“The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.” – Ellen Browning Scripps

While at Scripps, I passed by these words inscribed on Honnold-Mudd Gate everyday, on my walk from Garrison after practicing or rehearsals back to my dorm. I remember first reading them on move in day, my parents carrying boxes with my through that very gate to Toll before we took photos in front of the stone plaques. I read the words as plainly as I did any other outdoor signs. I did not realize it then, but I had a role to carry these words with me and live out their meaning, as a student in learning and growing at Scripps and now as an alumna after crossing again through Denison’s doors.

In times of life transition, Scripps’ motto, Incipit Vita Nova, is a mantra I hold close. During move in and my first few weeks at Scripps, I was living in the past, not fully taking advantage of this new community I was now a part of. When I acted upon any plans or goals for my future, I became overwhelmed and stunted myself from growing. Slowly but surely, thinking here begins new life, I took the small steps to invest in my experience and truly make Scripps feel like my community, my home.

In my move to DC after graduation, I held the words “here begins new life” close, again taking small steps to writing a new chapter of my journey. Many of the same worries I had moving into college resonated in my move after graduation, with different context. But this time, I had an incredibly rich experience, full of depth and times of character testing, my time at Scripps. This time, my expeirence helped me navigate a cross-country move, new jobs, and new relationships. I hadn’t realized it yet, but this was just one instance of the beginning of my Scripps experience’s lasting empowerment as an alumna.

Since graduating, I’ve stayed connected to the Scripps community and student body in what little ways I can, from volunteering as an alumna interviewer in the DC area for a second year to writing letters for incoming students. Earlier this month I went to a Scripps incoming student reception in Arlington, Virginia. Even as a recent graduate, it truly is inspiring to interact with current, prospective, and incoming students. It is wonderful to interact with new students and their families. It gives me such hope for the future of Scripps, to see what all these driven and talented students will accomplish on campus and beyond. Our community is special, it is close knit and it is empowering.

New students, recent grads, and alumnae alike, Scripps is an empowering experience. There are things about it that you will discover you do not agree with or think that should change, but your classmates, peers, community, will empower you with the action to create change. There are times when campus life and everyone around you will look like a veil of catalouge perfect happiness when you are not, but the experience will still make you genuinely vulnerable as a trait of true strength and resilience. There are times when self-doubt stifles our own growth, but some aspects of our Scripps experience will shed light in our darkest hours, telling us, you can do it.

After graduating, I have always carried with me all the ways I’ve grown at Scripps, from which I have only grown stronger and more resilient with a clearer view of my values in life’s fluidity. Whether you are just beginning your journey at Scripps or have since graduated and forged a new path, I encourage you to hold close Ellen Browning Scripps words to think clearly and independently and life live confidently, courageously, and hopefully above and beyond the elms.

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Thank you for reading and joining me as a guest blogger this summer! A big thank you to the CP&R team for allowing me this opportunity. Remember to stay tuned for new posts from the Fall 2017 bloggers!

My dad asked me this question among conversations about my job. It’s true, you can make your opportunities, but that always involves going the extra mile and being noticed by a colleague, your boss, or someone else above you. So the answer to the question is generally this, in a workplace, your boss holds opportunity, but you need to do the work to get it. Going the extra mile will always be noticed and will open up other opportunities for you. Not only will it be appreciated by your supervisor or coworkers, but with consistency, it can compound into many positive things during your current role and after you may choose to leave. Many of these will vary based on the culture of your workplace, but here are small ways go the extra mile at work and gain more opportunities.

Arrive a little early. Or stay a bit late. If you’re expected to be at work at 9 AM, give yourself a buffer, be at your desk, staring up at least by 8:50 AM, if not earlier. For me, I’ve found I work better in the morning before the day ramps up with meetings and other tasks and before the afternoon slump hits me.

Ask coworkers about their roles and how you could be involved. Especially during the learning curve of a new role, your instincts in your role are not as developed. You might not be entirely sure what is the best use of your time or what is expected of you during a certain business cycle. Hopefully the next tip will help with that, but until then, talk to your coworkers, ask them questions, and ask if there is anything you can help them out with.

Meet with your boss about your role. Having a conversation with your boss about your goals and how you want to develop is a direct benefit to all parties involved. Your boss will recognize the initiative to talk about your role and can steer more opportunities your way that are aligned with what you’re hoping to do and gain. You will also feel like your talents and skills are being fully utilized and valued within your team and or company. You definitely want to feel like your skills are being recognized and utilized, so make sure they are known!

Dress to impress. Also know as dress for the job you want to have. This can be interpreted in different ways and have different applications depending on the industry (I’d love to wear sandals, sneakers, floral dresses, and my denim jacket to work everyday if my industry was that way). Even if you have a casual dress code, dressing in an appropriate way that makes you feel confident will definitely project. For instance, I work at a small consulting firm, and for a small consulting firm, not everyone is dressed in suits or the traditional business for a attire. That being said, everyone still dresses in a professional way. I probably don’t have to wear a blazer jacket to work, and I’ve only not worn one twice, but I always do because I am the youngest in my office. The (literal) extra layer of clothing helps me feel confident in a workplace full of long-time employees.

Stay connected. Met some colleagues from the other side of the building before an all-hands meeting? Maybe at happy hour? Going up in the elevator with a new face to the same floor of your building? In any role, it’s very likely you will be meeting lots of people, so stay connected once you meet them. A quick walk over to their office to say hi or an email if they work off-site is a great way to expand your network within your company and create a collegial community. Plus, you may end up having to work with them on a project! So the more names to faces you can get, the better.

Take initiative. Have an idea to expand the future potential of a project? To include a new feature in the quarterly newsletter? While leaders may hold opportunity, it is your responsibility to get them. Making your ideas and interest known will lead others to think of you as someone who is ready to spring into action. Taking initiative is the most important part in gaining more opportunities and defining your role at work!

The ability to properly communicate, let alone through writing, is an imperative skill, no matter who you are or what you do. Writing is the most transferable skill and yet remains one that requires practice, trial and error, as well as curated adaptability depending on what it is being used for.

I have written about this topic before, and even though I am an arts & humanities/social sciences kind of person, I believe writing is a necessary skill applies to every field. Many of us don’t realize how much we write in our daily lives. I’m talking about everything from email correspondences, your resume, cover letters to course work, applications, and infamously, thesis (or dissertation for all of you in graduate programs). Now, I actually have the word “writer” in my job title (wow!), and experience on a daily basis on the importance of writing skills. Here are some of the things I have learned about professional and workplace writing.

Who are you representing? When you write for your job, your words serve a purpose to communicate a mission, a brand, a way of doing. How can you make sure you are staying aligned with the messaging? If you don’t already, read your company’s published work, from the website, newsletter, press releases, case studies — anything you can read that your company produced (even how your supervisor interacts with external groups like clients or other companies over email).The more you can sharpen your writing tool kit and adapt a different kind of voice, the more successful you will be at communicating in different roles and contexts.

Templates, Boilerplate, Messaging. This will depend on what type of field  you work in. For example, in the proposal world, we use templates and boilerplates, BUT they are always a starting point. The details always change depending on the proposal and the client. Along with in-person interactions and connecting, our messaging is literally in our proposals and what we use to convince an agency to give us their work. In other instances, your company’s messaging is in templates and boilerplates, from online material, to press releases. Templates and boilerplates are used as starting points for all sorts of things. It’s why when you read about a new product release, you eventually run into the same handful or so iterations of how it is marketed. It’s why when you read about a politician’s press release about a certain topic, it doesn’t seem too different from when you last read about it. It’s why when you read a blog and could name the author or where it came from without knowing the name (It’s why I’ve used the same template for some of my posts!).

Keep it simple. Albert Einstein once said, “If you cannot explain it simply, then you do not understand it well enough.” Sometimes, the more entrenched someone is in the technical aspects of their work or area of expertise, the more they get bogged down with hard to understand details or terminology that only other experts would understand. Your company might be selling a product, service, or software, which has its own state-of-the-art nuts and bolts, but how you’re going to write about it to sell it isn’t going put that info front and center. What should be but front and center is why your product, service, or software is unique and will benefit whoever you are trying to sell it to. If you’re a technical person (i.e. programmer, software developer, engineer, etc.) and can also write about your work in easy to understand terms, you probably make your media department and or proposal team very happy. Remember, it’s just another form of communication!

Practice. Along with getting the feel of your company’s messaging and style, practice is what will actually sharpen those writing skills and make them adaptable. If your position does not have a strict writing aspect, consider reaching out to someone in your company who does. Ask what the process for creating materials is like, how many drafts there usually are, how many people (and what are their roles) read through drafts. Remember to look for opportunities to improve your writing, because they are everywhere. Like I said, everything from email communication, to your LinkedIn summary and job descriptions are small opportunities to improve your professional writing skills. Even if you are not planning to make a job change, revisit your resume every once in while, to update the content and practice creating succinct, informative statements about your experiences.  Everything you write can be of benefit to you down the line as a portfolio to draw from; your thesis or final paper for an application to a job or graduate school, press releases or social media posts from one job to help show your experience for another, and so on.

I hope some of these insights help to build writing skills! Remember, writing was, is, and will always be the most transferrable skill!

After graduation, I quickly realized that many of the things I was worried about while in school did not matter anymore. The worries about my major, my grades, when I’d get a job, they were still important, and I am glad I invested my time into them, but were no longer weighted as driving factors post-graduation.

Your major. I double majored in music and psychology while at Scripps. So you can imagine curious inquiries, if not perplexed ones, when hiring managers would ask me during interviews about how those experiences would benefit them in their workspace. I focused my answers on my skills. I applied to a lot of research and writing jobs, so I would talk about my research internships and my thesis, both of which were completely relevant skill wise to the job, even if I was writing about the punk-rock/20th century classical music intersections of the Velvet Underground or music performance anxiety. I chose my majors because of my interests, but I still followed my efforts for another passion, writing. To me, writing is and will always be the most transferable skill, required of anyone in any major (also one that will not be replaced by robots anytime soon).

Your major matters most when you’re taking classes to meet those requirements to graduate or one’s of grad school. After you graduate, well that’s your major! No more worries about major requirements or seminar classes! Chances are, unless you have a very specific career path that requires very specific coursework, your major will not affect your ability to get a job in a different field. Most times after graduation, your major will be a conversation starter at most and not the crux of your academic experience like it was in college.

Your grades. (This includes GPA, graduating with honors, and other graduation brochure accolades) Don’t get me wrong, your GPA, honors, and accolades are something you should be incredibly proud of and share when relevant (For reference, I no longer have my GPA on my resume. I do have the years of the music scholarship I received as well as dean’s list semesters, which will probably just devolve to dean’s list over time). But again, unless you are applying to med school or specific post-grad programs that requires certain benchmarks, it is very unlikely that anyone will ask you what your college GPA was.

Even while in school, whether it be college or graduate school, I believe success is defined by much more. Your grades are important, and they can be a positive factor on the job search, but how you hold yourself and work with others is just as, if not more important, post-graduation.

College social life. Meeting new friends outside of college can be rough. You’re not in a place where everyone else is your same age, headed for the same goal (graduating), and literally around every corner tied by the common experience of being enrolled at the same school. Especially from Claremont, this can be an adjustment. You can most likely follow a Claremont bubble past-graduation, hang out with recent grads from the 5C’s in many of the big cities where we move to, and feel like you more or less never left that social scene. But there’s a difference between connecting with college friends post-graduation and trying to extend or relive your college social life. It will always be great to catch up with college friends or talk with alumni from the 5C’s, but just keep in mind that difference of what college social life meant to you then, and what it will mean post-graduation.

When you get a job. I had many friends and acquaintances, a Facebook feed full of people, who were celebrating job acceptances as early as before the start of senior year. And believe me, it was really hard for me not to compare myself to those people. I stressed over the “norm” that I was supposed to have a job before graduation, from the competitive, driving determination of the 5C’s to my parents’ expectations. The stress got the better of me at times during senior year, to the point where I was not even enjoying or cherishing my last months at Scripps. But after graduation, it’s really unlikely anyone is going to ask you when you got your job or judge your answer if it didn’t fall somewhere between August and May of your senior year. You’ll probably get asked when you started or how long you’ve been there, but after graduating, it’s not as big of a deal if you got your job during your senior year. (Also, you will find a job. I am sure of it.)

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Next week I will be writing about opportunity, how do you make it and who holds it?

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

― Albert Einstein

One of the things about “the real world” that is  freeing (yet anxiety inducing at times) is control over my own schedule. I’m not just talking about a day-to-day, free time schedule or routine or weekend plans. I’m talking about the greater lengths of time, how I structure goals and milestones without the schedule of semesters and ensure seasonal breaks. I’m talking about how the question “what am I doing with my life” can keep me up at night because moving jobs or cities, nurturing new friendships or remaining connected with old ones, is entirely, 100% up to me and how I choose to plan and spend my time.

While my job is still dictated by an internal schedule and the industry’s own ebb and flow, I am lucky that I have creative latitude to define my role and shape it. I am also lucky that there is a great culture of work-life balance at my company. Outside of work, it’s been really great rediscovering old hobbies, nurturing new ones, planning trips (and not having homework).

It’s taken me awhile to set up a type of creative, hobby schedule for myself. Between adjusting to a city and simply not knowing where to start, I’ve found and made time for activities I love. I am also realizing that creating a short and long-term schedule will be tried, tested, and tweaked through life.

Here are some of the ways I’ve found new balance between work, creativity, and life.

Stay active. Once I started my current job, my daily average step count definitely took a hit. I realized that even though I thought I spent a lot of time sitting in classes during college, I was also walking a lot around campus (hitting that 10,000+ step count daily!) in addition to exercise. Now, I plan my workouts in the morning so I can get them out of the way. I am fortunate to have a gym in my apartment building and running trails right nearby, but when I didn’t, I used no-equipment body-weight exercises to work up a sweat in a tiny space. I also try to do small things break up my seated time, like taking the stairs in my apartment and at work. Still wondering if I can get a standing desk, but until then, I literally just stand up at my desk every hour for at least 2 minutes. I have my own office with a door, so when I’m really antsy I do sets of squats, elevated push ups, or forearm planks.  As for the bigger picture, setting goals have helped me stay consistent and gain confidence in an active lifestyle (i.e. run a half-marathon every 6-months, run local DC events, be able to do a pull up — I have not yet completed the last one).

Read for fun. One of my new year’s resolutions was to read one book a month. I’ll be honest, I haven’t kept up with it as consistently as I planned to, but it has definitely gotten me to read more and discover new works. I’ve set up a “reading nook” in my apartment, which is literally just a side table with books lined up on it (haven’t leveled up to a bookshelf yet). I found that I am more likely to read a book when they are out and visible. After spending so much time staring at a computer screen at work or mindlessly scrolling through my phone, reading ink on paper is very refreshing and makes me feel like I am taking an active role in continuing my own learning. I also love reading whenever I travel, nothing makes a flight go by faster for me than a good book!

Plan vacations & trips. Speaking of traveling, take your vacation days! You won’t get a break unless you give yourself one. Recently, most of my long-term vacations have been back to my family in California or my significant other’s in Minnesota. When asking for time off from work, just always be respectful and ask far enough in advance. If needed, delegate any tasks or projects to co-workers, letting them know at which stage its at. Get ahead in your work if possible so that the catch up won’t be so overwhelming when you get back. Aside from taking vacation days at work, weekend trips can be a great getaway. Whether by train, bus, or car, road trips are super feasible during the weekend, they just take a bit of planning. During the warmer months, I also love hiking as a weekend trip to get out of the city and in nature. Make sure you give yourself a break to refresh and rejuvenate! 

Be Creative. In addition writing, photography, and playing viola, I’ve found myself developing my cooking skills as a creative outlet (google once again prevails as a great resource for recipes and tips, don’t forget the binge watching Chopped and the Great British Bake Off). Preparing my meals on Sunday really helps with efficiency during the week, but also balancing that with making something fresh can relax me after a day of work and commuting. Living with seasons has also made me appreciate another recent hobby of mine, gardening. I’ve started growing basil, rosemary, and thyme to cook with as well as tending other brightly colored plants a few succulents that remind me of home.

But being creative doesn’t have to mean these things. Your role at work my be your creative outlet, whether it’s explicitly in some type of design capacity or maybe a new way to utilize a certain process in the business, creativity can serve as the connection between work and life.

Readers, how do you balance work, creativity, and life? Whatever it is, I hope you feel balanced yet in a productive momentum towards achieving what you want in life!