Category Archives: Sandro

Desperate Emails: Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Send Them

Posted on by
Reply

It’s February, which means the time to look for internships is upon us. It’s been upon us for quite a while, and I promise you, I haven’t been procrastinating! I’ve been diligently searching for and applying for internships since January!

Well, that’s partially true. I have, by now, applied to one internship, and sent out some inquiring emails looking for work or looking for recommendations. I sent one email basically begging for work to a professor who taught a class I took last spring, and one to a radio and podcast production company. I also sent an email to a professor asking him to write a recommendation for my internship application.

I’ve been talking to a couple friends recently about their internship search processes. One of my friends struggles against her anxiety to send out important emails. I can definitely understand her fear, but I think it helps to think about how low the stakes really are when you’re sending an inquiry email. Of course, no one likes to be rejected. On the other hand, being rejected over email is probably the least-personal, most-removed way to be rejected. So even if the rejection makes you cry, at least you’re in your room sitting at your laptop when you start crying, and not face-to-face with your physics professor.

Trust me, it’s not fun to cry in front of your physics professor.

Anyway, hopefully the rejection doesn’t make you cry–because even if they do turn you down, it’s not like you worked on an application or your resume for hours or anything. All you did was send an inquiring email. Plus, professors get so many emails anyway, that if you sent a professor a request for a recommendation or something, and they turn you down, that professor will probably forget all about it within the ten seconds it takes for another email to arrive in their inbox.

And if it’s a potential employer you sent the email to? Well, it’s still not so bad if you get rejected. You don’t have to accidentally bump into them on campus, and, like that professor, they’ll probably forget all about it once they get their next email.

Like I said, no one likes to be rejected, but keep in mind that it could pay off. I was recently talking to a friend who sent an inquiry email to a company looking for a job and actually got one. In terms of my own experience, I sent out an email to a professor last semester, and she offered me work over the summer, too. Sometimes all you have to do is ask: sometimes, just sending that email is the best thing to do. The stakes are low, and you won’t know until you try, after all.

A Small-Town Kid in New York City

Posted on by
Reply

Location, location, location. Who doesn’t fantasize about the fabulous place they’ll be living in ten years? I know I imagine myself in LA or Phoenix, living in an apartment and working at a publishing company or literary magazine. I will definitely appreciate the warmth of either city I plan to end up in, and I will relish the fact that I will never have to shovel snow from any driveway nor off any roof.

I didn’t always think of myself as a West Coast or Southwest kind of person, though. I, like many young people, had my sights set on New York City for years. An internship I did in Manhattan during the summer I turned seventeen changed my perspective on that particular city, however.

To give you some background, I grew up in Nicaragua and Arizona, and went to high school in a small town in New Hampshire. None of these places have the same crowded crush as Manhattan. Arizona, especially, is known for its sprawling, seemingly infinite desert, which I spent plenty of time traversing in the passenger’s seat of my mom’s car as a kid. As a kid, I definitely grew sick of living in small-town Arizona (even though I appreciate that experience in hindsight), and I dreamed of moving to the big city and making it as a writer.

Until that summer in Manhattan when I worked at the Academy of American Poets on the fringe of the financial district and lived with family friends in Brooklyn, I had been to Phoenix and Boston and Managua, but never to New York City. I don’t think I quite believed before my internship that New York is a city unlike any other, and I thought myself equipped to enter the teeming city with just a tote bag and my meager city experience under my belt.

Upon my arrival in Manhattan, I was immediately accosted by the smells and lights and noises that completely enveloped me, and the way that the city was so crowded that all the buildings and crowds seemed to bleed into each other. During those six weeks when I took the subway back and forth between Manhattan and Park Slope, I couldn’t get used to the constant sensory assault. I loved my internship and am very grateful for the opportunity, but my perspective on the city itself completely changed. I imagined somewhere lively and metropolitan, and NYC  is absolutely those things–however, it’s also very overwhelming for a small-town kid like me. Plus, the East Coast is cold. It snows there.

The internship, overall, was a great, life-changing experience and gave me something awesome to put on my resume, but I’m actually even more grateful that it taught me where I don’t want to live once I’m done with college. It sure wouldn’t have been a good situation if, after graduating, I secured a job in New York City, moved all my stuff up there, and then realized a week later that the city is just too energetic, fast-paced, and crowded for me to be happy there.

I realized, that summer, that sometimes, it’s more valuable to learn what you don’t want to be doing.

4 Tips for Answering That Tough Job Application Question

Posted on by
Reply

My first semester of college was a definite challenge, as it is for many people. On top of the stress of classes, being in a new environment, and making friends, I was trying to figure out what medications I needed to manage my bipolar disorder. Come finals week of that semester, I had figured out the right dosages and was feeling better than I had in years, but the process had been stressful enough that I had to drop down from four classes to three classes and move out of the room I shared with two other students into my own single room. Basically, during my first semester of college I was fighting my own brain, and it was a terrible experience.

What you just read is the raw material for the story that I used on my last job application when asked, “What is a struggle you have overcome?” Now, how can you spin that story so it’s ultimately a tale of overcoming something? Here are a few tips!

  • Make your answer all about how you solved a problem. The moral of the story needs to be how you solved a problem, whether that problem was the faulty wiring in your brain or the heavy workload, or anything else. Just think about how you “fixed” whatever struggle you were facing.
  • Don’t stray too far from the truth. I’m a writer, so I absolutely understand the impulse to make your story seem more intense than it truly was. However, when it comes to these stories, don’t  stray too far from the reality of what happened. Avoid the possibility that you might be caught in a lie. In any case, everyone has overcome something in their lives; I’m sure you can think of some problem you’ve had to solve. My own story about coping with my mental illness certainly doesn’t make me sound particularly heroic, but it doesn’t have to: it just has to be about how I applied a skill to a difficult situation.
  • Rephrase the question. If you’re having a hard time thinking of how to answer the question, try rephrasing it in your head before answering it. A question along the lines of, “What is a struggle you have overcome?” can be rephrased in a few different ways. For example, “How did I make my tough situation less tough for myself?” or “How did I use my skills to solve a problem I faced?”
  • Highlight an important skill you learned or demonstrated. Make sure the reader knows that your story taught you something that is relevant to the job you’re applying for, whether it was how to manage your time, how to prioritize, how to put your trust in a coworker, or basically anything. Alternately, show how the situation gave you the chance to apply a skill you already had.  I “fixed” the problem I faced during my first semester of college by knowing when to ask for help, which was a skill I already had, but was able to apply in that situation.

I hope these tips have been helpful, and can help you write a better answer to the ever-so-popular question along the lines of “Describe how you have solved a problem.”

Gender and the Politics of My Outfit

Posted on by
Reply

In October of 2016, I attended a networking trip to Los Angeles with Scripps CP&R. I was excited for the trip, but full of anxiety about how to dress. I am a transgender man, I had to decide whether to dress comfortably in men’s clothes or dress safely in women’s clothes. Picking a first impression outfit becomes more difficult when I’m not sure how interviewers and potential employers will read me.

Everyone worries about what to wear to an interview, a company visit, or the first day of work. We worry what interviewers and employers will think of us, and whether our appearances will help or hurt us in our attempt to get a job. But some people have to worry more: women have to worry about the high and ever-changing standards placed on their appearances; People of color have to worry about the ways in which their natural skin or hair might be perceived as “unprofessional”; transgender people, too, have to worry about how they present themselves to potential employers, often with the stakes of their safety and their careers.

The decision of “should I dress masculinely or femininely?” also relies on my status as a pre-hormone therapy and pre-surgery transgender person. For any transgender person who isn’t always read as their true gender, deciding whether or not to attempt to “pass” is a constant question. When I get dressed for an interview, I have to decide whether I am going to try to be read as a man, and perhaps fail, or give up and dress in women’s clothes. Wearing men’s clothes means I feel more comfortable in my clothes, but my clothes might influence whether or not I get a job–I might be perceived as a transgender person or as a lesbian, and an employer could, knowingly or subconsciously, decide that someone else is “better-qualified” for the position because they perceive me as a member of the LGBT community.

Dressing in women’s clothes means I will feel uncomfortable in my clothes and definitely uncomfortable in the way I am perceived, but might have a better chance of getting the job or internship I’m trying to get. During the trip in October, after much anxiety, I chose to wear a blouse, a women’s blazer, and trousers, as well as a full face of makeup for the first day of company visits. Wearing these clothes felt outside my range of comfort: I would have much preferred to wear a men’s shirt and maybe a tie.

I was once talking to a transgender friend about how to dress for an interview, and he told me that it was the most important thing to be true to myself: however, I think that sometimes I have to just make the choice that will keep me safe and ensure that minimal drama arises in my life. Sometimes that means being uncomfortable, but, to me, that’s a necessary sacrifice.

If I learned one thing from the networking trip, it was that in the future I would do research on whether the companies I want to employ me are LGBT-friendly. I recommend, for other transgender job searchers, doing your research. Try calling or emailing human resources at your target companies if you can’t find the information online, or reaching out to any connections you might have at those companies. Once you know whether a company will support your identity, you can decide for yourself whether or not it’s worth it to pursue a job at that company.

Sometimes going undercover as your assigned gender might be worth it for a while; sometimes it might be a better option to not pursue positions at companies that don’t support transgender employees. It’s up to you, but having all the information is key and can definitely cut down on anxiety. Ultimately, it’s most important to remain safe, and only take the risks you’re comfortable taking–and make sure you have all the information first.

Further reading: “How to Manage a Job Search as a Transgender Candidate”