ariapluscat: July 2013

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Internship advice

I'm going to do a few posts to provide advice for interns. I really struggled when I first got my internship with all sorts of questions. This is certainly natural: most minimum wage jobs and academic settings are a completely different work paradigm than an office job or internship.

These posts will provide some basic advice for interns, from starting out to finishing up.

These are a few key approaches to be an amazing intern.

Attitude: Interview

Your internship is really just a very long interview. Receiving an internship is just getting your foot in the door; you still have to continue to be an amazing potential employee. You haven't made it in yet. While you should be proud of landing the internship, you should realize that this is just the first step to making a good impression at the company and with your supervisor. Even if it seems that you will be likely give the job, look further: you can still see this as an interview for the next job that you apply for or the promotion that you will want.

Much like an interview, every day you should be on your best behavior, looking out for pitfalls and opportunities.

Thank you letters

Gratitude is an amazing thing to demonstrate. People are always happy to help someone who take the time to pat them on the back and return that help. Especially in well established companies and those jobs that gave you your first experience, gratitude for the opportunity to work is expected.

Write thank you letters for being interviewed, for recommendation letters, for being mentored, for the opportunity to work. If you can, give back some sort of value to the person who helped you. This could be sharing a bright idea that they inspired, pointing out an opportunity for funding, or offering to put them in contact with a professor at your school who you think they would get along with. They helped you so you should do your best to help them.

Don't discount what you can do to help them! These small acts coming from you now will signal how truly motivated you are and that you will be an important professional connection.

Thank you letters should be well written in content and put on nice stationary. An email will not cut it.

Proofread and Perfect

When you first get an assignment, ask questions about it. Try and get a sense not only of what you are asked to do, but why and what your supervisor truly wants. Don't pretend like you know what you're doing. It's better to ask questions than make mistakes.

Here are some useful questions:

Basic details

Would you like this saved as a pdf or word document?
Should I print this in color?
Who should I copy on this email?
When do you want this by?

Conceptual questions

What is the target audience of this project/publication?
What is the goal of this project/publication?
Do you have an previous examples?
How was this program developed?
What is the latest innovation for this program?

Work quickly and efficiently but make sure to keep up the quality of your work. Proof read everything you do. The best way I've found to proof read is to print out everything and read what I've written multiple times.

Share ideas and innovation

Having asked meaningful questions about the project, think about the project. How would you run this project? What could be added to the project? Where would there be problems?

Once you know what is wanted of you and what is being asked of you, do both and add your own spin to it. If you can, add some sort of innovation to the task. Are you making an event program from Word document? Make the program in Publisher; explain to your supervisor that it will be easier to print. Create several designs for the event program, designs that fit with the feeling the event is going for. Do everything you can to make a perfect product.

I also ask other coworkers to look things over or bounce ideas before speaking to my supervisor. This shows initiative and, when I credit the coworker for sharing their idea, humility and good teamwork.

The point

You are you. You can do a lot to become a better worker. But to be a truly excellent intern, you need to show yourself as an excellent worker and as someone who can add to the company.

What you add is about who you are.

If you're an amazing social butterfly and spend tons of hours running events for your sorority, take that to your job. Be Elle Woods. If you're a quiet dreamer with tons of ideas, work them over in your mind and then share them. Take your inspiration from the imagination and rectitude of Tesla. If your social skills are so so, but you love the technical side of things find an office that understands this, find a task where you technical skills can shine as you work independently, find your niche.

You can't be happy constantly changing who you are; you can't be a good worker if you hide your best aspects.

Internship advice

College Men's Common Criticisms of Feminism

It seems like if you get a group of college kids together, late at night when there's just enough trust to let conversations start flowing, it's inevitable that a guy will steer the conversation toward a critique of feminism.

Why do guys feel so much of a need to harp on feminism?
And if guys want to criticize feminism, why do they only want to criticize it when they feel that the criticism isn't going to leave a safe space?

Read more for the common criticisms and my run down on why this happens.

The things that men always bring up against feminism:

privilege isn't real because i don't think i benefit from it

bonus points for a story of a bootstrapping story of independent success

if feminism is about equality why is it femin-sim? why not equal-ism?

bonus points for claiming men and women are equal because we can both vote

women pay less of car insurance so there's no such thing as a pay gap

bonus points for claiming women's low car insurance is strange since women can't drive

why are women so upset that they have to shave their legs? i shave my beard

bonus points for challenging women to find a guy who doesn't care

but really, friend zone

bonus points for stories of personal experience

i knew this one girl who was a bitch... so... yeah

bonus points if the girl wasn't actually a bitch

girls get benefits from being hot so it's not bad to want them to be hot

bonus points for claiming natural beauty is more attractive anyway

it's a natural thing for guys to be agressive and it's encouraged by society for the good of everyone

bonus points for also claiming that women can just ignore all societal expectation

If these are honest concerns for the sake of advancing women, why don't they bring them up publicly? For the benefit of everyone? For the benefit of their beloved "equal-ism"?

The answer is of course that these aren't for the benefit of feminism. These criticisms are really just worries that college guys have about losing their privilege. These guys voice their loss of power to encourage their female friends to give men back power, to placate their male friends with subservience and docile explanations for why we women folk have encroached so far.

And their concerns reveal and underlying ignorance and backlash that ought to motivate women even more to pursue feminism. It's so angering to hear these "criticisms" again and again, as if feminists haven't written extensively on these topics already.

College Men's Common Criticisms of Feminism

Refocus: Upcoming internship and career posts

I wanted to take a post to refocus myself. This internship is a totally new experience for me; I've never worked in an office before and I find myself both excited and tired by what that work experience is like. I want to refocus myself so that I can better help you: it's only by having a good sense of my goals that I can share with you advice of how to pursue your goals.

Here are a few posts to look forward to!

How to make a good impression at your internship
Connecting to others in a workplace
Internship Advice Collection
Initiative: Internships and being your best
Internship Outfits!
How did you learn about Art Conservation?

Read more for the commentary on refocusing!

I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how I can get towards my dream of preserving artwork, combining my love of science with my passion for the arts. It seems like the people who end up in the conservation field enter it from, not only a place of exceptional comfort and privilege, but from a different academic setting than I'm in. As much as I love MIT, we don't have studio art classes or a strong art history department. Not to mention that conservation seems to be a bit taboo- those who love art history are frightened of the technical requirements.

Additionally, I want to refocus this blog. I want to share something valuable with all of you. Your reading or just stumbling on this blog means so much to me. I find writing and explaining my experience to give me a lot and the whole process of working on this blog gives me a lot of focus. Writing to you, as friends, is an external promise that motivates me to work hard. I feel honored to be able to share with you; I don't want to break that honor.

Part of that honor, I think, needs to be to turn this into something positive and valuable. I feel that there is a lot of personal meaning and academic advice catalogued in this blog. I want to continue to expand on this and start sharing financial and professional advice. I want i choose to refuse to reflect how I'm growing and changing: the books I read, how I pursue a career, my worried about student loans, the paintings and sketchs I make, and all the amazing things that are helping me to grow.

Refocus: Upcoming internship and career posts

How to make a good impression at your internship

Connecting to others in a workplace

Internship Advice Collection

Initiative: Internships and being your best

Internship Outfits!

How did you learn about Art Conservation?

Read more for the commentary on refocusing!

Moving Forward From Failure: Get Started!

I find failure to be the most difficult thing to overcome. Maybe it's the fact that failure had such a high cost in my youth. Maybe it's just that failure represents the effort put into the attempt not being quite enough.

via: Left handed toons People don't actually laugh at our failures

But here's what I do to get over my fear of failure and get started on a project.

Mentally Approaching Failure

During our youth, it seems that many of us were told that talent or intelligence meant never failing, having things come to us easily. Therefore, when we face difficulty or worse yet failure, we question one of the fundamentals of our identity: our talent. The ideology behind this comes from the concept of a Romantic genius, a person with natural talent whose work far exceeds what practice and route learning can achieve in the untalented.

But this is a silly notion. Even the Romantic geniuses had failures!
Friedrich did studies for his paintings; even The Wanderer had its precursor. Chalk Cliffs is nowhere near the statement as the The Wanderer. It's not a shame to the artist that he went through a process of refinement for his ideas. That's what failure is: the process of improvement.Van Gogh did not immediately paint a perfect canvas: often he painted over his failures, adapting them to the improvement of his next work.

Fear of Mockery

Our greatest fear seems to be that we will be laughed at or mocked for our failures.

Let's remember van Gogh. Most art historians lament that he painted over his "failures." They wish that they could see the process that he went through, much as they pour over the sketches of those painters trained by the French Academy.

And okay, somebody laughed at your failure? So what? What are they doing? Instead of taking that time to be improving themselves, they're paying attention to you. If anything, that means that you're already succeeding. You're gaining attention for your new work. You've got an audience for your future success. You're making someone else feel happy, maybe a vindictive happy that reflects on their inner demons, but still happy. So don't worry about it.

The Cost of Failure

"I spent so much time working on it but it didn't turn out right."
"Look at all the money that went into that ugly thing! What a waste."
"My reputation's ruined by that fiasco. No one will let me try again!"

We've all heard or said these things about our own efforts that ended in failure.

But what have we said about the profits of success?

Consider failures investments. Don't jump into large ones; slowly build. Develop a skill. It only takes a single success to put you on the market, but all success requires skill.

In the case of drawing: Start out on cheap newsprint as you learn to draw or paint. Invest in a few nice sketchbooks. When those are filled, you'll see improvement. You'll have the wisdom to choose the style and medium that best suits you. A few quality finished works on canvas will yield more and more knowledge, based on the sketches you continue to do on cheap paper. Finally, you'll have a piece that satisfies you. You can send this succes to a gallery where it may or may not be accepted. But you will always have the skill of drawing, a skill that can continue to grow.

Moving Forward From Failure: Get Started!

via: Left handed toons People don't actually laugh at our failures

But here's what I do to get over my fear of failure and get started on a project.

3 Keys: Through the internship

So you have an internship and you've been there for a while. The glow is wearing off and your familiarity with the copy machine might be starting to wear on your nerves. But you want to keep up the good work you had that first week! You really want to do a great job!

Well there are 3 Key means to make sure you stay on the right track during your internship.

Read more for these 3 tips.

Stay humble

You are not too educated or too haughty to get coffee, photocopy or do any other menial task. This should be obvious. Stuffing envelopes or entering data into excel spreadsheets may not be what you look forward to in the morning, but it's what you do with a smile once you get to work.

Take a little initiative with these things. If you're entering data, offer to find averages of attendance. Proof read the program of events before you make 500 photocopies. Ask if anyone wants fair trade or organic coffee. These little moments of initiative won't require much from you but will certainly get you noticed.

Perhaps most obvious: don't complain at work. You're welcome to do so to your family and friends off hours. But smile through the day and keep a good attitude.

Stay motivated

No matter what you should be doing you best work. Whether your boss has a bad attitude or the metro wasn't great that morning, you should be doing the best you can. Keep asking for things to do and projects to work on. If you can suggest a new idea, brainstorm against another coworker you feel comfortable with.

Try to avoid negativity at your internship. Appreciate what you can do and the accomplishment that you get out of your assignments.

Keep looking for opportunities. The adrenaline of the first week might have worn off, but the opportunities haven't gone away. Keep looking for them!

Meet with your supervisor

If you can, take the time to meet with your supervisor and get a sense of what you are doing well, how you can improve, and how you can better understand your supervisor's role in the company.

Ask about how your supervisor got into the field, what they enjoy about the company, what trainings they suggest.

Their advice will be very valuable to you - along with the fact that you are showing interest in them and motivation for your career. This can be a good way to work in networking if you're on the less chatty side.

3 Keys: Through the internship

How to Be More Awesome

I'm a big fan of MissJessicaHarlow. Seeing the opportunities that she's making for herself and opening for her fans is amazingly inspiring. Not to mention her fabulous sense of style and humour.

Check out her video on how to be more awesome!

How to Be More Awesome

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Who's who at an internship

It can be really difficult to start a new job, especially an internship where you know that you will be relying on the good opinions of others to get recommendations or job offers.

Of course different organizations will have different people and different organizations of power. But this is a good rundown of who you'll probably meet at a your internship.

Read more to find out Who's Who at an internship and a few hints about who you are!

Intern supervisor

You've probably already had plenty of contact with this person in the process of getting your internship. The intern supervisor most likely is in charge of all of the interns in different departments. This is the person that you should touch in with periodically; most likely they'll be the one that schedules your meetings and trainings. If your supervisor has any problems with you... well, the intern supervisor knows. And lets you know too.

The intern supervisor is also generally the person you go to if you are having any difficulties. If your access badge hasn't come or your supervisor is asking you to work 50 hours a week, you should talk to the intern supervisor about finding a solution. They serve as a good mediator between you and the larger company, making sure you get proper respect and treatment. The intern supervisor will also have final say over your recommendations and your review.

Direct supervisor

Your direct supervisor is whoever is in charge of the office you are in. This supervisor is the person who directly assigns you tasks. Some supervisors are happy to have interns and will truly take you under their wing. Others will see you as an imposition and do their best to ignore you, despite your desire to work. Still others will simply see you as another pair of hands and give you a never ending line up of dull tasks.

You don't have much control over how your supervisor decides to treat you. You do have control over how you react. Always be polite and professional. Do your best to ask for challenging work; when you complete a task, check with the supervisor that it has been done properly and ask for more work. If you are curious about something, take initiative to research it and then ask if that information is correct.Your direct supervisor will hopefully see your motivation and creativity as an addition to the office and take advantage of it.

Obviously, your direct supervisor is important: they are going to be the one giving you referrals and having a large say in the decision of whether to offer you an opportunity to return. Try to impress them by working hard and working smart! If you'll lucky, your supervisor will appreciate your dedication, fostering a great relationship.

Coworkers

You may have a closer relationship with others in your office. Having a coworker who has taken you under your wing or who you can consistently turn to for assignments can be a really great thing. I find that other coworkers who still remember what it's like to be an intern can offer a great working relationship. If you have questions about office politics or how to relate to your supervisor, your coworkers can be a good resource for such questions.

Do remember: Coworkers are still above you! Don't get too friendly with them or forget their place above you!

Also remember that coworkers have more loyalty to their supervisor than to you. If you choose to gossip about your boss to them, don't be surprise if that gets back to your boss. Offices are small places, made smaller when people get too cozy with one another. It's not bad to make friendships, but remember to respect the workers who are above you.

Fellow interns

I think that maybe the best thing about an internship is meeting other people. Your fellow interns are also at college, with an interest in same career field as you but they have a totally different perspective to offer you. Talking to fellow interns can give you a sense of what the field you're in is like, the personality of your future coworkers, and even inspire some pretty amazing goals for once you head back in the fall.

Being open and respectful to your fellow interns is the best thing you can do. Do your best to avoid competitive comparisons and instead focus on the common ground. If you're all in an unpaid internship, focus on exchanging tips for cheap lunch vendors or easy tutoring gigs rather than competing to see who has the best or worse living condition. Just being pleasant and constructive can go a long way.

After the internship is over, see if you can meet up with or at least email a few of the interns that you connected with. Ask them if they're doing alright, when they're moving back to campus or what they though of the internship. If you feel an honest connection, such an outreach could start a valuable friendship.

Volunteers or customers

On the offhand chance that your work will have you dealing with volunteers or customers, remember to be kind and generous with them. Be as helpful and respectful as possible to everyone, no matter how inane (or insane) they may seem. If they are a regular of the program, their input may be very important. Comments from customers or those who volunteer can mean a lot to a small organization- so a compliment for you from someone may be very valuable.

You may rank slightly above volunteers or be trusted to supervise them. But remember: you can get fired. A volunteer can't. So really, who's in a position of power? If you are put in charge of volunteers, try to be as polite and respectful as possible. And don't delegate everything to them. Everything they do, you should do too and work twice as hard at it.

Who's Who and Who are you?

You are who you are. You are a hard working and motivated person- so show that off! Work hard while you have the opportunity. If you have a brilliant idea, work to make that idea have an impression on your company. Be the best that you can be and the world will take notice.

One thing that I would say: I know that a lot of people seem to think that networking is the end all be all. There's this image of networking as the ability to effortlessly charm hundreds of people and inquire on the intimate details of someone's life that you've gleaned from an office party. But that's really not how things work in an office. Networking is about the daily encounters: asking someone if they're alright when they're having a bad day or making the effort to offer to help with something when someone seems particularly stressed along with doing your work as well as you can.

Who's who at an internship

10 Things You'll Love About Being Home on Break

Let's get back to the positive side after the post of 10 Things you'll miss about college on break!

Lesson: It's good to vent and verbalize the things that bother you, but refocus on the things that you enjoy. Figure out how to add more of the 10 things you love and remove the 10 things you don't.

Read more for the list of 10 things you'll love about being home!

These are the things that I love about being home:

Being with your family
Your own precious bed
Flipping motherfudger kid-cussing
Catching up with local friends
Avoiding dorm drama
Home cooked meals
Early bedtime and good rest
Your own bathroom to arrange as you like
Free laundry for your clothes
No stressful exams

There are so many great things about being home. Being in the place that you grew up and dreams up so many goals can really help to center you, give you energy to keep pursuing what you want to be doing.

10 Things You'll Love About Being Home on Break

10 Things About College You'll Miss on Break

There are a lot of great things about college - the level of independence that you get to experience - things that you lose when you go home for break. Sitting here in Virginia, I'm thinking about the things I miss about Boston and the MIT campus.

Read more for my list of 10 things about college you'll miss on break.

1. Going where you want to when you want to

If you are returning to the suburbs from the city, then you're probably missing the ability to walk wherever you want to. And maybe you've gotten roped into driving a sibling somewhere. You don't realize it while you're at college, but the ability to go where you want to when you want to without answering to your parents is really great.

2. Blasting music

Whatever the rules are for your dorm, I'm sure you've found the time and place to blast your music. Your home, however, probably doesn't have a place to blast music. And it's likely that even if you could blast your music, the commentary from parents and siblings would ruin the joy of airing your music out.

3. Cussing

I don't cuss that much, but I do relish the occasional swear when the moment is right. The moment is never right at home. Worse than that, if I slip out a cuss word a younger sibling will parrot it back a million times.

4. Seeing your college friends

This one is obvious. Even if you're in the same area, it's different to live with someone and see them all the time vs. schedule a meet up to get coffee. I really do miss seeing my college friends all the time and our little impromptu hot chocolate runs.

5. Avoiding the home-town politics

I found that college really changed my politics. I now have very different politics than the people in my home; even my approach to discussing politics has changed.

6. Getting tons of take out and snacks

Everyone knows that college kids eat a lot of snacks and take out. But when we return home, we get all sorts of sass for eating poorly. I don't think that the occasional snack is bad, but it's hard to convince the parents to buy it.

7. Waking up late

College might not start until noon, but the rest of the world wakes up to start at 9am. It can be a painful transition back to the early bird life, especially if you want to chat with college friends that live in a later time zone.

8. Leaving your room a mess

I don't think that I'm particularly mess but when I'm working on a project I do like to have my things spread out. Also, I'm one of those people that's opposed to making their bed. But when I'm at home, I have to make my bed and clean up all my things each night. If I don't there's a scolding waiting for me!

9. Wearing whatever clothes you want

I do love different gyaru, mori and lolita fashions, but no one at home knows what these things are, much less understands them. Even in the case of wanting to wear party clothes, there's really no opportunity. Work and family don't understand your clothing choices the way college students with similar interests do.

10. Academics

I won't say much about this but I think we all know that boredom starts to set in a few weeks after break starts.