Category Archives: Amanda

The End of my First Year

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As I’ve been bombarded with papers and finals throughout this week, I keep saying, “This is the most stressful week of my entire life.” It comes partly as a joke, partly as a natural reaction to all the work I have. But when I really think about that statement, I realize it’s just an emotional reaction. There have been plenty weeks throughout my life that I’ve been incredibly stressed; probably even more so than I am now. As I wade through the huge amount of work I have, I can’t help by think of some advice that my mom gave me in high school: “You always get it done.” And I always do; I rarely turn in things late. I feel incredibly grateful to have people who remind me of my own capabilities in my life.

The end of my freshman year has brought on not only feelings of stress, but also feelings of how lucky I am to be that stressed. I feel incredibly lucky to be in classes that challenge me, that have forced me to grow intellectually and emotionally. I have changed more in my first year at Scripps than I did all four years of high school, and I’ve changed so much for the better. Being in an environment where passionate, open-minded people surround me has made me much more confident in myself, and get a better idea of who I want to be as a person.

It wasn’t really until the end of this year that I was able to realize how Scripps has instilled a newfound confidence in me, which has made me so radically different from the person I was in high school. Through both my classes and the people I’ve met, I’ve been able to feel accepted and comfortable enough to grow into the type of person I want to be. I have a more profound sense than ever before that everything is going to be okay, and that I’m going to become a type of person that I’ll like. Without the confidence that Scripps instilled in me, I would have never been able to get the job this summer that I know I’ll love doing. While I still have a long way to go, I know that Scripps has put me on the path towards getting where I want to be.

Dressing the Part

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I recently hosted a Scripps prospie who will be interning for the same organization as me this summer, and what she told me came as a bit of a shock. Not only, she said, is the environment that I’m going to be working in one of the most professional she’s ever been exposed to, but all workers must adhere to a strict dress code. In this case, that means no halter-tops, nothing above the knees, and no leggings. While I had opposed dress codes before in my own public school, they make sense to have as an employee of a school, a position in which I would be expected to dress in a professional way that commanded respect even amongst seven year olds. Still, the fact that I’ll be working in an environment that lacks air conditioning, in summer in New York, poses the dual problem of dealing with the heat in one of the most fashionable cities in the world.

When I interviewed for the job in the dead of winter, I had to shadow a teacher for a brief period of time. I was immediately intimidated by the hip and chic attire the teacher, a young woman, was wearing- I remember she had these really cute black leather boots, and while she wasn’t wearing one of those really big floppy hats, she seemed like the type of person who could pull one off. I, on the other hand, was wearing a dinky old cardigan with a patterned top that my mom had bought me underneath. I call this shirt my interview shirt. I have worn it to every interview because it’s kind of cute and not too revealing, but at the same time, it doesn’t exactly exude power, or the idea that I could be the type of girl to pull off a big floppy hat like that teacher. Looking back on the interview, it was like that episode of Broad City, where Ilana accidentally (or purposefully?) wears a dog hoodie to a meeting with an important buyer at her job. The buyer, played by Vanessa Williams, looks absolutely flawless, and Ilana is immediately impressed and embarrassed.

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This summer, I want to do things differently. The biggest challenge for me is dressing in a way that conveys this sense of power and confidence while working with the New York City heat. What I buy will be very dependent on whether or not jeans are allowed at the job- currently, I have several dark-wash, no rip pairs that in my eye seem appropriate for a teaching job, but then again, what do I know? While I’m too busy with work right now to really do some shopping, I can see myself burning a lot of cash at stores like Zara and H&M. Fashion has always been something that’s important to me in terms of expressing myself, and I’m excited to dress this newfound part of myself- the part that has a career that’s making a difference in the real world- in the best way possible.

Everything I have in common with Reese Witherspoon

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I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Reese Witherspoon’s New Role: Power Broker.” The title of the article immediately intrigued me: growing up, the name Reese Witherspoon conveyed images of the Playboy Bunny turned Harvard Law graduate Elle Woods, and I had never assumed that Reese had followed a similar path of ambitious career-building in her real life. The article describes how Witherspoon, tired of being offered roles of bland, one-dimensional female characters, teamed up with her friend and producer Bruna Papandrea to create a production company called Pacific Standard, that would focus on obtaining and producing stories of complex, female characters.

I really admire the way in which Witherspoon took a very real and prominent problem in the industry she was working in, and decided to tackle it hands-on. Two of the very first scripts that Pacific Standard worked with were that of Gone Girl and Wild, purchased even before the books had been released and become best sellers. Witherspoon invested her own money in Wild, which she would later star in; both movies received a variety of awards nominations. It takes an incredible faith to be able to trust in one’s gut that something is going to be a success; if Pacific Standard had failed with these two initial projects, their company would have been regarded as a farce. As a huge fan of Gone Girl and Wild, it was interesting to hear that those movies weren’t accidentally great achievements for women in Hollywood- in fact, they were very deliberate, calculated efforts to make movies that featured complex, and very “unattractive” female leads. Witherspoon describes how the script for Gone Girl, specifically, was rejected from several studios before finding a place at Universal Studios.

While Reese (as I feel comfortable calling her now) and I may have started off from very different places in our career journey, I can’t help but be inspired by the sheer guts she showed by creating a production company centered around women in an industry dominated by men. She showed a certain type of boldness in taking something she loves to do- reading- and combining it with an industry that she loves to work in. In the article, Witherspoon describes how she reads up to two books a week, and constantly visits independent bookstores in order to keep her eyes open for new literary stories. Though I don’t think I’ll be working in the film industry, I believe that that type of faith in oneself, and one’s ability to create change in a seemingly cemented set of circumstances, is important to have in any industry.

I don’t know just yet if I have that ability to trust in my gut as much as Reese does; still, after getting the job for this summer, I’ve been feeling a lot more confident in my ability to do whatever I like in the professional field of my choosing. After all, I got a job interviewing alongside people who had way more experience than me. While it’s too early to start planning ahead for next summer, the new experiences that this summer and upcoming sophomore year will bring me have me feeling more confident in who I’m becoming as a person. Reese’s story proves that this confidence- in one’s taste and in one’s ability- can be all that really matters.

Getting Where I’m Going

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For my job this summer, I’m going to have to commute in to New York City with my dad at five am every morning. I’m dreading it, but anticipating this daily journey had made me think about the ways in which my parents have helped me to be who I am today. I’ve always felt like I was a fairly self-sufficient, self-motivated person, but growing up, my parents placed an emphasis on me getting great grades and trying everything. They have always supported me in whatever I’ve done, whether it be Girl Scouts or Soccer or Volunteer Work, so long as I was happy. For me, being happy means working hard, and being the best possible version of myself that I can possibly be. That’s kind of just who I am as a person. So while they would have supported me had I just gone to a mid-rate college, or not taken challenging classes in high school, it was myself who worked constantly to get into a school as good as Scripps.

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Talking with my friends, it’s interesting to see how different our parental experiences are, especially in terms of entering the professional world. Some have the benefit of being able to work at their family’s companies to gain experience, or have family friends that have offered them jobs. With both my parents being finance majors, I probably could get some professional experience through their connections, although not doing anything that I would particularly enjoy. One of my other friends even has her parents questioning her about grad school in her freshman year, as they believe a law degree will increase her chances of getting a job with her undergraduate degree being in Philosophy. I can’t even imagine my parents doing this– if anything, it was me that was panicking about the usefulness of my degree in English in the modern-day workforce. Sometimes I worry about my parent’s optimism. Though they both came from humble beginnings, the status of the job market was very different in 1993 (when they graduated college) than it is today. When applying to colleges, they told me to put Stanford as my reach school; in reality, it was Scripps that was my reach.

When I told my dad that my job was going to be teaching this summer, he asked if I wanted to be a teacher. I would love to be an English teacher, or even better, an English professor, but I’ve had several people tell me not to be- one of them being my favorite English teacher in high school. Knowing that only 4% of people who get a Master’s Degree in the humanities end up getting a job in their field, I think I would be a lot better off pursuing one of the many other things that I’m interested in as a career. Still, there’s something to be said for people who will support you no matter what. Even if I feel like that support can be a little blind at times, it’s when I doubt myself that I need it the most.

 

Getting the Job

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There is nothing worse than the weeks of anxiety that come after having applied to a job, and knowing that you’ll get some sort of response at some point, but not knowing when. Our modern age makes this time particularly volatile, as I can check my emails incessantly, an action that undoubtedly increases my anxiety. During college acceptance season last year, I often joked to my friends that it felt like we were living during the Cold War, waiting for the bomb to drop at any time. It was not uncommon to see kids break down during class, having peeked at their phones under their desk only to see that they had gotten rejected from a school. Waiting for this job to get back to me brought back those feelings of anxiety.

The job I applied for told me they would get back to me by the end of the week, but if I didn’t get a response, not to panic (as if that was something I could control). I had sent them a follow-up email after my interview, as the Gods who wrote the Career Services Guide had directed me to do, and when I hadn’t heard a response by the next week, I sent another quick email asking whether or not a decision had been made.

The reply I received was worse than rejection: “A decision has been made, and you will hear from us shortly.”

Shortly? Shortly?! I thought that meant by the end of the day- or the next day, when I still hadn’t received a response. In reality, it meant three days, during which time I busied myself with friends and schoolwork, trying to get the uncertain nature of my future off my mind. But at the end of three days, I got the best news possible- I had gotten the job!

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I so excited, that I ran into Mallott at brunch without swiping in, having seen my friends in there (I got yelled at and had to go back). I immediately texted my family, who told me they were so proud. I am still so relieved to have a set plan for the summer, and that I no longer have to worry about waitressing, because…

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I still have a far way to go before becoming a full-fledged career woman- I’m texting my dad tomorrow to help me fill out all the paperwork for the job. But I’m glad I was able to take the first step in getting an actual job, at an actual organization. I’m a bit nervous due to the sheer amount I’ll have to work- the job is 9-5, Monday through Friday, working with young children. It’s more hours than I’ve ever worked before, and I have to get up early to go into New York with my dad, too. Talking to a volunteer there, I heard it was the most professional environment that they had ever worked in. Still, I know that I will get plenty of training before actually starting my job, and I’m excited for all the new challenges to come.