skills – Penn & Beyond

Embarrass Yourself This Summer

Natty Leach, Associate Director A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across Mike Boyd’s Youtube channel dedicated to learning new, often frivolous, skills. The first video I came across, for instance, focused on an MIT physicist’s peculiar ability to quickly make a dotted line across a chalk board.

For the chalk trick, it only takes Mike a few minutes; other videos chronicle upwards of 8 hours of attempts. Regardless of the task at hand, every video shows him starting from scratch with what some might consider embarrassing results. And that’s what I found most impressive about these videos—through every failure, no matter how public, he betters himself until reaching the goal in mind. So this summer, I recommend that you do something completely new and different, even if it feels embarrassing to try at first. Whether you’re busy at a new internship or just taking a break this summer, do something you’ve never done before, no matter how big or small, and relish in eventually conquering it. If you’re not as bold as Mike and would rather do some trial and error before hitting the big stage, here are a couple of projects that you can easily do, embarrassment-free, from the comfort of your couch: A small thing to easily familiarize yourself with this summer: Handshake – Career Services’ new job and internship platform. Mastering Handshake will only take you a couple of minutes. Check out our Handshake Hints on getting started. If there’s anything I can stress, it’s completing your profile and marking some career interests. Handshake’s homepage shows you opportunities that are molded around your interests so the more choose, the more you’ll see. A bigger project you could tackle: Anything on Lynda, a tutorial database that’s free to Penn students. Lynda.com Lynda has a ton great, skill-oriented tracks you can follow along with. Most videos are digestibility small (10-20 minutes) while full collections can total 40+ hours of hands-on training. Last year, I took a few courses on drawing, game design, and JavaScript.

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Working in the Complaints Department

Last week I went to a comedy show in Old City where the comedians and most of the audience were in their 20s, perhaps some in their early thirties. One comedian, riffing on the strange habits of co-workers, began his set up with this question to the audience: “How many of you don’t like your jobs?”

Guess what? There were about 3 people, including myself and my friend (a law professor) who indicated we were happy with our work. I imagine this crowd of Millennials isn’t exactly a random sample; but with all these dissatisfied employees, needless to say there were some good implications for MY job as a career counselor. Clearly there will be a demand for the kind of service I provide from the upcoming generation.

And so I began to wonder, what was going on? Was this about the economy and the lack of opportunity for 20-somethings? Was this about the contagion of emotions, so if you work in a place with a negative atmosphere or are surrounded by friends with discontented attitudes you too may adopt the negative mood? Is it just plain cooler to complain?

I admit I don’t yet have an answer to the questions posed. I could see that there may be some positive value in being collectively disgruntled, a strength in feeling that if things aren’t “right” at least you can commiserate.* But my reaction is to consider the opposite approach: that finding what you like in work gives you the energy to address problems or make changes and a sense of purpose and satisfaction. For example, there I was on my time off, finding the opportunity to think a little more deeply about my work while listening to the audience laugh at the pitfalls of a comedian with a coworker who blamed the office printer for the flatulent noises coming from his cubicle.

Few individuals find their work life perfect, but each can make the choice of focusing on what they do enjoy. Like today’s Millennials, I graduated from college into a recession, and along with many other young people landed two part time jobs doing entry level work that was not very intellectually engaging. Even so, I found that I enjoyed a feeling of professionalism, because I knew the employers I worked for needed my efforts, I liked helping people, getting recognition for my work, and organizing and implementing my own projects. Eventually I chose my profession, returning to school for a graduate degree in counseling based on the insights I gained from my administrative positions.

You can find your work in the “complaints department,” perceiving your experience as bad if there are elements you don’t like, but even a job with clear limitations – one that is frustrating or “dead end” – can give you something positive in the future including an ability to face challenges, know yourself better, and at the very least make a memorable joke.

* There is a fair amount of information out there about how negativity affects the workplace. See this article on complaining in the workplace and note Wharton Professor Sigal Barsade’s work. (Also see: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1708.)

Developing Professional Skills in Unexpected Places

My daughter got married this fall and, because she and her fiancé were getting married in Philadelphia but live in Canada, I helped them with a lot of the organizational activities, including creating, refining and using the master invitation list. At the start, it became apparent to me that, in order to do this most efficiently, I should learn how to use Excel.

Younger readers to this blog will think to themselves, “Doesn’t everyone know how to use Excel? It’s so basic.” I’m of the older generation who started using computers in my second professional job in the late 1970’s and bought my first personal computer in 1983. And while I have learned (and forgotten) a whole raft of programs over the last three decades, I stayed away from Excel, partly out of fear – it looked too complex and numerical for me — and partly because my office mainly uses Access for data management.

I’ll never be an expert but, in addition to being able to make mailing labels for the invitation, I was able to keep a running tally of who was coming on which side and create files for seating arrangements, dietary preferences and escort cards
I’m telling you this because you need to remember that what you do outside of class, the library or the lab may help you in your job search or, if you’re already employed, do better in your current job.

Undergraduates are very good at including extracurricular activities on their resumes along with the GPAs, but graduate students (the group I work with at Career Services) are less likely to think of them as opportunities where relevant strengths are developed and demonstrated. In fact, many will say, “I don’t have time for anything extracurricular!”

It doesn’t have to be organized activities and you don’t have to do anything big or be very engaged in. For another example from my life, there are currently a lot of assessment activities going on in student services offices and some of the assessment methods involve using rubrics. When my children were younger their school used rubrics to assess learning outcomes and involved parents in the process. So now I may be using something I learned about in a somewhat passive way, and I imagine you have done something similar.

So, expand your thinking in regards to your skills. As the line from the “hokey-pokey” says, “put your whole self in!”

Your Career: It’s a Family Affair

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family” (Anthony Brandt)

One of the most interesting classes I took in graduate school included a project where students created a “family tree” of relatives’ professions, going as far back as possible in their family history. The goal behind the exercise was to learn about family impact on individuals’ career choices. Sometimes family influence, especially parental expectations, has an obvious impact: ie “I am paying for your Penn education to get you the best pre-med training possible” – other times, it is much more subtle – ie “We just want you to be fulfilled and productive.”

When I have a career counseling session with a student, I am aware that in some way their family is in the room with us. Families influence what we value (money, prestige, productivity, intellectual achievement, helping others). Families influence the geographic regions we think are open to us in our work. Families influence what occupations we are exposed to: know any Resort and Panoramic Illustrators? How might you know to pursue a career like that unless your parents were skiers or you were raised at 5,000ft?

This is part of my family tree:

What are the themes here? Is it surprising I might be a career counselor at an institution like Penn? Even though no one in my family has held my kind of job before, most of my family’s career paths involved teaching and “helping” positions working with people. Skills required: strong communication, assessment and problem solving, empathy. Most of my family worked for themselves in private practices or worked in educational institutions. No one (in all three generations) chose to spend time in corporate environments. Another theme is the level of education in my family. My family let me know that they expected educational achievement and success but beyond that I got no direct instruction on what I “should be” professionally. Despite this apparent freedom to choose, it’s easy to see in my case, that “the apple falls not far from the tree.”

Have you thought about the ways in which you have skills, interests, and other experiences in common with your family? What have you considered to be an option, but don’t know anyone who has done it before? What choices have already been made for you? How important is your family to your career plans? These topics are great for you to explore on your own, or with a career advisor.

Here is a link for parents about career planning for Penn students. If this really interests you, you may have a career in genealogy to consider….