Actions

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
―William James


I subscribe to Real Simple's "Daily Thought" email. Every day, first thing in the morning, a quote like the one above wings its way to my inbox to amuse or inspire me. I loved this one, especially paired as it was with this picture (any subtle hints to my husband are purely coincidental), because it reminded me how often I take my own actions for granted. And it got me thinking; how would I act if I was always aware of the difference my actions could make? I tried this today and here's what I've come up with so far today:

• took a few extra minutes this morning to give my kitten undivided attention rather than shooing him from my computer's keyboard. Difference: It put a smile on my face and he seemed to enjoy it.
• took out the garbage and recycling in preparation for our trip. Difference: Now I don't have to ask my husband to do it tonight and I'll come home to a better-smelling apartment.
• sent an email out to my fraternity telling them my plans if elected president of the alumni association. This going to take a big belief that I can make a difference, because I want to implement some pretty significant changes.
• wrote back to some of the people who have emailed or facebook messaged me because I always feel a little odd when I write a friendly note to someone that goes unanswered. Difference: maybe I've averted a friend's sense of awkwardness at my non-response
• used my lunch break to get a bikini wax and pedicure in preparation for the beach. Selfish? Absolutely. Difference in my mood and sense of self: immeasurable (plus such a good feeling meant the woman who performed these services got a great tip).
• focused on my posture while walking today (my new dance teacher has me thinking a lot about this) Difference: I feel more attractive and more confident. This feeling will inevitably bleed into my interactions today.
• Responded with more friendliness and generosity of spirit to my typical customer service issues: people wanting free tickets, vendors wanting us to use their services, and complaining customers. Difference: Much friendlier responses than I usually get and potentially good karma for my company.

Something I'm noticing now that I'm reading through this is how dramatically my choices affect my experiences. Of course that's logical, all of our actions are going to affect us the most, and then those closest to us, and then those we encounter, and so on and so on, but it's nice to know that I'm not as much at the mercy of fate as I sometimes feel I am. Maybe I don't have the power to change the world today, but my actions can still make a difference to those around me and in my own life.

What would you do differently if you were more aware of the difference you make?

Letting the Music Back In

Hello music, it's me again.

I know I've left my Ipod dormant while reading on the subway in the morning. I know I haven't been putting you on when I'm lounging around the house or when I need a distraction at work, but I've had my reasons.

I've never been a music-in-the-background kind of girl. The concept of putting music on just to ignore it has always escaped me...what's the point? If I'm not singing or dancing along I have trouble putting it on (or maybe the reverse is true, I have trouble not singing and dancing along when I put it on). I never knew that the biggest sacrifice of giving up my car to live in New York would be the loss of the perfect, private space to blast a good song and sing at the top of my lungs. Now my life is often noisy and often crowded.

But I haven't been keeping you out to spare my neighbors or my husband or even because I'm too busy. The real reason I've kept you out is that I haven't been doing much for myself lately, and in my mindset of getting from day to day I've been missing the larger picture of what I need to be happy.

I need you, music.

And last week, I found you again. My friend encouraged me to go out for an audition for Candide at a locale theater troupe. I put off preparing an audition and almost didn't go, but at the last minute I pulled something together, marched out the door, and after three hours of listening to other auditions (and about 4 million renditions of "Poor wand'ring one"--all dull as hell) the music was flowing through me and the high E-flat I'd worked into the end of my piece happened effortlessly. By the time I got home, the floodgates were open again. I pulled out every musical theater anthology I owned and sang every song I knew until about 1am. I sang my husband to sleep, and then I kept going. I haven't gone a day without singing since.

Welcome back.

The Right to Mourn (what's not right to mourn)

Every weekday I flip through Metro NY for my dose of the news on my way to the real reason I pick it up: the soduko and crossword page. This page also tends to have room, just across from the horoscope, for an op-ed piece. One of the columnists writes for the Daily Show and I read his pretty regularly, but the rest I can do without. Today, columnist Clark DeLeon echoed the cries of the rest of the media that's obsessed with Michael Jackson's death by telling us that who we should really be mourning is Farrah Fawcett. This reminds me of when the media covered the news of Princess Diana's death 24/7 for about 2 weeks, all the while telling us we were bad people because we should have been clamouring to mourn Mother Theresa, who died at the same time.

Media hypocrisy aside, what really bothers me about this is that there is some assumed right and wrong about mourning someone or something. When I was in high school, my grandmother and my dog died in the same week. My grandmother was in her eighties and I saw her 2-4 times a year. My dog slept next to my bed every single night. You can guess which one broke my heart.

I don't believe that there's a bottom line of personal tragedy which can be reached by adding up the sum of our experiences: Let's see, add two points for regular contact, subtract one for bad qualities, add 3 for tragic and sudden reason for demise...
...it doesn't work that way.

Although my will to live was not crushed by either Farrah or Michael's passing, if I had to mourn one of them, it would be Michael Jackson (and that's a pretty big stretch). After all, as a child of the eighties and not the seventies, I haven't had much to do with Farrah. Michael, on the other hand, has been in my musical vocabulary since I was old enough to listen to the radio. I still blast "The Way You Make Me Feel" when I need a pick-me-up and if the radio stations would ever stop playing "Thriller" these days I might be able to go back to enjoying it once a year on Halloween as most members of my generation do.

So if you want to mourn the death of Billy Mays as loudly as he used to sell OxiClean, go right ahead. I won't tell you you're wrong.

It's (not) my job

Probably the most frustrating phrase you can hear when you're looking for a little help is "it's not my job." Suddenly, the boundaries of someone's job description become so absolute that the person in question cannot act against it to lift a finger to help you. If you're lucky, this phrase gets the add-on of "Sorry," as in "Sorry, it's not my job" which means that the person would help you if they could, but oh shucks, the world is too clearly defined into categories of "my job" and "not my job" and the universe will be thrown out of whack if they test that. Sorry.

"No, it's alright, I don't need you to hold the door while I carry this heavy box through it, I'd hate to overturn the natural order by making you do something that's not your job. Thanks for saying 'sorry,' though, it really makes me feel like you're not at all an ass and are in fact a terribly well-intentioned person bound beyond your own strength but an all-too-confining job description."

The only phrase more frustrating than "it's not my job" when you're an underling with 30 bosses is the exact opposite. Suddenly, you can't even staple a piece of paper without someone asking why you didn't get their permission first, since overseeing stapling is their job and how dare you step on their toes to make that decision. The most frustrating aspect of this problem is that this is the moment when job descriptions suddenly become so elastic that the person in question (and your 29 other bosses) can stretch their job as far as they like to argue any excuse to oversee whatever it is they want. Never mind that two other people already claimed that it's their job to oversee proper staple consumption and office equipment usage, what matters is that the person in front of you suddenly also has a line item in their job description about correct angles of staples on the page that now means they should have been in on the staple decision from the beginning and next time you should know better.

It sounds confusing, I'm sure, to navigate your way through this rather mutable environment, but I have figured out a quick guide for said underling to know where you stand:

--If you don't want to do it, it's your job

--If you want to do it, it's not your job.

I'd wish you luck, but it's not my job. (Sorry)

My Personal Heaven

Based on the numerous times I've uttered the phrase "I'm in heaven" in the past few weeks, I can now imagine that my personal heaven would contain, at the very least, the following:

• A picnic on a sunny day


• Fresh fruit


• A library of books that I could read without interruption - best with sunny armchair, fireplace, and couch.


• A kitten amenable to cuddling and purring (this goes well with the library above)


• Andrew


• Talented musicians who actually enjoy playing/singing for the fun of it


• A home in Brooklyn Heights


• A highway, a fast car, and good music blasting


• A comfy bed that I don't have to get out of unless I want to


• Root beer floats


• A dance floor, a good band, and a room full of partners (but especially Andrew)


• A garden I don't have to weed


• A glass of merlot


• ...make that a wine cellar (it is heaven, after all)


• Friends and family, especially the ones that make me laugh

The Other Side of the Job Search

April is showering, the weather is getting warmer, and the time has finally come for me to sit down to the stack of applications in my inbox and hire our summer interns. This will be my third round of selecting interns and supervising them, so I'm very comfortable with this process by now. With the economy the way it is and so many of my friends applying for jobs right now, I thought I would give you a little insight into my own preferences and biases as I sift through applications. Maybe some of your future employers feel the same way.

How to Make Your Resume Land on the Top of the Pile

1. Include your cover letter in the body of your email
When I open your email, that's my first impression of you. If you say "Kindly refer to my attached resume and cover letter" you have already blown your chance to make a good first impression. You're counting on me to be curious enough to click on the files and open them (in what order?), and you haven't given me any reason to be curious. Sure, if you have a gorgeously-formatted cover letter, attach it as a file, but don't ONLY attach it as a file. Format the letter like an email (no headers please) and send it along. This will highly increase the likelihood that I'll read it.

2. Keep your cover letter short
If you can say in one paragraph something interesting about yourself, your background, and why you want this job, I do not need more. The longer your cover letter, the less of a percentage of it I will read--after 1 or 2 paragraphs I'll start skimming.

3. Show me who you are
Rather than summarizing your work experience (the whole point of your resume) use the cover letter as a way to turn yourself from a pile of applicants into a person I may want to get on the phone. Make me smile, impress me, or just show that you're qualified and seem like you'd be a nice person. Let the resume do the rest.


4. Be clear that you know the position you're applying for
This seems obvious, but I've read a few applications that seriously make me doubt that they know even what department they're applying to. Read the job description and, without quoting it at me, show that you know what you're getting yourself into.


5. Have a 1-page resume, please
I have yet to see a 2-page resume that is actually packed with relevant information. If you are under 30, you should have a 1-page resume. Your guiding keywords should be relevant (85-90%) or interesting (10-15%). For the record, I do not find a 10-line list of scholarships and honorary societies at all interesting and they are rarely relevant.

6. Tell me why you're qualified
Whether it's in your cover letter or resume, it is your job to tell me why you're qualified for this job. Here again, the keyword is RELEVANT. For internships, I expect a lot of people will just be starting out in this field with little experience, but that's all the more reason to draw from whatever experience you do have.

The musician who wrote to me saying that her singing background meant she'd be a good marketing intern did not rise to the top of the pile. The one who explained that his hours in the practice room and attending concerts have developed a passion that's motivated even through thankless work...he got an email response immediately (and, sadly, had already gotten another internship. I’m not surprised). The latter drew that connection for me and the former did not.

7. Fix my problem
Do I want to give a person a leg-up and an opportunity to grow and learn about themselves and the job market? Sure. Is that the reason I am going through all of these resumes? No. Spend less time telling me about how I can help you, and more time telling me how you can help me. Are there things you know that will save me having to train you (skills)? Do you have some experience or some wonderful personality that's going to make you a good fit for our office?

8. Explain your experience
You have put your formal title on your resume, and written some beautiful-sounding vagueness like:

Supported the marketing campaign

I still have no idea what you did or what you're capable of. You may think whatever you've done is trivial, but success is in the details. Why not:

Supported 4 different members of the marketing campaign with tasks that included: managing excel lists, calling clients, researching our campaign on the internet and social networking sites, and writing copy.

Suddenly I know that you can handle multi-tasking and prioritization, you're capable with office software, have been trusted with customer service, and you're willing to take a stab at writing copy. Whether or not I'll need you for all those things, I may need you for some of them, and that's a lot better for me to know. Is it longer? Yes. But I'm sure there's somewhere else you can cut to make that fit.

9. Proofread
My coworker and I howled last year when an applicant accidentally put another organization than ours in her cover letter, and, sure enough, had “detail oriented” in her resume. Sure, she apologized, and everyone makes mistakes, but do you want to stand out in someone’s memory as the one who made a mistake? There is no excuse not to proofread your stuff (and have a friend help you, too).


10. Be honest

If you’re not a good writer, or “detail-oriented,” or amazing at Excel, don’t claim that you are. Don’t try to be what you think I want, be exactly who and what you are. A woman in a master class I took once put it really well:

If you’re an orange, be the best god damn orange you can be. Don’t try to be an apple just because they’re looking for apples today. It won’t work and you’ll make a terrible apple. Maybe tomorrow they’ll be looking for oranges instead, and then you’ll be the first person they call.

I do frequently pass on resumes that I think would be better fits elsewhere in my company.

11. Have a friend Scan your materials
Give a friend 10-15 seconds to scan your materials (each) and ask them what they noticed. If it's not what you want them to come away with, change your formatting, edit, or re-write your materials to suit. Try this on a few friends that you trust. I will give your resume more time than that, but make those first 15 seconds count.

Good luck!

Some Whimsy for Your Day

A colleague of mine passed along an article in the Huffington Post about the video below. It reminds me that no matter how stressed-out I may be, or rainy the day is, I need to keep some sillyness in every single day or else I get way too serious.

Putting aside my general loathing for most things Sound of Music (I sang the role of Maria in high school and still occassionally twitch if I hear "the Lonely Goatherd"), this video was exactly what I needed this morning.