Category Archives: Olivia T

Giving Thanks

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Thanksgiving has come and gone, and as I’ve found out, leaves fall off of the trees, even in Southern California. It’s easy to forget that time passes here, with such consistent and beautiful weather.

As I spend time thinking about the upcoming holiday, there are some people who come to mind that have helped me figure out where I want to be going with my career.

My parents and sister (and my family/extended family as a whole) are definitely some of the people I owe the most thanks to. Other than raising me, they have helped me find a school that suits me and have always been encouraging and realistic about what I want to do. Not only do they cheer, but they also keep things real by asking important logistical questions that make me think about how I’m going to apply what I’m doing in the future for a job, internship, or something else. They push me to keep looking for opportunities and are there to support me with whatever I endeavor to do.

I also owe a lot to my high school teachers, especially my Modern European History and World Affairs teacher. I’d often need a pass after her class to go to my next class because we’d be talking about something from class, something from the news, or maybe something one of us had seen that made us think of the other person. She was young, educated, and in tune to current events, as well as her own thoughts and emotions. She is someone I look up to and respect for her hard work. She’s also been helpful an encouraging while I find my path. One day she held me back to show me a United Nations job program called the Young Professionals Program, something she had seen and thought of me.

There are so many people to give thanks to. Spanish professors, fellow board members, friends, instructors… Whether or not it is obvious, these people have shaped my career direction as well as my personal direction. There are so many experiences that have shaped my understanding of what I want to do, and all of them have something to claim as part of that. Even my high school chem professor encouraging as I pursue a degree in foreign languages 🙂

Thank you. And whether you are having a friendsgiving here on campus, going home, or spending time with a friend’s family, have a happy Thanksgiving!

Picking Up Skills

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A few weeks ago, I declared a Foreign Languages major in Spanish and Korean. I’m not certain where I’m going with it, but I think I’d like to teach, interpret, work for the media, or maybe serve as a diplomat or work for an international organization (again, not narrowed down in the slightest…) I would like to live abroad, maybe go to grad school abroad as well. Who knows, I may end up settling down outside of the United States?

To get to any of those places, there are some things I need to figure out, or at least work on, some skill sets that I need to develop.

The skills that I’m working on don’t involve nunchucks, but I feel like languages can be as complicated to figure out at times…

I grew up with a family that only spoke English, and I didn’t start learning languages until the last part of middle school. I really got rolling in high school, which is when I fell in love with Spanish.

Here at Scripps (well, technically at Claremont McKenna) I started Korean, which is simultaneously incredibly similar and different. It’s sometimes hard to keep the three languages straight, even when I can’t say a whole lot in Korean (yet). I tried to say in a Korean verb today with a Spanish verb ending conjugation. That was interesting.

What I really need to work on is expanding confidence and vocabulary. Because Korean is so new, I’m really working hard to take it off of the page (as well as learning more vocabulary and grammar). I’m much more coherent on paper, but I know that I have to be able to speak as well.

As far as Spanish goes, I need to keep expanding my vocabulary. It’s hard to know where to start. Like Korean though, it simply requires practice and experience.

Though I have yet to make it to a Spanish language table, I’ve been attending the Korean table every week to work on building confidence (and vocabulary skills!).

If I were to do any of the things I’m thinking about for careers, I really need to study up, or rather practice and immerse myself in situations where my language knowledge is tested and improved.

It can be really frustrating to get stuck on a tough reading for class or a near-impossible to pronounce word. It takes patience, but also an outside commitment to help with breaking these barriers. With Korean, I think of being able to watch K-dramas with my sister without reading subtitles, or emailing my friend in Seoul in Korean. For Spanish, it’s going to (hopefully someday) visit my friends in Spain, Argentina, and Mexico or speak easily with my high school Spanish teacher en español.

But sometimes you have to start with the small steps. Things don’t happen overnight, but with work over time. For now, I’m proud of the little things, but I’ll keep taking bigger steps forward.

안녕하세요! 마올리예요. 대학교 일학년이에요. ¡Hola! Me llamo Olivia Truesdale. Soy una estudiante de primer año. Hello! I’m Olivia Truesdale. I am a first year.

 

 

Conflict

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I dislike having to confront emotional conflict. Problems like drama between friends are definitely not my favorite things to deal with. Bring on the logical conflict and debate, but when it comes to social politics or grudges I’m out of my element.

Part of this is that I honestly try to avoid conflict for myself. I’m more of the forgive and forget type rather than a woman who will hold a grudge. I’d much rather keep moving along happily, apologies accepted and given as needed in more of the peacemaker/diplomat opinion.

I do have a tendency to over-apologize to bring back peace (though I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing), and I often overcompensate to distract from awkward situations. I’m not the passive aggressive sort; I would much rather be direct about my feelings if I have them, but I aim not to be in conflict at all.

However, a little bit of conflict is not bad. It’s reasonable not to be okay with things that are happening, or to not want to forgive someone if they’ve hurt you. What’s not always rational is trying to let everything go.

I’ve always been a self-advocate; if I have needs, I address them, I’m assertive, and I’m not afraid to ask questions (especially if it’s school related). Shifting this self advocacy into the social sphere is harder. I don’t want to seem like I’m overreacting to situations if I act decisively about something that bothers me.

For fear of being the cause of drama, I’ve skated over things that I was upset about. In favor of not hurting others’ feelings, I’ve ignored my own.

The most prominent example with this was my experience with a former friend group. I consistently felt excluded and used. After a while, I broke from those friends quietly, feeling uncomfortable with confronting the problem directly.

It wasn’t until a year or so later that I finally felt comfortable enough to talk to one of the people I had distanced myself from about what had happened, and it is an understatement to say that it was a relief. All of the questions, frustrations, and doubt that I had kept to myself had found an outlet, and the loose ends were tied.

Was it worth the wait? Yes, but next time I’d rather be direct in the first place. Internalizing the conflict to keep the peace worked, but I think confronting the situation would have made things much easier. It’s something that I have recognized, and I’m making note of.

A friend once told me “don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.” She has a point. As much as it’s important to keep the peace, it’s also just as important to advocate for yourself and to acknowledge when when to address conflict, whether at home, between friends, or in the workplace. No matter what, it’s important to be respectful. Conflict comes up everywhere, but it’s up to your own discretion to decide what you aren’t willing to let go. 

As for myself, I’m working on being okay with confronting interpersonal conflict. It’s not on my list of favorite things to do, but I’ve improved on speaking up for myself in that regard since high school. It’s an almost required skill for whatever I plan to do, so I’m aiming to be prepared.

Dealing with Mistakes and Rejection: When things don’t go as planned

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As lovely as it would be for everything to go perfectly according to plan, it rarely happens that way. There are always bumps and goof ups that happen along the way, and the most important part is that we can adjust and keep moving on.

When I got to campus, I applied for a few jobs. I went through interviews, and waited to hear if I had gotten the positions. For both cases, I had felt relatively confident about my interview and my application, but none of the positions that I applied for worked out. I was definitely broken up, but I had to keep in mind that it wasn’t personal.

After all, in the sea of amazing and well qualified women here, I was just one fish, and a first year at that (not to say that the latter hurts, but it may not help). I took a bit to center myself. Sure, it would have been nice to have a paid job on campus, but it wasn’t a requirement. There are other things I can do, and it’s by no means the end of the world to not have a job.

And I was right: I honestly am not sure I’d have time to work right now between my classes and the extra curricular activities that I’ve picked up (plus the essentials like spending time with friends, self-care time, and sleep). The biggest thing about dealing with rejection is thinking about ways to try again with a fresh start another time while moving forward and not dwelling on the past.

Another thing that’s easy to dwell on is a mistake. Recently, I missed a deadline for blogging, and I was (figuratively) beating my head against the wall for it. It’s not the first time I’ve tripped up, so I was extra mad at myself for getting behind again.

The most important things to do with mistakes are a) apologize, b) make amends, and c) take steps to avoid doing the same thing again. Some mistakes do happen twice, but it’s important to avoid letting them happen a third time.

I sent an apology email, I took action on my blog post that I missed, and I started a fresh post for the new cycle to get on my game early. I also took out my planner and marked each post assignment date clearly, and in my best writing, so I won’t let the ball drop again. For me, calendars and reminder systems like lists work wonders.

As much as it’s easy to get worked up into a funk, don’t let a mistake ruin your day. A mistake is simply an unintended error. You may not have meant to do it, but you can make steps to fix it in the future and apologize for what has happened. There’s no use crying over spilled milk! Remember that most of the times, forgiving yourself is harder than being forgiven by someone else.

No matter what, whether disappointed with an outcome or with something you’ve done, know there will be second chances, you just need to plan ahead for them.

Where am I going, where have I been?

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I grew up in an almost aggressively STEM biased town, a average sized midwestern city called Rochester in southeast Minnesota. STEM and Small Town, MN… hmm. Though it seems like an unlikely combination, Rochester is the home of the Mayo Clinic, a top-tier medical institution with a handful of major campuses around the US. Just a bit more background about home: it feels like almost everyone has a family member that works at the Clinic or IBM. For most of my life, I lived across the street from the emergency room (that turned out to be rather convenient when I broke my nose falling out of bed), and the sounds of the Mayo helicopter overhead is just ambient noise.

As a result of this, I felt that for the longest time I wanted to be a doctor. For a while, I wanted to be a pediatrician so that I could work with kids, possibly because I remember my little sister being in the hospital a few times. After a heath careers camp, I was sure I wanted to be a nurse anesthetist. This stem fixation lasted a while, likely through seventh grade. After that, maybe because my eighth grade science class wasn’t may favorite, I switched courses.

My next fixation was journalism. Not just journalism, but studying journalism at Mizzou (University of Missouri), a school well known for its media studies programs. I had done extensive research about the school’s admissions, the program, and student life. This shift came after Journalism Camp in Minneapolis, MN. There, I made a short film about the Minnesota education system with three other students.

But this wasn’t right either. After a while, I hit a period of uncertainty where I didn’t have any idea what I wanted. My ACT score report reaffirmed this, as I took the Interest Inventory piece that comes before the exam. It was indeed true that I did not have a “clear preference for working with people, ideas, data, or things.”

It was scary not being sure of what I wanted to do, especially since my peers seemed so sure that they would be pediatric oncologists or whatever else (What is a pediatric oncologist? I still don’t know).

After a bit of self-discovery, I realized that I really enjoyed my history and language classes. I knew I enjoyed talking and interacting with people, so diplomacy, political science, or international relations. This path lead me through the rest of my high school career.

Eventually, the time of year came where I had decided to go to Scripps. I cried with joy to realize that I was able to go, but I was also a liitle scared to be going into the “real world,” where I would need to start knowing where I wanted to go in life.

Over the summer, I began thinking about my intended path, and looked at what classes I wanted to take year one. Korean, Spanish, Core, Writing 50. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t the international relations piece I was interested as much as I liked the languages.

I knew Scripps had a foreign language major, but I wasn’t sure if it would be what I wanted. With a nervous heart, I clicked on the program on the majors list to see if the foreign languages major was what I hoped it was.

I was so glad that I had looked. It was all that I had dreamed what it would be, if not more.

Flash forward to now: week nine of my first semester in college. I’m taking the classes I had hoped, plus a ballroom dancing course. I plan on declaring my Foreign Languages: Two-Language Cultural Study of Spanish and Korean this week.

This definitely wasn’t a streamlined or organized process, but through all of this exploration  I’ve made it to a place where I think I’ll stay for a long time.