Category Archives: Career

Career

Adventures in Freelancing (Pants Optional)

4 Comments

I never thought I’d miss desk chairs.

I was fortunate enough to be one of those people who started working immediately after college. A yearlong internship panned out—the television company with which I’d been interning took on a $45 million project during my last semester, and rather than train new coordinators, they just started paying me once I graduated. I started at $500 a week, which at the time felt like legit riches, and then got bumped up to $600 a few months later.

Although I was only supposed to contract for about 5 months, I ended up staying as an employee for more than a year, during which time my incredible boss/mentor rallied tirelessly to get me put on salary, but to no avail. I tried to move laterally in the company, toward one of the creative jobs that were more along the lines of my degree, but nepotism reared its fugly head and I was passed over for any new positions.

So, I found myself with no chances to move within the company and no full-time prospects elsewhere. I did cry, once—in the comfort of my own breakfast burrito—and no one noticed except the waiter, who (bless him) wordlessly handed me a mimosa. After a few sips, I pulled myself together, considered my skills and connections, and shifted my mindset to freelancing. Fortunately, thanks to the proactive work of my now-former boss, I spent almost no time searching for jobs. She put me in contact with a few company connections, all of whom I reached out to immediately and pushed to set meetings up with. During these meetings, if there were even an inkling of a suggestion of a task mentioned, I said yes. Always yes. I agreed to everything from working a private school charity function for a producer to managing the marketing for an upcoming indie film. I can’t stress enough how important it is to say yes. If the task is basic enough that they’re asking a relative stranger to do it, and it doesn’t involve a Hazmat suit, it’s probably something you can figure out how to do. I consider myself a lifetime double student at the universities of Google and Your Local Public Library.

So I got a backup laptop battery, switched out my unlimited MetroCard for a pay-per-ride and, before I could put on my comfy slippers, I was juggling five different freelance gigs. And I do mean different. I spent my days alternating between cutting Flavor of Love highlights (yes, the VH-1 masterpiece), to pulling stills and sound bites for a TV show’s digital board game, to frantically researching Photoshop layer-masking for a website’s design after having promised I had the adequate skills to do it.

The Money

Let’s talk about the fun part of freelancing: getting paid!!! Negotiating a pay rate is not as tricky or as terrifying as you’d expect. Before that process begins for you, ask someone in a similar field about the rates they charge, both when they started and now. When you go back to the employer, don’t be afraid to aim higher than you think you should. If you’ve gotten this far in setting up a freelance position, they’re unlikely to slam the (e-)door in your face. They’ll either say yes, or they’ll counter with a lower rate. From there, feel free to negotiate away; I found that agreeing on a rate within a couple of emails saved both of us from any potential resentment.

Here’s another thing about quoting a rate for your work. Come on—lean in for this one—I’m going to type in italics to invoke whispering: If they’re hiring you to do some extra work, eight times out of ten they don’t know how to do it themselves. They probably don’t even know what the typical rate is. Don’t take advantage of people, obviously, but don’t be afraid to upcharge based on your own experience (whatever that may be) and to make it worth your while. Like I said, I promise that an employer won’t turn down your services, then tell all his/her friends not to hire you, and then hack into your OKCupid account to declare you a huge, pompous, money-grubbing asshole if you quote a rate that’s too high.

What’s less fun than negotiating a rate is chasing after employers for money. It’s not necessarily that you didn’t do a great job, or that the employer is a bad person, or that the project is necessarily a total go-nowhere scam running out of the back of a souvenir shop. (I repeatedly stress not taking this stuff personally, because it’s very easy to let happen, especially if you’re working alone most of the time and away from the regular, conversational feedback of office life. A year of freelancing left me more sensitive to criticism than Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon.) It is simply not your clients’ top priority to give you their money, regardless of the job you did. So don’t be afraid to bring it up kindly in an email or make a phone call, regularly, to make sure it happens. No one is going to worry themselves as much about your payment as you are. Be your own #1 get-money-get-paid advocate.

The Routine

Throughout my time freelancing, it was hard to regulate some semblance of a routine. I would work late until I fell asleep with my computer in my lap, and then I would wake up the next morning, grab my computer from my bedside, and start working again. The sheer number of deadlines made self-motivation easy; the trickier task was turning my brain off from “work mode.” Imagine getting to your office at 8 am and leaving after midnight every day. Even if you’re only committed to eight hours, you’ll probably find yourself working ahead just because you’re in that environment. When I was working from home, there was no differentiator, especially when “home” was a teeny tenement apartment with no common spaces.

But there were numerous advantages! I could work in my pajamas (although to avoid the inevitable self-disgrace, I usually didn’t), I could do my laundry and grocery shopping in the middle of the day when there were no lines. I worked my gym schedule around the TV Guide for the channels I could watch on the treadmill. My conversational skills didn’t exactly flourish, but my work and home lives were the most efficient they’d ever been.

The Location

At one point, I decided to take the phrase “working remotely” to heart. With some extra cash from one particularly lucrative job, I moved to an apartment two blocks from the Mediterranean Sea for a few months while I continued to cut, edit, and write content for various clients. Wake up, work over breakfast, bring lunch and write on the beach before it got too hot, come home, work through dinner, go out with new roommates. And, of course, go on the occasional adventure. I realize that not every freelance job can be done from across the globe, but if the stars align accordingly for you, then get your ass out there.

Hanging Up The Slippers

Before I knew it, a year of freelancing had passed. By then, I was working part-time in the office of a client, a social media/entertainment startup, who now needed me on-hand for a few hours a week. I was also bartending a couple times a week, more for the social interaction than anything else. I felt both exhausted and also, strangely, unaccomplished; unless you’re looking at freelance gigs cumulatively, it’s easy to feel like you didn’t contribute greatly to any one project.

Not long after that, the part-time office job asked me to come onboard full-time. After weighing the decision, I decided to hang up my slippers and come back to office life. I would miss the freedom of scheduling my day, and I would miss indulging the weird idiosyncrasies I had developed from being alone most of the time for 15 months (like talking to myself excessively and eating certain foods with a knife only). Ultimately, the most alluring prospects were the regular, decent salary, a stake of equity in the company, the comfort of a desk chair (so much more ergonomic than the headboard of my bed), and the chance to interact all day with humans who weren’t appearing on a daytime talk show.

Am I glad I made the switch back to a one-job-only, 9-to-5 life? Yes. Do I miss the flexibility? Yes, every time I get a low-airfare alert for some exotic city, or try and elbow my way to the only rust-stain-free dryer at the laundromat at 7:30 in the evening. On the plus side, I have more regular in-person human interaction; I’m finally starting to get out of the habit of what I call ‘speaking in email,’ ending all spoken office conversations with “Best, Alyssa.” And I don’t have to chase anyone for a paycheck—it lands nicely into my checking account twice a month.

Is It For You?

I don’t know that I would recommend freelancing as a full-time job to everyone. I think it’s worth trying, especially if any of the above perks seem attractive to you. And oftentimes, they can lead to a steadier position, as in my case.

If you’re thinking about jumping on the freelance train, it’s worth having some money saved up, in case the jobs dry up or in case an employer is dragging their feet to give you your first paycheck. There’s always going to be some lingering awareness (and there should be, if you’re responsible about your bank account) that there will be periods of low income in addition to times where you’re flush with cash. Retail copywriting, for example, is heavily sought after from October to December, but unsurprisingly, work dries up after the holidays. So as tempting as it is after a well-paid gig to head to Serendipity 3 for a celebratory Frrozen Haute Chocolate, it might be worth saving some of that cheddar for a rainy day. If managing your money with some Scroogery isn’t something you think you’re capable of, then maybe freelancing isn’t for you.

Of course, starting to freelance isn’t always an all-or-nothing decision. You might be working one full-time position when someone asks you to take on a project. Then that may lead to other projects, some concurrently, until you have to consider whether it’s enough money and consistent work to quit your day job for. If so, and if you don’t LOVE your day job, then I say get out of there! Be free! Spread your self-sufficient wings! And when that day comes when you’re called back down to Earth for another permanent position, you have to make the decision for yourself: Just how much do you love eating oatmeal with a knife?

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Career, Relationships

I Put a Ring on It in a City of Single Ladies

Leave a comment

I moved to Los Angeles about four years ago. In all that time, LA has proved to be a lot of things. Yes, there are a million blonde white girls who look exactly like me (and it seems like they snapped up all the agents already). Yes, there are images of fitness perfection everywhere and people really love the word “cleanse.” Yes, there’s no such thing as winter, to my great dismay. But most of all, people here care about their careers more than any other city I’ve lived in.

Granted, I haven’t lived very many places, and I have no reason to be surprised. Working in entertainment in LA takes a great deal of focus and drive. But I had no idea the level of scrutiny my own life choices would be subject to.

I had long ago decided that the LA lifestyle wasn’t something I would subscribe to completely. I moved down there with a grain of salt and an escape plan in mind. I wasn’t planning on scrabbling for infomercials or paying hundreds of dollars for “Agent-Meet Workshops”; really, my personal goals were to gain experience doing projects I was interested in and expanding my acting horizons. Because of this level of detachment, I hadn’t thought that the attitude of Los Angeles toward marriage would be any different than that of the rest of the country, where 20-something-year-old women are subject to the questions of their older counterparts: “Who are you dating? When will you settle down? When will you be married?” So, when I became engaged at 23 and set the wedding date for after I turned 25, I didn’t consider it unusual at all and was excited to wear a beautiful ring that would scream the happy news for me without me even having to open my mouth.

But man, the reactions I got! People acted as if I had decided to become a nun. Or join a cult. The ring on my finger became an instant magnet for attention, and not all of it was good.

Let me clarify: those who have known me for a while, and who know my fiancé, or are at least good enough friends with me that they feel as if they know him, didn’t have any comments to offer except “I’m so happy for you! It was only a matter of time!” Instead, it’s those who met me more recently, and who noticed the ring, who had less positive things to say. Things like, “Wait….you’re getting married? How old are you? Oh my god, you’re a baby! How do you even know what you want when you’re so young? What about your career? Do you want children right away? Wait…you don’t want to have children right away?!? Why get married so soon then? What about your career? Why are you settling down? What about your career? What’s the rush? For the love of GOD, what about your CAREER?!? THINK ABOUT YOUR CAREER, WOMAN!”

I was completely unprepared for this onslaught of questions. I got them from new coworkers, new acquaintances, and even had other comedians ask me these questions while I was working… a completely unsolicited barrage of opinions and judgment. I tried not to fall in the trap of explaining my life choices to a stranger, but the more I was exposed to it, the harder it got to not be defensive.

The fact was, I had never really thought about what a marriage would do to my career because I never felt the need to weigh “career vs. relationship.” I wasn’t planning on having children for at least five years. I wasn’t planning on being a stay-at-home wife. My fiancé is an encouraging and supportive partner. I had been in a relationship with this man for six years and was still able to pursue a career. Our relationship, and my love for him, has in no way been a detriment to that end. I’ll admit that if there was no one in my life, I would have been more engrossed in my job, but the situation I was in was what I had been looking for all along: a balance in my life, with love, passions, art, family, and career.

The thing that drove me over the edge was that other women were having the exact opposite problem that I was having. Women who were single, whether to concentrate on their jobs or simply because they hadn’t found the right person yet, were being examined and questioned for not doing the exact thing that I was about to do. Ladies just couldn’t win! I was also baffled that—given that there are so many different family structures and relationship choices in this modern age—there is anybody left to be surprised or seemingly personally offended by my somewhat conventional life choices.

Later, I discovered that one of my coworkers who questioned me so relentlessly was actually unsatisfied with her own relationship status. It made me realize that there’s usually more under the surface when people present their judgment, but I still don’t excuse those people. To me, if someone tells you about their relationship or family status, whether it’s “married with children,” “single mother/father,” “dating around (or sleeping around),” “gay,” “bi,” “straight,” or “polyamorous,” it is insufferably rude to respond with anything other than: “Oh, that’s cool.”

The plus side of all of this is that I have learned to gain some perspective on the whole concept of judgment. I realized that no matter what your choices, no matter how “normal” they might seem, someone somewhere is going to judge you for it. I’ve learned to not give a shit. I’ve resolved to become less judgmental myself. If someone goes on about something that someone else is doing and how “weird” it is, I just shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, if it works for them and it’s not hurting anybody…” Even if I’m uncomfortable with something, it doesn’t give me a pass to be a judgey little meanie about it.

Finally, this thought: Many people have many opinions and thoughts on marriage. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but for me, marriage doesn’t mean a one-way ticket to Stepford wife-ness, nor is it the equivalent of a grave. It is not an excuse to stop growing and learning and exploring. The reason I cringe at the term “settling down” is because I never plan to, no matter what my relationship status. When my fiancé becomes my husband, we will both continue to be ever-changing and ever-expanding human beings. The beautiful part is that we choose to pursue that growth and learn those lessons with another person. My life and marriage will be, in the words of J.M. Barrie, “an awfully big adventure.”

Photo by Michelle White

Photo by Michelle White

Career

The Job I Love & the Job I Lust

1 Comment

I love my 8-to-5. Seriously! I work at one of the coolest companies in California, and my coworkers are hilarious, genuine, brilliant people. I’ve been nothing short than excited and thrilled to be going steady with my job (even though it didn’t get me flowers or chocolate on our recent anniversary). I can’t believe how lucky I am to be 23 and recently graduated with such a great place to work every weekday.

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

But I’m having an affair on the side.

It started with wandering eyes; a dangling participle would catch my gaze and pique my interest, a misplaced comma could so easily distract and entice me. Editing has always been my passion and, without my fix, I start to go into withdrawal. My obsession with grammar was born from my love of organization, mathematics, and rules—the sheer act of breaking down something as complex and nebulous as language and literature practically makes my mouth water. It’s like math with words!

When I started my day job, however, I was not tasked with meticulously grooming the text in a document but rather shaping its look and feel instead. This focus on document design has taught me so much in the areas of layout and graphic design (an area I’d previously only dabbled in, buried somewhere in an elective I took for my degree). But while my design skills flourished, my editing chops lagged, and I found myself missing semicolons and subordinate clauses.

And then I found the UNDERenlightened.

Our editor-in-chief, Anastasia, recently published an article chronicling our pitfalls and successes since we started operating UE a year ago. She was a complete stranger to me back then: a friend-of-a-friend who was cashing in enough favors to get an idea off the ground. I emailed her and set up a phone interview, eventually signing away my evenings and weekends in order to get a hit of that sweet, sweet grammar.

My original commitment of editing one article a week instantly exploded when I stepped up to managing editor at the beginning of this year. Our editing team dwindled to two: I edited every article twice, with Anastasia doing a final read before posting. Thankfully, our staff is expanding once again (though we always love more help).

It’s a lot of work and even more time, but teaching myself the professional skills that I want is a priceless opportunity. I’ve maintained and improved my concrete skills: I haven’t forgotten the important bits from my grammar courses though I still have my textbooks handy (I wish the same could be said for my French minor), I’m developing my ability to edit for tone and content, and Anastasia has guilted me into writing more articles than I ever would have volunteered. I’ve also discovered some invaluable resources: for example, the Chicago Manual of Style allows a free trial, which is quote/unquote unlimited (as long as you don’t mind making tons of fake email addresses—I’ll pay for a real subscription eventually, I swear!).

When my friends complain about their struggle to find fulfillment at work, I ask them why they don’t just make opportunity for themselves. However, I realize how tough that can be. I have to remind myself that my schedule is not for everyone: it is literally a job on top of a job. But if you’re committed to learning a new craft, I believe that you will make the time, even if you’re not a self-admitted workaholic like I am.

I’m incredibly lucky to have this outlet for my passions. I have the benefit of a day job that supports me enough to devote my evenings and weekends to editing. I even have family, friends, and strangers on the Internet who help this blog run, allowing me to fulfill my personal interests.

For now, I get to keep both the job I lust and the job I love. It’s exasperating sometimes, but it leaves me energized and optimistic for the future. I am confident that I can sow the seeds of personal development now, and reap the rewards of a grammar-filled 8-to-5 at a great company later.

Career

Defending a Liberal Arts Degree

Leave a comment

A few years ago, I was at a party for my mom’s work. I was chatting with one of her coworkers when my recent graduation came up.

Photo by Michael Cox

“Well, what did you major in?” her coworker asked.

“Linguistics!” I said, perky as can be, proud of my hard work.

“What will you be doing with that? Waitressing?”

What a jerk, right? Apparently not. I soon learned this soul-crushing kind of snark is pretty widespread: a classmate of mine once had someone turn to him shortly after graduation and say, “Know how to get an English major off your doorstep? Pay him for your pizza.” Ugh, makes my heart sink.

There exists a fairly common belief, for some reason, that a humanities or liberal arts degree can’t get you anywhere. People often struggle to defend the degree. Many say that it’s worth it because the humanities are “mostly about finding yourself.” However, in my opinion, “finding yourself” is a tough justification for that insanely expensive college tuition. If you really want to find yourself, you can travel, join WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), volunteer, or really do anything that allows you to interact with a wide range of different people. You’ll still be faced with situations that force you to grow emotionally and cognitively. However, if you want the added bonus of concrete skills and the college education to attract top-tier employers, a humanities or liberal arts degree could be a better fit: the advantages are worth the expense and time commitment of college. I currently work at a large, urban public institution, encouraging students to consider Linguistics, English and Philosophy as beneficial, lucrative areas of study, and these are the reasons I give them when they ask if it’s really worth it.

In the vast majority of classes one can take as a liberal arts major, there are several key questions that are constantly asked:

  • “Why does this matter?”
  • “Is this truth?”
  • “How does this actually work?”
  • “What are the layers of meaning?”
  • “What is this consciously trying to tell us, and what does it tell us unintentionally?”

Getting into the habit of asking those questions can make you a really valuable asset in any job because you have the ability to suss out how to prioritize, how you fit into an organization, and ways you can use your role to improve processes and relationships. Following through with the answers will make you a more efficient and impressive worker. Asking these questions before you’re asked to do so is super valuable. You then make intentional choices about how you want to interact with the world, and you understand how your choices affect not only yourself, but also the people around you.

In order to succeed in the humanities, the papers I wrote—and I wrote a lot of papers—were not about reporting the facts but about convincing the reader that my point of view held water. This means I had to learn to carefully gather my information, and present it in a coherent and digestible way. You will need to do this in every job you have: being able to do it well will impress your supervisors, but more importantly, it will make it easier for you to articulate what you want to do. As a result, you can achieve your goals more easily.

Because a liberal arts degree requires you to learn about a wide range of topics, you will likely end up being well-versed in a lot of different areas. This makes you an asset because you can connect with a wide range of people, you can speak articulately about a lot of different things, and (most of all) you can easily learn about things that you don’t already know about. If you need to build a new skill for work, the tools to do so are already in place! Learning how to learn is an oft-used catchphrase for liberal arts, but it’s the real deal.

College is about your ability to make more money and do more challenging or interesting things over the course of your life, not in the first job you get. Yes, it may be harder to find your first job if you major in the humanities (unless you use your career center at school, which alumni are also able to use for free and network like hell), but over the course of your life, you are in a better position to make interesting career choices and are more likely to continue on to graduate education.  You have the training to think critically about what you want and the contribution you are making to the world. Many of the critics who say that humanities majors can’t find jobs are flawed because they only look at data from students’ first jobs, not at the arc of their career. When longitudinal studies are done, it’s clear that liberal arts and humanities majors have more varied career paths, and make the same amount of money as or more than business and STEM majors 15 years out from their degree. In fact, a huge amount of the talk in the media about the struggling humanities is due to the fact that it is incredibly difficult to measure the success of anyone, let alone people who studied a particular field. There are too many variables, and not enough data, to even do things like measure the change in enrollments of a field. So, then, take the hysteria around how “no one can make it” with a pretty serious grain of salt.

Most likely, if you studied something in the humanities or liberal arts, you did it because you loved it. Goodness knows, it wasn’t because you wanted to come up with snide and snappy answers to “Why would you care about that?” When you have a genuine desire to learn, you pore through more books, ask more questions, are more likely to be BFFs with your profs, and ultimately, get more out of your studies. All the skills you acquired are magnified because you were honing them in an environment that brought you joy.

It’s important to think about your humanities degree as a springboard for the rest of your life. So boo to all the naysayers. If you love the humanities, they are worthwhile to study. Whether you dug deep in your early modern literary studies, investigating gender portrayals in botanical novels or, like me, you spent your undergrad career looking at miniscule acoustic differences in vowel systems and their development, flaunt it. It was, is and always will be worth it.

Career

That Time I Killed my Childhood Dream for the Sake of my Sanity

Leave a comment

As a kid, I was blessed with a hyperactive imagination and a dramatic sense of destiny.  These are both helpful once you’re older and trying to be assertive in your creativity… but if you’re at a stage in your life when you’re obligated to take an afternoon nap, it makes you a tiny lunatic.  I believed in Santa until I was prepubescent (who cares what other people said, I had the logic worked out), and nobody could prove that dragons didn’t actually exist so I inverse-propertied that shit and stubbornly held out (we just haven’t been looking in the right places).  This was just the more fantastical stuff—you can only imagine how I was about anything over which I actually thought I had control.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

I started acting in films when I was 5.   Ask me some other time, and I can go into the details of how bittersweetly intoxicating it was—the intricacies of how quickly and willingly any child ruled by wild, hungry imagination would slip under that wave of magical make-believe.  For now though, let’s just suffice to say that set life was pretty sweet.  There was free food always, someone announced my presence over walkie-talkie whenever I was anywhere, and working meant having my face on all the monitors.  I fucking loooved it.  (I’m a Capricorn.  You know who else was a Capricorn?  Stalin.)  Point being, when I realized that this was something that I was getting paid to do and technically could get paid to do for the rest of my life and, therefore, not need to do anything else but this all the freaking time… well, I was in.

I turned 6. And chose what I (thought I) would do for the rest of my life.

It’s fascinating how attached you can become to even the most trivial choice.  You embrace it because it gives definition to that messy, inscrutable concept of “self” you have in your mind.  You lock it down in front of you so you can trace the shape of it with your eyes and claim that this is you.  It’s incredibly satisfying… until, of course, it’s not.  Heavy-hitters like Fight Club and Mad Men explore the “not” in a way that I can’t even attempt, but from my basic understanding of it, you either 1) start hating the shape you’re seeing or 2) someone (maybe everyone) starts telling you “Hey, you’re wrong.  That’s not you at all.”  And you’re expected to just let go.

The second was what happened to me and, honestly, it became clear pretty early on that I would not have a future in acting.  But this was the choice I had made—not a trivial one in the slightest—and I was so very deeply attached.  I closed my eyes to the (mostly well-intentioned, for the record) Dead End Ahead messages I was getting.

I turned 10, I turned 11, I turned 12.

It’s difficult for me to step into this next part.  Even with the time I’ve had to soften the light and mute the volume, I try not to dwell on the memories of this time because it’s so easy to linger and ask unheard, unanswerable questions.  To keep it brief, the auditions were torture.  The stifling hush of cattle-call waiting rooms, where I spent at least 45 minutes for every 5 I actually auditioned.  The canned “thank you” responses that I carefully memorized, word for word, so later I could pick them apart, turn them over in my fingers and see if they meant something else. The dwindling callbacks.  The incredible silence from the phone—undeniably the most judgmental silence I have ever experienced.

I turned 17.

I don’t believe that I was an unusually intense child; it was just an atypical context for someone of that age to find herself in.  So, with the logic of my years, I decided that this whole experience couldn’t simply be something that was just happening to me—it had to be as melodramatic as “destiny.”  How on earth could anyone expect me to let go?  It had been molded into my identity for as long as I could remember and, no, it wasn’t even a significant time investment out of my year anymore—much less my day to day—but it was part of me.  You may as well have asked me to hack my arms off.

I can make jokes about it now (armless kids are funny, guys) but really, I struggled with it.  So I gave myself a cheat and went off to film school that fall to study writing and directing.  I packed your usuals—you know: clothes, new laptop, headshots, kitchenware.  I gave myself a little hope.  I wasn’t letting go of acting entirely—I would just come back to it later, and everything I had ever known about myself would still be true.  Everything I had ever insisted to be true would be true.

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

Photo Submitted by Emmy Yu

There’s no dramatic, climactic ending to this story.  There was no eureka! moment when I suddenly said, “Hey, get over it,” and then I did.  College and post-grad life led to a natural diminishment in the time and energy I put into keeping acting on my mind.  Admittedly, at the time, this was a transition I ignored because it was too painful to accept.  Better to cover it up with dismissive jokes about “my acting days of yore.”  Even now, I find myself fighting my panicked instinct to minimize the significance—to look it in the eye, this darling, childish fantasy of mine, and say that acting was just a phase I went through.  But I’ve also wised up to the fact that this is a kind of denial—the emotional equivalent of smiling after you’ve knocked your own teeth out.

Somewhere between ages 5 and 18, I missed the memo that there is always a gap between who you are and who you want to be, and sometimes that gap is unbridgeable.  Acknowledging reality—that this thing I once thought was an everlasting part of my life would actually end up as a montage in my head—was a terribly painful but necessary step in growing up.  And I’m not even sure how it happened but I can say that it did.  I stopped paying my SAG/AFTRA dues.  I don’t even remember where my headshots are stored.

The concept of “letting go” is a horrible, shrieking abomination—one of life’s unfortunate staples that will hold you down beneath the surface of all your expectations, breathless, drowning in your impotence.  What’s worse is that your instinct to fight it will cause you just as much pain—the lengths to which you will go so you can trick and manipulate yourself into thinking that it’s done or that it didn’t matter.  If you find yourself there, be honest with yourself but be gentle, too.  Be okay with the fact that you had hoped for something you couldn’t control and it ultimately disappointed you.  Paolo Coelho said “Everything will be okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”  The end comes when you least expect it and will be much easier than you ever imagined.  You won’t even feel relief because you will have already floated on.

And if that’s too flowery to digest, just think of it as forcing yourself to throw up after a night of hard drinking.

Career

Understanding Employee Benefits

Leave a comment

Congratulations! You’ve got a new corporate job. Your HR representative hands you a big envelope detailing your salary and all these benefits—401K, vacation, health insurance etc. And the questions start to pop up: Mom, do I need life insurance? What’s an employer contribution? I don’t know what any of this means!

BenefitsSquare

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

It’s important to understand your benefits and have the tools to take full advantage of them. If used correctly, your benefits can add approximately $10,000 value to your compensation package. (Note: I have no idea if this is a proven fact, but this is just something my parents and my first HR rep told me. They are all ‘money people,’ so I believe them.)

Here are a few things to look at a little more carefully while choosing your benefits:

1. Health Insurance

If you have any benefits, you probably have health insurance. Usually you have a couple options: plans where you pay more upfront and have lower out-of-pocket costs later, and plans where you play a lower premium but have to save that money for the “big bill” later.  Other important things to take a look at: your co-pay, deductible, and if there is an annual or lifetime maximum. One time, an employer offered me health insurance and, upon further investigation, I discovered there was an annual maximum of $1,000. My car insurance was offering me better medical coverage! I looked to purchase insurance outside my benefits plan because I knew that in any sort of serious situation, that medical insurance wasn’t going to help me.

2. Employer Match/401k 

Employer-matching contributions are another great benefit: your employers will match your 401K contributions up to a certain percentage of your salary (usually about 5% to start out). It’s a great way to increase your savings quickly! One important note: if you leave your company before you are considered “vested,” you will lose all your employer contributions. (Total bummer, I know!)

At my first company, employees didn’t become vested until two years in, and I left after a year and a half. But my current company’s 401K vests immediately. If you do happen to find new employment, ask HR what would happen to your vested balance if you came back to the previous company. I found out before I left that if I went back to my old company within two years of leaving, I would get my employer contributions back. Pretty cool research to have in my back pocket!

3. Life & Disability Insurance 

Life insurance is another common benefit. Generally, if offered, your employer will pay for the amount of one year’s salary, while giving you the option to purchase additional coverage. You also get to designate this money to your loved ones, so be prepared with all your beneficiaries’ social security numbers ahead of time.

Many companies also include short-term disability and long-term disability insurance options. Depending on your insurance, this may extend to illness or injury while not on the job (pneumonia, hospitizalion, etc.). That’s why you want it to pay extra for it, even though workman’s compensation would cover injuries on the job. Even if you are working a desk job, if you can make an affordable monthly contribution to earn these benefits, I would recommend you take it. Accidents happen everywhere and there is nothing more taxing for you or your family than a career-ending injury. Some examples of career-ending injuries include accidents in company vehicles, slipping on ice, and falling down stairs. Again, all very unlikely, but could lead to severe injury that would keep you from working.

You should also figure out when your disability rolls from short term to long term. An employer cannot replace you until you are considered to be on “long-term disability,” which can be anywhere from 3-6 months. If you like your job, you would hopefully recover during the short-term leave, before you get rolled to long-term and find yourself out of a job.

Finally, perhaps the most important thing about corporate benefits is to feel empowered to ask questions. Many corporations provide benefits hotlines that can answer your questions, get you specific details on your medical plan, and just help it all make sense!  If you don’t have a benefits hotline, your HR rep will be able to talk to you about any questions you have.

Brainfood, Career, News

That One Time I Started a Blog: The One Year Anniversary of UE

3 Comments

A year ago today, we started the UNDERenlightened.

In the past year we’ve covered everything from lock outs to hand jobs, drunk texts to internet slang. We’ve offered advice on dealing with your finances, your eyebrows, your car, your face, your period, your apartment, your roommates, and your toolbox. From finding the perfect lipstick or playing Quidditch, going to brunch or making cocktails, getting started with Android or trying out cosplaying, our writers have shared their stories and their experiences. They’ve taken you through being diagnosed with cancer, losing their wallet, turning 26, getting catfished, and going to the West Bank. We’ve created primers on religions, grammar, programming, wines, fan fiction, STIs, and an article on vibrators that is consistently the most viewed post on our site. We taught you how to make a GIF, make new friends in a new city, get from the couch to a 10k. Offered tips on outfits, interviews, restaurant behavior, DIY transformations, and decorating. And whether it’s getting that first number, meeting online, dating long distance, moving in together, or proposing, our writers have tackled relationships, sex, and dating with honesty and insight from their own lives.

When I first dreamed up the idea for UE in my friend’s kitchen, I had no idea it would grow into what it has become today. I am immensely proud of the articles we’ve put up this year, the people behind them, and I believe I can speak for all of us when I say that we are eager to continue bringing you the great content you’ve come to expect from us in this upcoming year.

Like all fledgling projects, our first year has not been without its ups and downs. And, in keeping with UE tradition, I would like to share with you some or our successes and some of our mistakes. While I can’t give you a textbook for starting a blog, collaborative or otherwise, I can tell you what it’s been like to start this one:

Start With An Idea

Back in early 2012, I was listening to my friend tell me about getting her license suspended and it got me thinking about all the things we will forever be learning how to do. I started keeping a list. The more I talked about this idea of being “under enlightened,” the more ideas people gave me. Soon I had several hundred “potential” article topics. Even though I knew most of these experiences had to be lived to be understood, I hoped that by creating a place where we could share these experiences, we could make it just a little bit easier for us.

From the beginning, I knew I wanted UE to be a collaborative site. I had so many friends who, like me, were writers without a place online where they could showcase their work. I wanted to start building an online writing portfolio but I found the idea of starting and maintaining a solo blog overwhelming–plus, let’s be honest, I’m not that consistently interesting. But through our combined efforts, we could maintain a constant content source and build a community where both writers and readers were learning from each other.

Just Do It

I started by talking to everyone about UE. And I mean everyone. Even my Grandmother was trying to wrap her head around “collaborative blog” during those first few months. At first, I was just trying to drum up potential writers among my friends but, to my surprise, the idea struck a stronger chord with some and they offered me their professional skills along with their time and dedication. I’d pretty much planned to beg, barter, and bribe people into helping me with the more complicated aspects of putting together the site (i.e. web design, graphic design, etc.) but before I knew it, my idea had spread from my friends to their friends and I had people sending me emails with their resumes asking if they could help.

I still remember saying right after a “phone interview” with a potential new editor, “Doesn’t she know that we have no idea what we are doing?” The managing editor at the time said back to me, “It doesn’t matter because you sound like you do.” Over the past year I’ve come to realize, with the help of UE, that no one has it figured out: there is no “right” way to do things. You just have to do it and trust that you will work it out.

Find a Team

Through sheer luck, our staff ended up being a mix of very close friends, good friends, and brand new acquaintances (whom I now consider very good friends). I knew there was no way I was going to pull off something this massive on my own but I still hadn’t anticipated running a staff of people dedicated this idea. I already knew how valuable a team could be from years of collaborating on creative projects and I felt an obligation not to waste their time or efforts. It was also important to me that they felt some sense of ownership in the site, so I saw each of them as the director of their own “department.”  I knew that giving them responsibility (read: trust) would foster a truly collaborative environment.

The minute you decide to make a collaborative blog, that blog is no longer yours. Even though people will often assume that I do all the work behind the scenes or call UE “Anastasia’s” blog, I do not like this. Whether in praise or in blame, I am always quick to remind them that there is a team running this show.

Be a Leader

Leading isn’t about telling people what to do, it’s about guiding a vision. It means listening and learning. When it came to creating something new, generally I would start by offering my vision for a particular aspect but used this merely as a place to get the conversation started. Give your staff the creative freedom to come up with their own approaches and implement them. You’ve put together a team of brilliant minds, trust in their talents. Your job is to keep everyone pushing towards the same goal.

Take the Time to Get it Right

Since our staff (and our writers) are located all over the country, we had to do all of our communication via the Interwebs. We embraced the power of Google. We use Google Drive to keep all of our articles, photos, publishing schedule, to do lists, etc., in sync and Google Hangouts to run our staff meetings. For many of us, UE is the job we do in addition to our full-time jobs. So, when we were building the site, gChat became an essential tool for getting things done during the work day.

We spent weeks working to get the look and feel of the site just right. We all agreed that it was essential to have a fully polished site before we went live. Even if this meant pushing our launch date (initially planned for early July) all the way to early September. We spent those months finessing every single little detail on the site. No link or font or color choice was too small to warrant some sort of discussion. We wanted UE to be a brand, so this meant coordinating not only the site but also our social media accounts as well. Every time we crossed something off the to do list, five more things would get added. And as the launch date moved closer and closer, it seemed like it would never get done.

The two hardest things were the site navigation and the legal. Try condensing a site about “everything” down into easily navigable subcategories. We’d come up with a plan, we’d throw it out, and we’d do it again. This process went on for weeks until slowly we built one that worked. The legal, on the other hand, ended up being a solo mission. It’s probably the least read thing on our site, but it’s one of things I am most proud of. Researching and drafting the various policies and agreements was particularly daunting for me because UE is legally registered and paid for by me. It would be my ass on the line if anything ever happened. There was one night, the week before launch, where I seriously considered scrapping the whole thing because I couldn’t get my head around it all. But with a little focus and a read-through by someone with a law degree, it came together. Now we have a solid User Agreement, Comment Policy, Submission Agreement, and Privacy Policy.

Honing Your Tone

I was so focused on putting the site together that I neglected the editorial side. I wanted us to have a backlog of articles before we launched the site. But what I didn’t anticipate was that when you are asking people to write for an unestablished site, no matter how much explanation you give them upfront, you’re going to get a lot of different tones back because they don’t have any clear examples as a base. And even if you thought you had a clear sense of your tone, once you start reading articles it will start shifting. So you have to balance deciding exactly what you want your tone to be, and communicating it back to both your writers and your editorial staff, all while carefully nurturing these fledgling professional relationships. This took time, practice, and a lot of mistakes. And, even a year later, we’re still working on getting it all just right.

Learn Your Limitations and Admit Your Faults

I believe the best managers are the ones who can admit their own faults: mine is deadlines. Despite all of my delegating and my best intentions, I’d overestimated the workload that I could handle. I was taking longer to edit submissions than I’d allotted time for, and since I couldn’t stick to my deadlines, I felt bad nagging my writers to stick to theirs.

Even with my team, for the first few months, I was still the lynchpin to the site running. If I went dark for a day, so did the site. So while I’d dreamed of UE publishing content every day, it got harder and harder to do so with both my managing editor’s and my own increasingly hectic schedules. We struggled along for a while, with a lot of last minute posts, but without either of us to keep the publishing schedule together the site fell silent.

We were dark all through the holidays and I felt tremendously guilty. I didn’t want to admit where I had failed but I also wasn’t willing to let all our hard work go to waste. I wanted to get the site back up and running but I knew that I needed to take a hard look at where we’d fallen short and be very honest with myself about what I could and couldn’t handle. I knew this would mean handing over control on things I’d previously been overly concerned with. But, as I said before, this was not “my” blog and if I wanted it to really thrive, I had to really let it go.

I called my managing editor and we had a very frank conversation about our time. This is where a lot of people might say working with your friends can get messy, but I thought our honesty in that conversation only strengthened our friendship. Together we reached out to one of the editors and asked if she might be interested in stepping up to take on the role.

When she agreed, I handed over complete control of the editorial side. I asked her to come in and implement her own ideas and system and to let me know where I would best fit in. I still wanted to read every article before it went up on the site but no article would again be held up by me in the editing process. We shrunk our publishing schedule down from five or six articles a week to a much more manageable three and we spent a lot of time making sure our new system worked before we were ready to officially “relaunch.” I really can’t thank Meggyn Watkins, our incredible managing editor, enough for her tremendous dedication and persistence. Without her efforts we would not be here today.

But if I have learned one vital lesson from UE this year it is:

The Importance of Commitment

This includes the commitment of the staff and writers, but I mostly mean a leader’s commitment. If you want to create something like UE, you have to remember that you are the reason all the wheels keep turning. If you lose drive, if things stop being shiny, if you don’t have time, or you stop pulling your part of the weight, everyone else around you will do the same. Not only are you the barometer of motivation, you’re also the source. If you’re not meeting your deadlines, why should anyone else? How can you be annoyed at someone for not doing their job, if you’re not doing yours? Teams are only as strong as their weakest link. If someone on your team is dropping the ball, it is not their fault, it is your fault for letting them.

To everyone reading this and to everyone who has ever taken the time to read any of the articles on our site–thank you so much for being a part of the UE family. We look forward to continuing to bring you great content for another year. If there is ever anything you’d like to read on the site, please let us know here. If you are interested in writing for UE, drop us a line over here.

Again, thank you for this incredible year.

Anastasia Heuer
Founder & Editor-In-Chief

Career

Tackling a Phone Interview

1 Comment

In a world where 50% of college graduates are jobless, working below their educational level, or outside their field, it’s not unreasonable to think that you may have to interview over the telephone for a faraway job at some point or another. Telephone interviews are strange beasts, because you can’t rely on many of the things that help a lot, like non-verbal communication and environmental clues.

PhoneIntSquare

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Daunting as this may seem, there are lots of things you can do to make this not so painful. You could even make it work to your advantage! Below are some tried-and-true tips that help me when I’m getting ready for a phone interview, and when I’m in the thick of the interview itself.

Prep Yourself:

  • Clearly write out all your answers ahead of time, and highlight important parts. It’s like an open-book interview!

An easy way to do this is to make a grid with three columns. In the first column, write out each qualification or responsibility listed in the job description. Then, in the second column, write crib notes about something you did that met each responsibility or qualification. In the third column, write what you learned from that experience or if there is anything you would have done differently.

Voila! Interview cheat sheet done and done! Keep this in front of you during the phone conversation to reference.

Prep Your Space:

  • Find a place that is quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Then, make sure you get great reception there. If you live in a house that still has a landline (I hear they still exist), use that instead of your cell phone.
  • Put a mirror across from you. As long as you don’t get distracted by how strange your mouth looks or something, you’ll feel more like you are in a conversation.
  • Use speakerphone or a headset. If you talk with your hands like me, there is no chance of you flinging the phone across the room and needing to scramble to pick it up.
  • Be prepared to start your interview at least ten minutes early. Be in place. Sit at a clean table with no distractions. Have your notes and other supplies ready and set to go.
  • Have water handy, but not close enough for to you to knock over with a sweeping gesture.
  • Make sure to have some scratch paper handy so you don’t have to jump up and run to another room. The people on the other end of the line will hear, and you’ll feel uncomfortable for the rest of the conversation!

During the Interview:

  • If you feel comfortable doing so, ask how many questions there will be, and figure out how much time you have per question so you can keep track, or ask about how much time you have for each question. This will help you pace yourself well, and avoid taking up too much of your interviewer’s time.
  • Write down the questions the interviewer asks you, especially if you are a visual learner or if each question has multiple parts. (Want to know more about your learning style? Here is a great quiz.) Jot down initial notes about what you’d like to say, if you can do so quickly.
    This will also come in handy in follow-up interviews, as you’ll know which stories you’ve already told and what you can elaborate on.
  • Be sure to end your questions well, so that your interviewers know what’s going on. It’s easy to ramble on about the time you started a new initiative at work. It’s better to be concise and clear than give every detail in an organized way.

Biggest tip:

  • Be yourself! People can tell when you are trying to play the part. More importantly, most interviews are about fit rather than qualifications: resumes are already there to make sure you meet the basic requirements. There is never an objectively best candidate, and you will never know what the interviewer is actually looking for.

Really, there is no advantage to trying to be someone you’re not. Worst-case scenario is that if you are acting like someone else, you may find yourself in a situation where neither you nor your employer is happy because you weren’t honest during the interview process. Plus, you’re a wonderful, hardworking person! Who wouldn’t love to hire you?

There is no doubt that this is a nerve-wracking process, especially with student loan debt possibly hanging over your head, the fear of losing or not getting health care, and the simple necessity of being able to feed yourself! Use the tips above to give yourself an edge, or at least some peace of mind, through the process of finding a job.

Don’t lose sight of your goal, and don’t give up!

Career, Style

Hirin’ Attire: Job Interview Wardrobe Tips

3 Comments

You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

Usually, I can’t say I agree with that old-fashioned adage. But a job interview isn’t an ordinary real-life scenario. It’s the only situation in life, aside from maybe a first date, in which you are placing yourself in front of another person and fully preparing yourself to be judged. And, just like a first date, even if you’re a dazzling conversationalist and your resume (or OkCupid profile) is full of all the perfect catch-phrases—if you don’t look the part, you might not get to second base. By which I mean a second interview.

Because I am a 20-something in the year 2013 and because every publication under the sun tells me this is true, I will go on roughly a hundred thousand job interviews within my lifetime.  I’ve already been around the job interview block, and I probably won’t be stopping any time soon.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about interview wardrobe choices since my days as a newly minted college grad, clutching my BFA for dear life, and praying for health insurance.

Fancy Footwork

Gentlemen, this might not be as intense a topic for you. The height and style of your shoe is rarely an issue, but even if it’s a “totally laid-back workplace” and you’re wearing your loafers or leather low-rise boots with jeans, I absolutely suggest that you polish your shoes! Shoe polish is easily accessible and they even sell these nifty all-in-one polishes at places like CVS or Walgreens. A grown man polishes his shoes—and gets that job!

Ladies, I know that a high heel makes you feel confident and powerful. I know you love the way it click-clacks on the tile floor, as if to say, “Hey everyone! I have arrived!” But I urge you to leave those amazing Loubotin look-alikes you scored on JustFab.com at home. Don’t risk being taller than your interviewer and doom yourself to some really awkward handshakes. Besides, if those shoes could talk, they’d tell you they want to be at a bar, not under a desk.

A few easy solutions are a stylish pair of patent leather or animal print flats, a small kitten heel, or leather or suede ankle boots. If you’re normally a little shy in the face of fashion risks, that’s totally okay, but don’t be afraid of a pop of color or a bold print! There’s no law that says all footwear has to be black nowadays.

SUIT UP! Or don’t?

This will differ depending upon the industry of your dream job and the company’s office environment. Try your very best to research what the dress code is before you go in, though sometimes it’s hard to gauge unless you know someone who works there!

But here’s a tip, for both guys and gals: be absolutely sure you need to wear that suit. If you’re interviewing at a place like a law firm or a major corporation, it’s definitely advisable to suit up, especially for the guys. But I’ve seen many male candidates stroll into casual office environments wearing their best suits, looking super uncomfortable, both physically and mentally. You don’t want to come across as stodgy or old fashioned.

For guys, you can always get away with a nice pair of black slacks and a collared dress shirt. (Tucked in with a belt! For real, this goes without saying!). Bring a blazer that you can throw on at the last second if you’re feeling under-dressed.

Ladies, a black pencil skirt is your best bud. Buy one and love it and pair it with anything and everything. A business-casual blazer also goes a long way in life, so it’s great to have that handy, too. If you don’t feel like wearing a skirt, black skinny pants or flowy black slacks are a great alternative. There’s a lot of debate surrounding black jeans, but I say that if the material is denim to the touch, then thems be jeans and you probably shouldn’t wear them! Skinny pants that are cut like jeans but are made of non-denim material are a much safer bet, especially when paired with a semi-formal top.

Also, an addendum on formal shorts: I adore a good formal short. And once you land this dream job, you might totally be able to get away with wearing them. But maybe leave them at home for your interview. Some people still view shorts as too casual a look, no matter how much pleated realness they’re serving.

Hey You, Yeah You with the FACE.

Ladies, very simple day-time makeup is advisable. Go easy on the eyeliner. You want your potential new boss to focus on the brilliant words tumbling from your lips, not your Amy Winehouse impersonation. Do wash and style your hair, but don’t go overboard with a new style you don’t usually rock (i.e. maybe not those Heidi braids you still can’t do without spraining your wrist).

Guys, if you’re going to style your hair, opt for a small dash of pomade. It’s much more flexible and easier to work with than gel.

And one more tip, take it or leave it: if you’re a glasses wearer, leave your contacts at home! This could be nothing but a silly coincidence, but every time I wore my glasses to an interview, I was offered the job. True story! Maybe I looked more trustworthy? More collegiate and organized? Who knows! But hey, it can’t hurt.

Conversation Pieces

If you’re like me, you dread even the slightest awkward pause and would jump out the window before letting the conversation run dry. Here, you could kill two birds with one stone by incorporating a fashionable accessory that could also potentially lead to this: “Hey, I love your (necklace/tie/bracelet/etc.)! Where’d you get that?”

Guys, this could be anything from a really nice wristwatch to a bold new tie. We’re talking, like, Joe Biden bold. Not the Homer Simpson Christmas tie you got from your mom in eighth grade.

As for the gals, know that a statement piece doesn’t have to break the bank! Stores like H&M, Forever 21, and the sale rack at Anthropologie have some really fun jewelry that will absolutely do the trick. My tip is to choose ONE piece: a vintage locket or a pair of chandelier earrings. But not both at once!

Do you have any additional tips for job interview wardrobe choices? We’d love to hear what you think. Leave them in the comments below!

InterviewWardrobeHero

Photo by Meaghan Morrison

Career, Relationships

Dealing with Workplace Drama

1 Comment

Raise your hand if you have ever lost your cool, reacted harshly, or said something you regret to someone else? Now, raise your hand if you were at work when it happened.

Workplace drama exists. We all experience it. The question is how do we deal with it?

I have been working in at least some capacity for several years now and every job has had some sort of office “drama.” I entered the workforce thinking that I would finally get a break from all the unnecessary crap I had to put up with in school.

Right. Then I promptly woke up from my dream-world.

People will always have different emotions, jealousies, dreams, and personalities, no matter where they are. While we cannot control others, we can change how we choose to react to them. Here’s what I’ve learned:

1. Be yourself.

Before you roll your eyes and sigh at the platitude, hear me out. When I first started at my current job, I found myself acting how I thought my coworkers wanted to see me. After a few weeks, I was exhausted and felt like I was trying too hard (because I was). Slowly, I began to reveal more of my actual self. I talked about books that I loved, expressed excitement at nerdy things, and made jokes during staff meetings. I stayed professional while still showing who I was and what made me tick. It helped me develop relationships with my coworkers, and cope with stress, because I wasn’t focused on maintaining my work personality, just my work.

2. Pick your battles.

My current job is pretty high stress. We have tight deadlines, a lot of outside pressure, public visibility, and sometimes-unpredictable work hours. While this can create a great adrenaline rush, it can also bring out some pretty intense emotions. When the stress gets high, everyone has to think fast, and sometimes we’re so focused on the end result, that we lose sight of each other. It’s important to remember that multiple approaches can achieve the same end goal.

Knowing when to speak up and when to hold back can have a monumental impact on how you are perceived and how you get things done.  Arguing over every choice might lead your coworkers to see you as an agitator who only wants things to go your way. But if instead, you discipline yourself to only bring up concerns that could have significant impact, then you will be seen as helpful and strategic. By sometimes holding yourself back, you can make the moments when you do enter the fray all the more meaningful and powerful. This same concept can be applied to nearly any office disagreement or issue.

3. Try not to wear your emotions on your sleeve.

This may be the hardest, as many of us do this without even realizing it. I do, and it’s a constant battle to keep hold of myself when all I want to do is scream, cry, or run away.

I am not saying that there is no place for emotion in the workplace, because that can be just as destructive. But being able to control your emotions rather than letting them dictate the direction of a situation—whether it be a meeting, an argument, or just a particularly long day at the office—can make all the difference in keeping your professional cool.

For those of you with a terrible poker face, when things get too intense, try forcing yourself to slow down. At a performance review, in a tense meeting, or when dealing with a particularly difficult person, remember to take a deep breath and think before you respond (I promise that’s not just overused self-help advice, I’ve done it–it works). Even a few seconds can make the difference between an overly emotional response and a rational one.

If your emotions do get to be too much, excuse yourself. Take a walk, go to the bathroom, or find a quick distraction. And, remember, don’t hold it against yourself. We all have bad days once in a while. Emotion is natural and, more than anything, shows how much you care.

4. Know the difference between drama and harassment.

Much of what is discussed above are situations that can often occur within professional environments. However, when something turns into possible harassment, it is important to know when to speak up and take action. There are laws in place to protect you if you feel that someone’s comments or actions are inappropriate, threatening, or violent. If you feel you are being harassed, document everything and talk to someone you trust or your human resources department to confidentially explain your rights and options. It is never okay to be made uncomfortable or threatened in your workplace and it is your right to speak up and change the situation.

Remember, drama finds us everywhere–people don’t magically become professional adults–don’t let it discourage you. It’s ok to make mistakes when it comes to figuring this all out.

One more cliché for the road? For better or for worse it’ll all work out in the end.

…Okay, maybe that one was a little overboard.

Photo by Michelle White

Editor’s Note: This is one of our anonymous articles. We’ll have these from time to time so that our writers can more freely share difficult subjects.