everyone has to work hard to achieve their academic goals, straight A’s are no longer a priority, and how someone else is doing in a class is completely irrelevant to your academic standing.

I now understand that being smart goes beyond just understanding something easily. Being smart is something that you have to work at, something that manifests itself differently in each and every student. For me, being smart means that I understand how I learn, and know that I will always figure out a way to understand the material by setting goals for myself and making a map to figure out how I can best reach them. Being smart isn’t something that you can ever really obtain. It’s something that you continually work towards, because it means that you are always working to better yourself. Being smart means that you can look at an unsatisfactory situation, assess it, and decide how you will proceed. It is with this mindset that I have learned to grow from experiences where I got a 62.5% on an exam and learned from my mistakes so that I could do better the next chance I got. In addition, I have been able to establish my strengths and weaknesses as a student. I know that I am more successful when I can speak with my professor about issues I am having or that I need to read my textbook for chemistry in order to solidify the topics we are learning about. Although I don’t often think of it this way, all these things make me smart. They show that I am willing to place blame on myself, but also be willing to acknowledge that I was correct in some areas and move forward with these ideas in place.

I think that I need to work on giving myself more credit. Oftentimes, I am likely to be too hard on myself, scolding myself for making a silly mistake or for getting a grade that I am not happy with. The truth is, this happens to everyone and the fact that I can realize that too also makes me pretty smart.

Sometimes, I still question my abilities when a professor calls our class smart, intelligent, creative, or any other adjectives related to our intellectual abilities, but what I am trying to do more and more is to embrace those compliments and give myself credit for the smarts I do possess, and even though my specific tools might seem different from others’, and I don’t have Unagi like Ross, I am reminding myself that they are still valid and make me smart in my own way.

        

To Grad or Not to Grad?

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As a person who loves school, and excels in school, I’ve always considered the option of attending grad school after completing undergrad. As sophomore year rolled around, I began considering this more seriously, and looked into several graduate programs I was interested in, ranging from art management and art business schools, to a variety of law schools. The idea of grad school sounded great: gaining the skills I needed to get out in the real world and be prepared, while pushing off the scary idea of getting a job for a few more years.

Using the resources on campus, such as Claremont Connect and CP&R events, I was able to find and attend several informational sessions on different law schools, and art management schools. At these panels, I networked with representatives and alumni of each school. I reached out to several of the contacts I had made at the panels, and conducted informational interviews in order to learn more about their individual experiences. Many of the people had gone directly to grad school after graduation, and they were all very happy with that decision. Each person raved about their experience and made it clear that the programs allowed them to build the necessary skills and connections to land a great job right after they graduated. Others had worked for a few years and returned in order to build specific necessary skills for that sector of the art world, for example.

Coming out of this, the idea of graduate school sounded all-around perfect. I became infatuated with the idea of attending grad school directly after college. I toured several schools, sat in on classes, and I even spoke with the President of a Grad School with an Art Management program, where I had a “mock interview” where he basically told me I had a spot in a recently created program that I could begin my senior year. Did I get ahead of myself? Totally.

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Heather knows all.

I realized afterwards when discussing all of this with my mom and several teachers that I wasn’t considering all of my options, and was rushing into this idea I had created in my mind. First off, was I sure that this program was exactly right for me? There exist several world-renowned programs at leading institutions such as NYU and Columbia that I hadn’t even looked into. Also, was I even sure I wanted to work in the arts business world? I had no experience and nothing to base this career goal off of. Most trusted adults I spoke with all gave me similar advice: I should take my time out of college to see what career works best for me, especially considering my indecision with choosing a major and my uncertain future career goals. This advice was further reinforced when I went home for fall break my sophomore year, when I spoke with my high school college counselor, whose opinion I greatly trust, to ask her about my dilemma. She told me an anecdote about a past student of hers, who went straight from under grad, to grad school, to then complete a PhD. After completing his PhD, he tried to get a job, and couldn’t get one. Surprised? I was. unknown-2She told me that this was because he was, “overeducated” and had no real-world professional experience. As a PhD graduate and with a Masters, he was expecting higher pay than an entry-level job, but without having any real, applicable skills. Thus, when comparing the candidates, he would inevitably always fall short, even though he had a masters and PhD, compared to the applicant with four years of job experience. In the end, there was no real competition.

Needless to say, my counselor’s advice struck a chord in me. I had been in a total state of conflict and not to mention confusion. It was almost a year ago that I had the mock interview with the school, and looking back at that and the mixed advice given to me, I can recognize that grad school may be in the works for me, but most likely at a later time. As a person who loves to learn about a variety of subjects, but is also confused and uncertain about her exact career path, diving into a specific graduate program may not be the best idea. Taking the time to explore different career paths and isolating which I am most passionate about, then thinking about applying to a specific program to advance my skills in that one area when I am ready is a much better option.

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