Financial Independence

This morning, my dad and I started exploring options for moving all of my stuff up to Minneapolis. There are about a zillion options – full service movers, shipping containers, trucks and trailer rental – and none of them are cheap. All morning, my dad kept pushing one of the most economical options –cardboard PODS. Somewhere in the midst of discussing their sturdiness and stability, I stated that I didn’t trust corrugated cardboard to protect my fairly nice pine furniture, adding that “at the end of the day, it’s my money and therefore I need to feel good about the decision.”

That phrase is one that has come up fairly often in conversations between my dad and me – over topics like prom dress prices, cell phone plans, and out of state tuition – only now it’s coming out of my mouth. And it sounds incredibly foreign.

And that’s when I realized that there is a strong transformative effect in achieving financial independence. I spent the first 18 years of my life making decisions with parental supervision because I was a minor. And for the next four years, they still had a level of authority over my decisions. They paid for my tuition, rent, insurance, and groceries, so where I went to school, where I lived, and what I ate were all subject to their influence. For the first time in my life, I’m able to make decisions regarding what I want completely on my own, without negotiating anyone, and without compromise.

It sounds minor, but it’s not. For one thing, it teaches a level of financial competence and self-reliance. You learn how to file your own taxes, invest your own money, and negotiate your expenses. But you also learn a great deal about yourself. How we spend our money and how we spend our time say a great deal about who we are. Making big financial decisions forces you to make priorities and really parse out what you value. See, the average new UNC grad makes $43,000 a year – more than two times the “living wage” for the most expensive North Carolina counties. We have a lot of expendable income and can afford just about anything – material things like a house and designer shoes, but also things like philanthropic donations, investments in our future financial security, and visits to our far flung college friends. Just not all of it at once. We have to plan accordingly and sacrifice in other areas. And research has shown that the ability and confidence to make these decisions has a huge effect on happiness and well-being. It’s not the money part of financial independence that makes people happy; it’s the autonomy to decide what to be and go be it. Personally, I think that keeping a budget and managing my 401(k) will be the easy part. I’m more overwhelmed by the task of making decisions and creating the most fulfilling life with the resources I have at hand. See, I like a lot of things: visiting my friends and family, yoga, hiking, books, my church, the idea of being able to retire early, making aimless purchases at Target – I could go on for days. The budgeting requires you to attach order and magnitude to the things that you value, which is daunting. So more than anything, I’m really intrigued to see what young professionalism reveals about me.

I’m also really curious about what happens if you skip this step entirely. For three years in college, I was on the “ring by spring” trajectory. It’s crazy to me that, at this point, I would have been leaving one shared nest only to start laying the groundwork for another.  With joint checking accounts comes joint priorities – joint priorities that are intertwined with “his & hers” agendas and further complicated by the fact that I have values that haven’t been tested and proven in the real world. It kind of scares me to admit this, but to put it frankly, until then, I can’t be completely sure of my own nature at this point in my life. (My dad’s a test engineer. Clearly the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.) I don’t think I would’ve been able to figure it out with all of the negotiating and compromising that happen when someone else’s values are so closely entangled.

Now, I’m not saying that getting married early is ubiquitously wrong or that there's a minimum amount of time someone should spent being on their own. People are different. Couples are different. Their circumstances are different. And I don't suppose it matters all that much if you luck out and marry the right person for who you are and who you become. I just think that there’s a tradeoff. Just as getting married at an older age puts some women at risk for missing out on motherhood, I think that getting married young puts some women at risk for seeing themselves more as part of a couple and less as a complete person. Therefore, I do have a bit of apprehension regarding the whole idea that being attached adds to your perceived social worth – where “a Southern belle is nothing but a pretty face and pearls without a man to eat her cooking and appreciate her cleaning.” And I worry about girls who are raised to believe that goodness and Godliness come from being an obedient and submissive wife. Because it all sends the message that happiness and self-worth can’t be achieved on one’s own. Especially not for girls.

But don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a feminist manifesto about how “I don’t need no man.” I do want to get married one day. I' m thinking someone like a hunky orthodontist who likes to read philosophy and go hiking and build things and fix stuff, but as I said, I can't be too sure. Nonetheless, a guy who makes me feel soft and dainty, feminine and warm. I want to live a happy life and have a good relationship full of compromise, communication, and negotiation. But first I want a little bit of time dedicated to me. I want to have a strong sense of what I’m least and most willing to compromise over. And know the difference between compromising and keeling over like a doormat. And I want to have surety that I’m accompanying this fellow through life because I truly enjoy his companionship – not because of the way he takes care of my tax returns or worse, because I can’t make decisions on my own or that I need to be loved by someone else because I don’t love myself.

Some people think it’s a little crazy – to find a sense of excitement and empowerment over getting cut off from mom and dad and getting nudged out of the nest, but I think my Chinese fortune cookie from today’s lunch has it right on:

Dear Carolina: Sorry I Underestimated You.

Dear Carolina,

I’m sorry for underestimating you.

See, when I came to Chapel Hill as a freshman, I wasn’t expecting to experience anything revolutionary. I’d done dual enrollment at Elon in high school and two summers abroad at a liberal arts university in Switzerland. Coming in with 46 credit hours, I thought I had a good handle on how to succeed in college. Go to class, read the book, do the homework, and it should all make sense. If not, there’s office hours or the internet.

And in a sense, I was right. It was a routine that served me well for all of my classes at UNC. Sure, there were a few classes that rocked my way of thinking and truly changed my perspective on a given subject matter. But for the most part, class was class.

What I failed to realize as a freshman is how much more Carolina demands of you than just coursework. Being smart doesn’t mean squat. Everyone’s smart. My peers that really stood out on campus did way more than just study – they were leaders of student organizations – some of them committing up to 30 hours a week for work that was unpaid and ungraded. They’re all passionate about some sort of social issue or service organization and commit time to helping those from Chapel Hill to China. They do research, work internships, and study abroad. And they still make time for a salsa dance or a capella organization that they do “just for fun.” And despite being perpetually slammed with classes and organizations, you’ll still see them regularly at the gym, at the bars on Thirsty Thursday, and tossing a Frisbee in the quad. And they still show up to class  looking impeccably put together.

These friends have been incredibly inspiring. But at the same time, they’ve spent the past four years absolutely wearing me out as I try to keep up. It’s never directly competitive – with different majors and different activities, it’s hard to make comparisons and determine who’s ahead. Instead, it’s more like expectations. You need to find something that you’re passionate about. You need to give back to your community and to those less fortunate. You need to live a well-rounded and balanced life and place value in your friendships. It’s the Carolina Way.

For me, this made for a huge learning curve. I didn’t know what I was passionate about or how I was going to make my mark at Carolina, much less recruit others to a cause, build a team, and manage execution as an organization. Yet I figured it out through my classmates. “How did you get involved in research?” “How much time are you putting into this?” “How do you hold peers in your organization accountable without being to bossy?” Essentially, I’ve spent the past four years badgering my friends with the same question: “How are you pulling all this off?” They’ve done amazing things. I wanted in on their secrets. I think that’s why I ended up working for Career Services; I wanted to make sure every ounce of effort they’ve put into their undergraduate experience is fully appreciated in their post-grad plans.

Looking back over the past four years of college, the most impactful lessons I’ve learned haven’t come from the classroom. All I remember from my freshman music class is that I skipped the entire month of February. And Western Civ? We talked about Caesar at some point. Instead, my biggest lessons have been learned in coffee shops, dining halls, and dorm rooms, over YoPo or on walks across campus. My fellow Tar Heels taught me how to appreciate diversity and how to look at differences in a constructive manner. They’ve shown me how to build momentum and get buy in behind a cause. They’ve taught how to most effectively show appreciation for great work and how to put my foot down if not, how to build someone’s confidence in themselves, and even how to do my own laundry. They’ve taught me about leadership, organization, communication, and drive. And most importantly, they’ve taught me how to live a balanced, fun, and fulfilling life. I’ve accomplished way more than I ever expected to in college, largely due to the friends of mine who have pushed me to do more.

So Carolina, I’m sorry I underestimated you. But at graduation today, know that I won’t take for granted my best teachers here at this university and that I’ll seek them out and thank them for making such a huge impression on my life over the past four years. And I’ll congratulate them on their graduation while I’m at it.

Thoughts on Amendment 1

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying not to write about Amendment 1. It brings up issues of politics and religion, both of which are fairly private topics to me. But after being couch-bound with mono for the past few weeks, it’s been impossible not to get wrapped up in the media coverage.

To start, I voted against the amendment for a number of reasons. Let’s just go ahead and skip over the effects for heterosexual couples in civil and domestic unions. We all know that’s not what Amendment 1 was really about. I voted against because don’t believe that building a loving family is a sin. Much of the scripture on this topic comes from books of old Jewish laws from the Old Testament, along with rules about properly selling your daughters into slavery and how to slaughter animals. But for argument’s sake, let’s pretend it is. Even still I couldn’t bring myself to support the amendment. I think it’s taking on a position as God’s special police force, in charge of regulating the behavior of others, as if I’ve earned some position of righteousness and enlightenment that entitles me how to teach others how to live. And I am not worthy or virtuous enough to tell others what Christianity is supposed to look like. I'm still trying to figure that out for myself.

And beyond that, I’m a strong proponent of the separation of church and state. I think it’s so easy to endorse ideas that coincide with our personal ideas of right and wrong without taking a step back and realizing that not all people share our ideas of morality. For example, I had the chance to indulge in a Sutton’s cheeseburger for lunch today, even though it’s not kosher and therefore sinful under Jewish Orthodox law. Therefore, I think it’s only proper that I return the favor of religious tolerance and acceptance. Forcing non-Christians to live by Christian ideologies has no additive impact on net salvation, but instead breeds frustration and resentment towards a church they might otherwise be open to exploring. And that’s why I voted against Amendment 1. Because I realize that North Carolina is full of people who are different from me – with different sexual orientation, different religion, different personal experiences that have formed and shaped who they are – and that all of these people deserve an equal chance at happiness – regardless of whether it makes other people uncomfortable – so long as no one’s hurting those around them in the process. 

So it’s easy to see that I was disappointed with the results on May 10. It was easy to want to join in the cheap-shot bandwagon of anti-Amendment 1 supporters; to want to join in on the discussion on the parallels of education levels with how counties voted. It’s easy to want to call that 60% of North Carolinians a bunch of uneducated, ignorant, judgmental haters and bigots. It’s even easy to be tempted to point fingers at other Christians for “not doing it right.” 

But I can’t. See, if my reasoning for opposing Amendment 1 comes from my hope that we can not only accept, but celebrate the value of diversity in our communities, it would be hypocritical not to value differences of political thought. Just because I don’t understand their motivations or agree with their opinions, it doesn’t make them wrong. And besides, resorting to hateful and condescending language only has a further polarizing effect on the issue; if someone opposes gay marriage, calling them stupid and hateful only creates more hostility. 

So what I’ve been struggling with most is how to respond in a way that pledges my support for the gay and lesbian individuals who have made invaluable contributions to my community and my life, while still respecting the thoughts and opinions of those in favor of the amendment. Saying nothing would be the most neutral option, yet it doesn’t seem sufficient. 

So instead I’ll share a quote from Zach Wahls, the Iowa teen who testified in opposition to a similar amendment, sharing his experience being raised by two moms. 

“After all, your family doesn’t derive its sense of worth from being told by the state, ‘You’re married, congratulations!’ The sense of family comes the commitment we make to each other to work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. It comes from the love that binds us. That’s what makes a family.”

And just as the sense of family is so much larger than any sort of legal designation, so is the sense of love and the sense of community. Amendment 1 isn’t going to change gay individuals, their families, or their supporting communities. We’re a group of allies that is here to stay until equal rights are realized. We’re a group that’s growing, with roughly 50% of Americans supporting gay marriage, up from 27% just fifteen years ago. It’s not a community that you “have” to be a part of for my friendship or approval, but I sure am proud to be a part of it.

The Misdiagnosis of Senioritis

I went through three and a half years of college with a preconceived notion of what second semester senior year was like. It involved underloading, significantly slacking in the few classes that were on your schedule, frolicking in the quad, and a minor drinking problem. We’d suddenly become unmotivated in the classroom and have an 18-week celebration of the fact that we were finishing college and starting new lives with jobs and salaries (we hoped) instead of exams and tuition. Based on the number of seniors I’d known who suddenly stopped going to class or contributing in group projects, it seemed logical.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past four months, it’s that this preconceived notion was incredibly wrong. It doesn’t work that way. No one wakes up one morning after three and half years of hard work and decides it would be a good day to let it all go to waste. If anything, for me, it was the opposite. I wanted to finish strong. I was even a little distraught over the fact that I couldn’t make Dean’s list with an underloaded schedule; I didn’t want to mess up my track record. I know a lot of seniors feel the same.

So then why do we do it – skip class and slack off – if we’re not lacking in motivation? It’s the fact that we’re motivated to do so much more than just schoolwork. For the past three years, grades have always been our number one priority. I’ve sacrificed hundreds of Thursday and Saturday nights out, afternoons in the pit, even an entire football season to make sure I maintained star student status. But I can’t sacrifice anymore. As these experiences become scarcer, they get more valuable. It’s simple economics.

So we’re taking advantage of them. We’re relaxing with friends out on the quad, eating one last Alpine Bagel, and taking advantage of the Blue Cup Special while we still have the chance. All of a sudden, every friends’ birthday parties and a cappella concerts become a priority because it’s the last time that we’ll be able to go and give our support and show our dedication to each other. (The fact that Wednesday Karaoke night could ever take on that kind of significance still baffles me). We’re trying to stuff as much “college experience” into a few short weeks and making sure we get the most out of eight semesters of tuition. We’re investing in friendships so they’ll be able to sustain the transition to the “real world” where they can no longer be sustained with weekly trips to YoPo.

So to all the seniors from years past who I’ve judged as lazy, inconsiderate slackers, I’d just like to apologize. I always assumed you weren’t considerate of my time, when in truth, I wasn’t considerate of yours.  At the time, I was too bogged down in the short term goals and priorities, the tests, quizzes, and papers, to realize that college is so much more than class. It’s about finding your passions and determining your values, experimentation and discovery, and stepping outside of your comfort zone. It’s about learning how to inspire and challenge others. It’s about learning how to do your laundry all by yourself. It’s about learning how to overcome obstacles and how to handle setbacks. Sure, class helps you get there, but in the grand scheme of things, it takes more than time at the library to allow for college to become a transformative, developmental experience.

So this exam season, sure, I’ll spend some time in a study room. But I’ll also be taking pictures with friends at the Old Well, tossing a Frisbee on Hooker fields, and enjoying a blueberry wheat beer on the patio at Topo. Because it’s a priority.

Good girls and bicep curls

I noticed something really interesting about my weight training class last Sunday morning. The entire class, aside from the two instructors, consisted of all chicks. It’s weird because it’s a technical lifting class. Exercises range from bench press and power cleans to plyo pushups and split squats. There aren’t any pink dumbbells to be found.

I think it’s interesting because a majority of women don’t lift like doctors want them to. Nothing outrageous – just somewhere between a half and a fourth of your body weight – but a lot more than the five pound pink dumbbells marketed towards women. There have been countless studies showing the benefits of this sort of strength training on weight loss and metabolism, bone density, blood pressure, arthritis prevention, and treatment of depression. But regardless, researchers found that most women just kept plodding away on the treadmill.

I was curious as to whether our group of women was inherently different from other women, but my personal experience suggests otherwise – it has something to do with the gym. After taking tumbling classes in middle and high school, I knew the benefits of a little bit of upper body strength and always intended to start a strength training regimen in college. But it never happened. Instead I became one of the treadmill plodders – until I started my membership at Arrichion, my fitness center off campus. But even now that I’ve established a weight training regimen, I feel weird lifting at the UNC gyms. It makes me feel hypersensitive to my femininity. I feel butch. And I don’t like it.

If women’s physical strength is such a public health concern, what mistakes are gyms making that interfere with a regular weight training regimen? Come to find out, it’s an emerging field of interest in sport psychology research. When it comes to the difference between female strength trainers and non-strength trainers, education isn’t a factor – both parties show awareness to the physical and psychological benefits of hitting the weight room. And the notion that lifting heavy weights gives you big, hulking, man muscles? Both groups know it’s just a myth. (Skeptical? Check out Marilou Dozois Prevost, Canada’s professional weight lifter, and tell me she doesn’t look like a girl.) 

The issue, however, had to with the gendered nature of gym space. That makes sense. Look at the Student Rec Center on campus. The first floor features weight machines, free weights, and a handful of cardio machines. And upstairs? Two aerobics studios, lots of treadmills, and two racks of dumbbells that top out at 9 pounds. I’ll let you guess where they keep the latest issues of Cosmo and Glamour. So in order for girls to lift more than 10-20% of her body weight – or in other words, get any of those benefits from muscle strengthening listed above – she’s got to venture down to the “boys’ floor” where she’ll try to keep her femininity intact, but without giving off the impression that she’s down there to meet men.

However, at my new gym, gender isn’t an issue. Men and women cycle through the same stations and everyone’s equally coached to go heavier and get stronger.

But I think it goes beyond just that study’s results on how space is appropriated to each gender. It also has to do with training. Most guys are introduced to weight training through high school sports and taught proper technique from their coaches or each other. That didn’t happen much for girls’ teams, and if any of my friends know the proper technique for a hang clean, they’ve kept that to themselves. So it was nice that Arrichion first introduced their strength training class with a required technique course for everyone – male and female, experienced or not. And since workouts are predetermined, I rarely have one of those “Dear God I hope I’m going this right” moments.

It also has to do with gym staff. When Arrichion first promoted their class, the owner urged me to come out – “I think you’d really like it.” Obviously. I’d been taking their circuit training class focused on muscle endurance (lower weight, high reps) for months. It seemed like a natural fit. But the same schpeel was given to some of the ladies who only ever go to yoga classes. And it was the same pitch used for the heavy lifting guys who are former college athletes. So it wasn’t too surprising that all sorts of clients showed up for technique training – and continue to show up for the classes. And I think it’s this same equivalent treatment that makes all the guys feel comfortable coming to yoga. We all end up working on multiple facets of fitness. And even the music used in class doesn’t reflect any gender specification, with selections ranging from Guns and Roses to Rihanna. Come to think of it, the only time I can think of experiencing any gender differential treatment was the first day when they made a point to direct me towards the women’s locker room.

But if undiscriminating treatment is how we get women to lift weights, it makes me question the efficacy of marketing strategies of a lot of the women’s weight training initiatives. They also use gender related marketing tactics – but instead focus on masculine attributes. Their messages seem to say, “Feminine weight training doesn’t get results, so we must invade the guys’ side of the gym, plunder all of their 20 pound dumbbells, and make heavy lifting into a feminine thing.” They display hostility, aggressiveness, competitiveness, and territorialism – all traditionally “male” characteristics – as if acting barbarically will help you fit in with the big boys in the free weights section at the gym or “win back” a form of exercise that they believe that men currently own.

This style of marketing message has even been adopted by leaders in the fitness industry. Nike’s “My butt is big” ad campaign features a woman who’s enlarged her derriere through tons of squats and lunges, and sees her tush as Border collie that “herds skinny women away from the best deals at clothing sales.” If anyone has a problem with her large, round behind, she invites them to kiss it. Charming, right? First of all, I just wish it worked this way, but after six months of front-squats, back-squats, jump squats, and split squats, I’ve gotten significantly stronger, and it’s gotten perkier, but I still have more of a "dink" than a "donk." And secondly, I just don’t get the hostility and animosity. I really don’t think that women respond well to the idea that being tough in the gym coincides with having a tough exterior. Even though women have been reassured that they can’t biologically grow big, bulky muscles, it’s still too masculine for them. 

I just wish the gyms and the retailers would stop seeing strength training in such distinct dichotomies. Why can’t we treat it more like running, where everyone tries to get better and get faster, men and women can train together with the same training plans, and the pavement never belonged to one gender or the other. Because I just want to lift. I don’t care about out-squatting your girlfriend. I don’t need to herd other women away from good retail sales. I’m not trying to get all “girl power” up in the gym. I just want to lift to be healthy, to keep up with my brothers on the ski slope or my guy friends on the rock wall, and to feel good about the way I look come bikini season. So I vow to lift and lift heavy, with good form, a good attitude, and good will.

Teaching Yoga

Six months ago, I decided I wanted to be a yoga teacher. In 12 hours, I’ll be putting those plans into action and teaching my first class. Preparation has been intense. I’ve learned a series of 32 hatha yoga postures, how to guide students through the sequence, and the anatomical benefits of each pose. I’ve learned how to give physical adjustments and modify or advance each pose to help each student get the most out of their yoga practice. I’ve studied how to stand when I teach, how to speak, how to make each student feel that I care about their yoga practice and that I’m there to help them meet their goals.

To think that my competence in these lessons will be put on display tomorrow, well, it makes me start to hyperventilate. I feel confident with the sequence and the script for each pose, but I’m having such a hard time keeping my lefts and rights straight. And I’m consistently going too fast on my timing. And I feel really awkward standing quietly at the front of the room, doing nothing while the 45 seconds of standing bow slowly tick by.

So for tonight, I wanted to take a step back from all these little details to look at the big picture. Because frankly, with my favorite yoga teachers, I’ve never noticed much about their timing or what they do while I’m holding a pose. They just make my yoga class feel good. I leave feeling a hazy sense of peacefulness and contentment. It’s kind of a high. So in typical Psyc major fashion, I start digging for how they do it.

And I realized that part of it is how they manipulate your emotions. I used to take a flow vinyasa class from a girl named Shannon in Minneapolis, and everything about this chick was mellow – from her hippie braided hairstyle to her soundtrack for class. She’d have us in some crazy balance pose with one leg wrapped around our torso, like, four times, but everything about her voice and the way she carried herself conveyed a sense of calmness that was infectious. You'd slow your breathing and ease the tension in your shoulders. And then it happened - there you were, straight chillin’ with your leg wrapped around your torso four times like it was no big deal. Or there’s my teacher from Raleigh, Lisako, who displays a slight smile during boat series. Now, out of everything I’ve ever done in any kind of yoga class ever, boat series definitely wins as the most hated. You sit like this for just shy of three minutes, sometimes lowering and raising your legs, or criss-crossing your arms, or other torturous variations. But when the person in front of you is smiling a bit, you can’t help but smile back. And apparently it’s psychologically impossible to smile and feel gripping pain in your hip flexors, so just like that, you’re cruisin’, humming along to the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack with the rest of the class.

And they do the opposite for the “cheater” poses – the ones where you’re lying down. One teacher, Carrie, makes her voice a little bit sharper, more authoritative. Most walk around the room as a reminder that class isn’t over yet; we should still be working. They give adjustments to make sure that our practice is continuously growing and we see the benefits of coming to our mats each day.

All of things they do in the most unobtrusive way. See, for me, yoga is a moving meditation. I’m consciously trying to slow myself down from the racing pace of college life. I’m trying to get rid of a lot of the negative, spiteful feelings I’ve collected throughout the day. And that takes a lot of internally oriented focus and energy. I think most teachers know that they need to guide and encourage their students, but the very best are the ones who do it without interrupting that internal focus. Their speech flows evenly and rhythmically. As they walk around the room, their pace is quiet and steady. On a conscious level, they seem to almost disappear. But subconsciously, that’s where they’re doing their work. See, body language and posture register in a different part of our brains, compared to our conscious thoughts and internal monologues. So when Lisako smiles or Shannon relaxes her voice and posture it changes my attitude without me even realizing it. My focus remains targeted towards internal self improvement, undisturbed.

And that’s when yoga feels good. I’ve pushed myself and I feel accomplished, but I never felt myself struggle. I’ve had the chance to fixate on my emotional well being and actively change it. I’m limbered up, sweaty, and a little dehydrated – and if I had to guess, it’s a taste of that whole “enlightenment” thing.

That’s what I want from my class tomorrow – not to nail my script 100%, or finish the class in exactly 1 hour, or get my class perfectly folded into pretzels. I want yoga to feel good – to create that hazy sense of peacefulness and contentment while perched atop their mat.

Namaste.

Campus Culture and Professional Success

Last Thursday, the Daily Tar Heel’s opinion page featured an editorial on our work here at Career Services. Their stance: UCS has awesome resources that go under-utilized due to a lack of outreach and student awareness. As the Director of the Career Peers program, it’s my job to oversee peer outreach and mentorship on behalf of the office, so for obvious reasons this article stayed on my mind for the past few days.

Much to my chagrin, I know of classmates that don’t know about Career Services. I have friends who know about UCS, but don’t think the office really fits their goals (pre-grad school kiddos, I’m looking at YOU!). I know of people who know about UCS, know they need to visit, and out of intimidation or laziness or some other factor never make it into our office.

So how do we fix it? Perhaps more marketing. But when there’s a budget involved, there becomes a tradeoff between allocating money for marketing purposes vs. the actual resources we’re trying to promote. Emails are sent, cubes are painted, ads are printed, fliers are distributed, but it’s just not doing enough. So for the past five days, I’ve wondered to myself how we get people’s attention. I started to reflect on my own career exploration. How did I end up at UCS? What experiences did I have that prompted me to seek out a career counselor and how can we create similar experiences for other students? After some reflection, I realized a lot of it could be credited to Dr. Penn, my Psyc 101 professor from freshman year.

Now, for the record, Dr. Penn doesn’t know me. I was one of 400 students in his class. I never went to office hours. My class attendance was less than perfect. How did he manage to have a profound impact on my career development? Our first day of notes covered different types of professional psychologists, and the description for industrial psychology really caught my eye. Studying the social interactions of people at work sounded interesting, so I did a bit of Google searching afterwards, reading a few articles on graduate degree programs and career options in the field. I didn’t really think of it again until my parents pushed me to start thinking of internships during my sophomore year. I remembered my interest in industrial psychology and worked with UCS to find an internship in a similar field, and ended up settling on human resources, where I would have the opportunity to put theories from industrial psyc research into practice.

Seeing as Dr. Penn spent ten minutes covering these professions on the first day of class, I’m going to venture to guess that he wasn’t intending on sparking any career epiphanies. But for me, it did because it gave me the message that if I enjoyed his class, I would likely enjoy those jobs. Seeing as Carolina is a liberal arts university, I think this is the link that’s missing for a lot of students. We can take classes in Ancient Roman Law and Russian Literature – classes that don’t exactly match up with a specific profession – and even if you love the class, it’s hard to know how to turn these passions into a professional career. It’s hard to figure out what sorts of transferable skills you’ll be learning through these classes in order to market yourself during the job search. And what’s most troubling is that many times, it’s these departments that avoid giving any career advice. Their students go in so many different directions after graduation that they give up on giving much guidance. But by incorporating five or six related careers into their curriculum, professors can become one of those teachers who really make a difference by helping their students find a way to turn their academic interests into a full time job.

And the thing is, even if students hate that class or rarely go into related careers, it does make a difference. It sends a message. It tells students that we expect Carolina students to be professionally successful, which requires students to start thinking early about their careers and make plans about how they’re going to reach their goals. It changes the culture of UNC from a liberal arts university where students are intellectually curious, to a university where students learn how to carry their intellectual pursuits well beyond their college career.

And that is what will make a difference in professional success for Carolina students – a change in the campus culture about how we view jobs and professional development. It takes something bigger than UCS that can make this kind of difference. It has to be a shared effort by the office, our professors, our peers that everyone can and is expected to achieve professional success. I think back on my experience as a freshman, and I remember tons of things I did because they’re what you do as a Carolina student. I fell in love with Carolina basketball.  I felt weird being the only one of my friends without a second major or a minor and started looking for one of my own. I went for a run on the first few pretty days of spring because it’s just what Tar Heels do. So what about career exploration and career development? Why can’t we all be more like Dr. Penn and lightly suggest that we start thinking about these things early? That’s how we’ll get every student to do something with their UNC degrees – besides just frame it.

Analytical by Nature

The first time I typed “Analisa” into Microsoft Word, that familiar red squiggly line popped up underneath. “Did you mean ‘analysis?’” the program asked. I think it was some kind of prophecy. I grew up to become an incredibly analytical young woman.

I like to analyze things. Solve puzzles. Find patterns. I like numbers; using statistics to make comparisons and look for trends. I like books riddled with symbolism and thematic patterning. But people are my favorite. I love analyzing people’s behavior and actions to get at what they’re thinking, or the way they think, or who they are.

Sometimes this is a blessing. My roommate has told me many times that I’m a good listener and I give good advice. I’m pragmatic, reasoned, reflective, and careful. But it’s also a curse. I tend to be a little guarded when it comes to meeting new people. I’m busy keying into the way they act and their behavior, figuring out who they are. And since I know how much weight my actions, my body language, words, and tone each carry, I’m careful about what I’m conveying and slow to get to know. And for that reason, things can get a little awkward. Meeting new people, interviews, things of the like – they all force me outside of my comfort zone of listening, reading, and watching others until I know how to respond.

So why write a blog? Partially because I’ve learned a lot from observing other people. Also, because it forces me to start talking about myself. And frankly, partially because some of the resulting awkward moments in my life are just too funny not to share.