As a kid, my parents would make me sit down and have me write thank you notes for the three days or so after Christmas and my birthday, which, at that age, was a grueling process.  I would write a practice thank-you note, have my mom look it over for spelling, write it carefully and neatly on a notecard, look up the address of the person I was sending it to, write that neatly as well, and send it off with a stamp.  Up until I left the house to move to college, my mom would leave reminders on the table for us during our winter break before she went to work saying “Kids, Please write your thank you notes today and tomorrow and send them off.”  Finally, once I went away to college, she left me to my own devices as far as thank you notes are concerned.  I’ve continued to write them, at first out of habit, but later because I learned how rewarding it is – as weird as that sounds.

At various points throughout my last year and a half here at Scripps, I’ve been invited to dinner out in the village with friend’s families, gone to friend’s houses for short vacations where I couldn’t go all the way home, or gone on small vacations with friend’s families.  A quick note to your friend’s parents is greatly appreciated, and something they will never forget.  I recently sent a thank you note to my friend’s grandmother for hosting her and I for a day at the beach at their house, and she has the note hanging up in her house because she appreciated it so much.  One of my friends invited me to her house for dinner during one of our breaks, and I send along a thank you note, which her mom called her specifically about, to mention how much it meant to her.

As far as career development is concerned, I have found that thank-you notes are just as valued as they are in personal relationships and friendships.   People will remember if you write a thank you note to your them.  Whether it’s your manager from your internship, someone who edits your cover letter for you, someone who discusses potentially career opportunities for you, or someone who connects you to one of their colleagues for networking purposes.

Giving thanks and showing appreciation is highly valued in society, and thank you notes are an exceptional way to show your thanks.

In high school, I felt that I was very much in the same place as I was as far as career decisions as I was in kindergarten when I wanted to be a professional soccer player and policewoman.  I could name a couple careers off that interested me in high school, as could my classmates, but they would change from day to day, and were easily influenced by my peers.

After my junior year of high school I completed a marketing internship at a successful construction company in my area, and because I had many of the same interests as Head of the Marketing Department, he would often recommend books and websites to me.  I read a book about running (the new barefoot running trend was just starting), I was introduced to a new cooking site I had never visited before, and I read Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.  The book begins before Zappos, the now famous online shoe company had even begun, and ends after the company had become wildly successful.  It still is extremely successful, and probably in a large part due to the cultural values that Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, makes sure the company follows.

In today’s world, companies are often plagued with expectations about production numbers, salaries, how they’re helping society, and a variety of other problems, making maintaining a conducive corporate culture often falls by the wayside.  Yet, Zappos’ corporate culture is one of the things that I think really leads to its success, and many other Zappos customers agree with me.

When I arrived at Scripps, I was set on majoring in something business related. (Just like I was set on being an architect 2 months before, or being a baker 4 months before…. But, nonetheless).  I first decided I would major in Media Studies because I was sure I could use that in LA-type business (movies, music, marketing, advertising, etc.).  Then, a Media Studies major with an Organizational Studies minor.  Then, just Organizational Studies as my major (And, no, organizational studies doesn’t mean you’re majoring in knowing how to organize…….)

Organizational Studies looks at how organizations function and affect society.  Hsieh’s book about Zappos gave me my first look into that diverse ways of running organizations.  I had never been introduced to the concept of corporate culture or the difference in the way organizational structures are set up. And it intrigued me.

The process of searching for your major is by no means a similar process for everyone.  Each person I’ve talked to decided on their major at a different time than me, for a different reason, and may be more or less sure about their choice than I.  So, when I’m leading tours for the Scripps Admission Office and someone asks me how I decided on my major, I say that I knew what I was interested in, and found a major that would allow me to take the exact classes I would if I could take any combination of classes I desired. Hsieh’s book introduced me to ideas and thoughts I’d never experienced before.  The business world and diversity of organizational structures got me thinking, and pretty soon after, I had decided on my major.  Pursue what you’re interested in, what intrigues you, and a subject that you want to learn more and more about every day.  That’s my advice for choosing your major.

Last week was midterm season and it was pretty obvious around campus with people walking quickly from building to building, bringing to-go boxes to the dining hall, and the coffee in the dining hall always seeming to run out no matter how many times it was filled up.  I was not immune to the stress of the season, but did find some solace in the fact that many of my classes were discussing similar topics and I was able to pull in topics and ideas from one class to another.  This week on LinkedIn, I saw a video of Denise Morrison, the President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company sharing her viewpoint that humans should expand their definition of success beyond business success, which also relates to some ideas I’ve been discussing in many of my classes.

Morrison specifically talks about how success has many different aspects to it: success in business, yes, but also success with your family, success in leadership, and success in serving your community.  She also briefly discusses that individuals should seek work life integration and bring their whole selves to work.

In my leadership class, we were assigned a take home midterm, which included a case study of a leader and the leader I was assigned was Indra Nooyi, CEO and chairperson of PepsiCo.  Much of the case study discussed her dedication to having PepsiCo produce healthier products.  It explained that she had accurately emphasized that PepsiCo was as big (as far as revenue was concerned) as some countries of the world and therefore had a social responsibility.  Her emphasis on creating healthy products was exactly what Morrison talked about in encouraging individuals to bring their whole selves to work.  Nooyi has a strong belief in living a healthy lifestyle and saw the same goal in many of her employees and consumer and therefore implemented this idea at PepsiCo.

In my Core III class, What Is Genius, we look at genius historically and today and look at how is conceived and perceived by society.  In our midterm paper, we were instructed to write about Genius and IQ.  I ended up writing about different forms of intelligence: practical, creative, and analytical intelligence, and how genius doesn’t define success.  Rather, I suggested that although analytical intelligence (which is tested through SATs, ACTs, and IQ tests) is generally valued highly in society, practical and creative intelligence can have just as much effect on professional success as analytical intelligence.

Although some believe that economics can be cut and dry, my economics class has taught me how to do more than just interpret supply and demand curves.  We’ve recently been talking about the difference between economic and accounting profits.  The difference is that economic profits take into account opportunity cost, while accounting profits do not.  While it might seem like a stretch to apply it to the Morrison video, it does relate, I promise.  In looking at success, society generally understands it in terms of business success, which Morrison understands as too constrictive a definition, much like accounting profit explained above.  In understanding success as Morrison defines it, we are looking at the full picture of success rather than just the most basic definition.  In economics terms, we are looking at economic profit, which takes into account opportunity cost, rather than just looking at accounting profit.

Morrison’s video is simple, but immediately after watching it, ideas about my various class discussions started popping into my mind.  Not only is it always nice to see that your education does have real world applications, but it’s also nice to see your classes line up in terms of ideas, themes, and topics.

This past Friday I attended my very first career fair.  I’m only a sophomore, so I was one of a few in the crowd, but learned a lot from the upperclassmen walking around in professional dress, ready to find the company they’d start their career at.

The fair was hosted by Harvey Mudd College but open to student from any of the five Claremont Colleges and boasted over 90 employers.  The line went on for a long time, but once I got into the lobby area, I typed my personal information on the computer “Name,” “Major,” “School,” “Year,” and pressed enter and out printed my personalized name tag.  I placed my nametag on my right shoulder, as instructed, and walked in.

There were tables and tables of employers lined up from wall to wall and even around the edges.  They were mostly tech firms and companies, as the fair was at Harvey Mudd, largely known for Computer Science, Engineering, and Math Students.  There were tables for companies from Amazon.com to Google, from Apple to LinkedIn, and from NBC Universal to Hulu.  The names didn’t stop there and there were long lines for some companies that I’d never heard of.

I perused the entire fair before I stopped and any tables and tried to understand the process people went through when approaching tables, realizing that I probably should have a pitch of some sort ready when I went up to talk to my first recruiter.  I carried around my resumes for 10 minutes or so deciding exactly which companies I wanted to give them to.  In walking around, many of the recruiters were talking to the students about their graduation year, which scared me a little bit… Would they even want to talk to someone who was still a sophomore?

Finally, I stopped at my first table.  I spoke to her about my major, Organizational Studies, and my current interests, Marketing and Human Resources.  I realized before I even decided to go to the fair that these companies were looking for computer science and engineering majors for the most part, and that’s why they signed up for a job fair at Harvey Mudd, but the companies I talked to all took my resume and happily discussed the opportunities they had for internships in Marketing and Human Resources.

By the time I left, I had only talked to a couple companies, but companies that I was really interested in.  Each of the companies I knew about before I came in, which helped the conversation flow a little bit more.

In hindsight, I wish that I had looked at the list of employers attending on Claremont Connect and done my research on all the companies, which would have allowed me to go in with a specific list and allow me to tell the companies why I was interested in them and what I was looking for as far as opportunities were concerned in the future.

The experience was helpful, without a doubt, and allowed me to understand what to do in the future when attending large job fairs around the Claremont campuses as well as off campus job fairs.

Last week as part of the Life after Scripps workshops presented by Career Planning & Resources here at Scripps, I attended a workshop called the $tart $mart Workshop, presented by Annie Houle and sponsored by the WAGE Project and the American Association of University Women, AAWU.  $tart $mart is a workshop presented by these organizations to give women in college confidence and the skills they need to go forward and receive fair compensation in their careers.

Annie presented us with this stunning fact to begin the workshop: women still earn $0.77 for every dollar that a man earns for equal work and this has been the case for the last five years.  Before that, it was even more of a wage gap.  Why is this?  There are laws in place that dictate that women and men must be paid the same salaries for equal work, which should stop the wage gap.  There are many reasons these laws can’t and don’t work the way the legislators wanted them to, but the fact of the matter is, women aren’t adequately negotiating for the salaries they deserve.

This summer, I read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and Ask For It by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.  Both of these books suggest the same theory.  Women (in general) are just not negotiating in the same way men are.  In fact, I didn’t even know that negotiating a salary was in any way appropriate before I came to Scripps, which is frustratingly enough, pretty normal.  There are many reasons why women don’t negotiate their salaries, but there is plenty of evidence out there that they should.

Through the presentation by Annie Houie and the WAGE Project, Lean In, and Ask For It, I now understand that EVERYONE should negotiate their salary, even though I understand how daunting of a task that is.

Annie presented a couple key points that I’ll pass on to you, however, I definitely encourage you to read the two books I mentioned as well as do some of your own research.

• Your negotiations don’t have to be monetary based.  You can negotiate your title, vacation time, benefits, travel, etc.
• When discussing salaries, NEVER be the first to say your starting salary.  Your potential employer may be willing to offer you a much larger salary amount than you imagined, so allow them to state their idea of a starting salary and negotiate from there.
• DO YOUR RESEARCH before you go in to negotiate your salary.
  • Check median salaries for your industry and job title here.
  • Calculate what your net salary would be at the salary you’re offered by the firm.  Would this meet your monetary needs?
  • Make a budget.  This will help you understand the lowest pay offer you could accept
• In negotiations, use examples of how each benefit you receive would in turn help the firm rather than just emphasizing how the benefit would help you.

Annie Houie at Scripps College’s $tart $mart Workshop

presented by CP&R’s Life After Scripps