Tag Archives: Passion

The Secret to Standing Out

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When thinking back to your pre-college days, you probably remember college counselors explaining that the most successful college applications project a cohesive image of who you are as a person, not just as a student. In essence, the most successful college applications reveal your passion.

Applying to college and applying for jobs or internships isn’t as different as it may seem.

Both admissions officers and employers hope to accept or hire students with an enthusiasm for a subject that they hope to continue exploring. It is the most passionate people who have what it takes to change the world, or at least one small corner of it.

The message that you projected about yourself on your college application was successful enough to get you here. Now, you can use Scripps’ resources to continue developing your passion through clubs or even the classes you choose to take. When applying to jobs or internships remember the experiences you’ve had that excited you most and added to your growing passion(s).

When I applied for my summer job, I noticed that my soon-to-be manager had titled her notes for our interview not with my name, but with “The Feminist.” This was the identity that my resume had projected. And this was the identity that she was curious to learn about in the interview.

In our interview, my manager asked me about feminism right away. She was intrigued by my passion and my projects. She was excited to explain that the CEO of the company I was interviewing for was a woman. She elaborated and described how the company takes a lot of pride in being a company run by women and selling largely to female consumers.

Here at Scripps, my identity as a feminist is not as uniquely appreciated as it was in my high school or it was in my summer workplace. We are a community of intersectional feminists here at Scripps so it is my other passions, like writing, that are indicative of my identity in my communities here. Even within informal groups, like friendships, our passions can create our identities. When studying at the library, my friends will ask me questions relating to writing because they know I love to analyze literature. My identity has been formed by my passion for prose.

Applying to and becoming a CP&R blogger here at Scripps is a unique bullet point for my resume, as well as a small weekly commitment I enjoy. Together with my other commitments and scholarship related to English, being a CP&R blogger exemplifies my passion for writing. Perhaps at my next job interview, my employer will title their notes for me as “The Writer.”

So, whether you have one passion or five, nurture your interests inside and outside the classroom. You will be able to create a lasting impact on your interviewer and have an array of experiences to choose from when asked about your passion. After all, if a subject is truly your passion, cultivating it and investing in it should be an enjoyable way to develop your career. 🙂

Using my Passion in my Summer Internship

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My internship this summer at Building Changes, an affordable housing nonprofit organization, was such an interesting experience. My role in the organization for three months was to learn about and develop an evaluation tool for one of the local programs that Building Changes had funded for three years through two grants—the Family Self-Sufficiency Program at a local public housing authority. Although Building Changes had funded the project, the organization only knew the desired outcome of the program, and not its actual components or the theory behind the program.

One of my tasks was to figure out how the program worked and relay this to my supervisors at Building Changes before developing a way to analyze the program’s success, which would give the program a better chance at receiving future funding and supply information for Building Changes and Building Changes’ donors (most of their grant funding comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and federal sources) about the success of the funding that they provide.

To evaluate the program, I identified the main areas of the program: goal fulfillment, income progression, receipt of public assistance, and program graduation. Using data from the program’s files, I compiled a database of income information, public assistance amounts, goal fulfillment, and graduation rates and developed a series of reports that can be easily run again in the future. Using data reporting software, I compiled a preliminary report on whether or not the Family Self-Sufficiency Program (FSS) program was on track to fulfill its goals and worked with FSS program staff to perfect the data evaluation program and draw concrete conclusions about the program’s success thus far. It was a very steep learning curve to get used to the data software (Crystal Reports and YARDI) that the agency used, especially since they were new to most of the staff there as well, but it was an exciting challenge to figure out how to apply my statistical skills gained in my coursework at Scripps to new kinds of data in a completely different setting.

Although Building Changes and the public housing agency will have to wait another year for new data to be collected and compared to measure progress of the program, the FSS program seems to be on track with other FSS programs in similarly-sized cities. In addition, the housing agency that I worked closely with has shared the data analysis reports that I developed to other agencies with FSS programs that use the same software. Those agencies can use the reports I developed to do similar data analysis, even if the goals for their particular program differ slightly, the reports provide information on all aspects of the program and use the data that all public housing agencies are collect annually.

The work I did this summer felt so intellectually exhausting at the time, but it was so exciting to see the work I did come together at the end of the summer. Although I didn’t get a feel for what the day-to-day work of an actual data analyst does because the project I did was so specific, I learned so much about program evaluation and gained useful skills for future work with data. I love working with data and this summer was such a reassurance that I will have career opportunities to use that passion in ways that deeply impact people.

Editor’s Note: This guest blogger was a 2014 Scripps College Internship Grant recipient. To learn more about the 2015 Internship Grant process, click here.  Deadline Feb. 5.

So You’re in College…Now What? Just ‘Be’

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Ever since I was young, I was enamored by the power of words. Words either in phrases heard over the sounds of a busy street, whispered from one person to the next, or countless quotes all over my computer, my room, or in my head. Often times I look to quotes for career advice on what the heck I should pursue in my looming, exciting, and unknown future. For example, here’s a favorite of mine by Henry David Thoreau, “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” Okay, so I read this and I realize I should be present in the moment and get focused back on my schoolwork. But this phrase begs the question, what defines success? According to Dictionary.com, success can be defined as “the accomplishment of one’s goals” or the “attainment of wealth.”

Now maybe it’s just societal expectations, but often times it seems that most of our lives are influenced by single choices that greatly impact our future (throwback to SATs, am I right?). Isn’t that what the stress of high school and college is about? Getting good grades, so you can get into college, get better grades, so you can get a job, get a great job so you can ‘be successful.’ Whatever that word may mean to you, it seems that our culture perpetuates the concept that what we do in these precious years of higher education determine the rest of our existence. Why yes, what we do during this time is often indicative of the paths we travel down later in our lives. And yes, this may create stress on what to study, who to be, what internship to apply for, and what campus job to get. But this shouldn’t have to come at the cost of not enjoying our time of newly found independence and self-exploration.

The other, very important side to this coin is enjoying the uncertainty and just ‘being’. Now I am not saying to forget or blow off responsibilities, like that looming Core paper, the Biology midterm, or the scholarship application due in a few days, but here’s what I am saying. It is OKAY to be unsure of what you want to pursue academically, spiritually, and personally. Coming to college is not a size fits all t-shirt where once you put it on, all of a sudden you have a plan setting you up for life. Plans fall through, interests change, and new passions form.

So what do I do next? Well if you are unsure, try new things. Take classes that interest you. Be mindful of certain requirements, but be adventurous enough to follow those passions of yours and take that seemingly awesome Anthro class or course on Green Architecture! College is a time of exploration, so enjoy it. Don’t let the burdens of fulfilling major requirements or increased work load prevent you from joining a new club or apply for the internship you think you will never get, because odds are you are just as worthy as the other applicants!

Also, enjoy the present moment and be grateful for the opportunity of even being educated. Well that’s difficult you say? How can I possibly just ‘be’ when I have fifty thousand things to cross off my to do list. First off, you can do both. Existing peacefully and calmly are not exclusive to productivity, they often enhance it. And secondly, being in the present can help you narrow your dreams for the future by being mindful of your current interests. Don’t believe me? Let’s consider the advice of some other important peeps, shall we?

  • Buddha once said, “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
  • Alan Watts, Buddhist philosopher, once stated, “No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”
  • The wonderful, the legendary, and two of the best songwriters of all time, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, wrote in their enlightening and inspiring song “Let It Be,” “When I find myself in times of trouble/ Mother Mary comes to me/ Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
hard-days-night-beatles

Oh how I love you Paul, George, John, and Ringo! Photo via Ultimate Classic Rock

Sooo…let’s just all be like Paul, appreciating the current moment of lifting off and not knowing exactly where we are going to land. Let’s learn to run towards uncertainty, rather than run from it, embrace the unknown, and just ‘be.’ Who knows, maybe this mindful practice will lead you to your newfound academic or personal passion!

Mondays Are Good

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I like Mondays this semester. The pace is perfect – slow and easy in the morning, then there’s a tiny pickup in the afternoon, and then it all winds down nicely in the evening. Mondays are better than Tuesdays or Thursdays because there are fewer gaps in my schedule. I hate having one or two hour blocks of nothing between classes. They’re too short to get any real work done… but long enough that I know better than to waste it on Facebook. Mondays are also better than Wednesdays. Although I have the same classes on both days, they’re different because I don’t get to tutor my little seventh grade munchkin on Wednesdays. I wish every day was a Monday. Huzzah!

 

6:00am-9:00am Sallie Tiernan Field House

The day starts at 5:45am for me (I’m kind of a morning person). I like my job at the Field House. It’s a pretty sweet deal. And the music you hear at the pool? Yeah, we at the front desk take care of that too. Sorry if you don’t like Ellie Goulding. You’ll never have a job quite like your college work-study job. Your boss is a saint, your co-workers are actually your friends, and the patrons aka your classmates are always forgiving and patient. Have a great day and sorry for occasionally swiping your card backwards!

9:00am-12:00pm Clark Humanities Museum

People think I’m so cool when they find out I’m a museum assistant. This is probably because they think I guide tours or decode ancient hieroglyphics on the job. The truth is my job is pretty cool, but I generally don’t do either of those things. Sometimes, I’m more like the museum secretary. I sit at Karen’s desk, answer calls, and shuffle papers. Other times I do more arbitrary tasks. Do you know how to polish silver? I didn’t know until last week. I spent approximately six hours cleaning and polishing French porcelain and silverware for a private event this weekend (see my handiwork below). Am I qualified to run a vintage boutique yet?

12:00pm-1:10pm British Literature / 1:15pm-3:45pm Drawing

When I was younger, my favorite subjects in school were English and Art. As I grew older, I fell out of the habit of writing and drawing in my free time. I moved three times during middle school and, quite frankly, I was more preoccupied with fitting in and making friends than pursuing something that “wasn’t going to get you anywhere”. I just now got back into writing and drawing regularly. Sometimes, when I frown at the glaring comma splices on my Mac screen, when I sigh at the distorted charcoal lines on my paper, I wonder if things would be different if I hadn’t stopped. Sometimes, this makes me sad. Sure, art is not “useful” like business or engineering or medicine. The dean of students in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man once said, “We have the liberal arts and we have the useful arts.” I don’t like the useful arts. I’m not very good that them either (I have a feeling these two things are correlated). But I like the liberal arts. In high school, I learned to love history and politics. In college, I rekindled my love for literature and art. This semester, I’m taking a sociology class at Pitzer and I like that too. I wonder what else I never knew I couldn’t live without. Good thing I have four more years to find out.

4:00pm-5:00pm Tutoring

Have you ever tutored a kid one-on-one before? If you haven’t, you should. You’ll teach him a thing or two, but you’ll probably learn more from him. Kids are amazing because they’re not jaded or worn down by the world yet. After a few tutoring sessions, even without being prompted, they’ll start opening up to you. They’ll tell you about their plans to travel the world, build rockets, and join the Chilean football team. And you can’t tell them they can’t because they’ll tell you that they’ll prove you wrong. Kids remind us that we need to stay passionate about what we believe in and continue fighting the odds. Cheers to that.