Journal Entries (from website)

Class 01/20
I was pretty excited to start this semester - getting to take a class to expand my
knowledge of my skills and strengths being a "woman in the workforce" is something
that I believe will be very beneficial. In order to prepare, I watched part of the Career
Development Center's Bootcamp Video, were I picked up some amazing LinkedIn tips I
plan to use to update my own profile, like personalizing connection requests, having a
custom keyword summary and about section, and posting pictures of the things you've
been doing. There were also several speakers who discussed the importance of a cover
letter, and how to use one to stand out from other applicants. Class was mainly a
syllabus review to introduce us to what we'll be doing over the semester, but there was
still a lot to take away from it. At the beginning of the class, we had a quick discussion
after someone apologized for something about not being apologetic about things, but to
instead adopt more of a "thank you for accommodating me" mindset. This is significant
to me because quite often I find myself apologizing about little things and I think that
switching my view will make me stand up for myself more. Another thing we did was
learn about Positive Intelligence and take our Saboteurs Assessment. Along that same
line of thought, we discussed how we are going to start exercising our brains so that our
saboteurs become our sages. This will be important so that we can realize the
handicaps each of us have and not let those "sabotage" our efforts in our careers. At
the end of the class, our homework was to find a happy childhood photo of ourselves
before we let our saboteurs take root in our minds.

Class 01/27
Last week, after learning about positive intelligence and our saboteurs, we were asked
to find a picture of ourselves from our childhood before we developed our saboteurs,
and I have put mine here to the left. I am a Pleaser, something I developed in
elementary school to try and make friends since I was a shy and nerdy kid. I chose this
photo because skiing is a sport where you have to make sure that you yourself are solid
on the skis before you go to help anyone else, and it reminds me to make sure that I am
solid before I go trying to help or please others. The focus of class today was to talk
about our saboteurs, and how we can develop our positive intelligence to keep them
from taking over. The first thing step to this was thinking about opportunities that had
come up in the past where the Judge or saboteur had done exactly that and label those
situations as times when they had taken over. From those, we reimaged the responses
that our saboteurs provoked into what would have been a better response, as well as
better responses to any future hijackings we could think of to start building better brain
circuitry. With Cassidy, who is also a Pleaser, I talked about how sometimes I let my
roommate walk over me when there are household discussions or chores to be done.
What we decided is that we both need to be better about saying “me now”, or “my turn”,
and to plant our feet firmly behind our views. Since we know that we are Pleasers, its
important that we be aware that we’re prone to trying to please everyone, and that while
initially that makes us feel good in the long term it is counterproductive. Personally, I
believe it’s also important to keep in mind that there is a difference between being a
Pleaser and just being helpful. As a class, after we completed our individual
discussions, we chatted about other methods to battle our saboteurs, one of which was
the STOP method. This stands for 1. Stop 2. Take a breath 3. Observe 4. Proceed with
caution. Using the STOP method in situations where we feel our saboteurs rising will
help us to take a pause, reevaluate the response our saboteur wants us to take, and
then form a better response with our Sages. Another method is to use our childhood
photos to think about a time without the saboteur’s influence, and what our responses to
situations would be if we didn’t have the saboteur riding on our shoulders. I really like
both of these methods because in practicing them, I am making myself and my feelings
a priority, and working on becoming a better me. I think that in particular, the STOP
method can also be applied to any circumstance where I don’t know what the right
reaction or response is, and it is a way to keep from doing or saying something that I
would come to regret later. Also, our yoga exercise today in class tied in perfectly with
the topics, since a big focus of it was grounding ourselves. I plan to use the mountain
pose in particular whenever I know I’m going to put myself into a position that could
cause my saboteur or the Judge to act up. Planting my feet firmly makes me feel more
confident and will help me to push past anything holding me back.

Class 02/03
Over the course of this past week, I worked on identifying situations where the Pleaser
in me rose up and using the STOP method to tamp it down. One in particular was with
my 4-H club on campus and a leadership program I thought I wanted to do this
semester. I quickly learned that I did not have the time to devote to both, and the
Pleaser in me almost tried to say that I would just cut some of the time I spend crafting
to do both of them. However, I stopped, took a breath, and thought about how that
would be beneficial to me overall. I ended up deciding that I could postpone the
leadership program to another semester instead of sacrificing the time I set aside for my
mental health. I was really proud of myself for using what we talked about in class in a
positive way.
In today’s class, we changed focuses from positive intelligence to our values, and why
they are important. Each of us has our own unique abilities and passions that will help
us figure out the paths that we’re going to take, but we also have our own values for
how we want to live our lives and perform in our careers. At the intersection of our
abilities, passions and values is the sweet spot, the ideal career that merges all three of
those things. When we determine our values, we can better pinpoint that career for
ourselves. Looking deeper at the values we have, we see that there are different
categories: foundational values, which are of non-negotiable importance to us; core
values, which are almost as important as the foundational ones and work hand in hand
with them; minor values, which are not as important but can still contribute to our
decisions, and imaginary values, which we think are important to us but are actually not
important at all. Imaginary values can include things like social media, material wealth,
and our saboteurs. I myself fall prey to both the saboteurs and social media—it is hard
not to compare myself to what I see others posting online. However, in the grand
scheme of things I know that these are not values that are important at all. The
foundational values I chose for myself are Family, Curiosity and Joy, and the core
values I chose for myself are Friends, Adventure and Creativity. I feel that these are the
most important factors to me when making important life decisions, and that their
influence is the strongest.
After we determined our values, we took the Work-Life Integration quiz, which we used
to figure out what kind of worker we will be in our careers, and to see what kind of life
we prioritize. Personally, I was not surprised to learn that I am a stronger separator than
integrator, as this pandemic has really tested my working from home abilities. I tend to
think about all the things that need doing and neglect my work in favor of them when at
home, whereas when I go in to work, I can keep work and home separate. I also found
that overall, I am a Personal First person which surprised me since I thought I was more
of a Work First person. I think this traces back to my foundational value of Family, and
the idea that I have that there will always be work, but times with Family that you miss
you cannot get back. However, we discussed how depending on the time and situation
that our lives are at these can shift, and that is not necessarily a bad thing as long as we
keep our values at the forefront. We also discussed how women more so than men are
good at feeling guilty about neglecting work or home for the other, and that we need to
be better about not feeling this way, since both are important, but one will be more of a
priority at any given time. I plan to have my significant other take this quiz, out of
curiosity for his results but also to talk about how our values and work-life integration
match or differ. I think that doing so will allow us to better understand the type of careers
we want to have, and how they will mesh with each other.

Class 02/10
Today’s class was the first of our panel discussions, featuring three women in entry
level positions in their careers—Isabelle Rocco, Megan Angevine, and Carrie Gray. I
was looking forward to this panel in particular because in just a few semesters I will be
looking for my own entry level position, and I have equal parts excitement and
trepidation for it. I hoped that talking with these ladies would help to sooth the
worrisome thoughts about applying for jobs. My overall question for them was about
how they chose the job/company that they started with; I wanted to know what exactly
influenced their decision. I knew that for me, salary, 401k and health benefits, and
vacation time, along with my values will guide mine in the future, but I was curious about
anything else that might factor in as well.
They had a ton of good advice for us, from thoughts on career development to things
that connect to our class discussions on values and work-life integration. One of the
biggest points that connects to me was that its important to schedule and prioritize
yourself and the things that are meaningful to you. There is always more that needs
doing for your career, but if you don’t take time for yourself you will burn yourself out. I
liked the point that Megan made though, about how it is important to have a separation
between work and personal (tying in directly to my separator value), having messages
come in on your phone for both can bring peace because you can glance at them and
be aware of what is going on, so you aren’t walking in blind to situations. In looking at
their careers so far, they talked about resources like the Pack Pros events and the
Career Ambassadors program being helpful for building your career knowledge, and
how even now it is important to network. To make it easier to network, they
recommended setting networking goals with yourself, giving yourself a weekly goal to
complete. I plan to set one that is to connect with them on LinkedIn! Relating back to my
specific question for them, in a breakout room with Isabelle I asked her about figuring
out one’s priorities and her response was to create an Excel spreadsheet with the job
offers you have and the benefits/values you consider important, then mark which jobs
correlate to them. Other things that all suggested are important to look at when
considering a company include asking about the company values and looking at their
diversity, both of which can indicate whether a company is someone you want to work
for. Once you choose a company, to foster growth you want to show interest and
volunteer with what the company is doing, and make sure that they’re interested in your
own personal growth. Something I hadn’t thought to ask about was what to do when you
encounter misogyny, but I laughed when Carrie said to just have the confidence of a
mediocre man, since they have a certain bravado about things! I thought that was a
hilarious response to a question that many of us wish was not even a question
anymore.
After talking with Isabelle, Megan and Carrie I do feel better about figuring out my
career when I graduate, and I have some new resources to check out to aid in that
process. I was surprised to hear from them so much on making sure you don’t neglect
your personal life, but it does make sense. You cannot be a productive employee or
person if you aren’t at 100%. It was nice to get a picture of where I might be in two
years, and to listen to Isabelle talk about her work with nonprofits, which is where I’m
thinking to end up. I plan to do some more research into how a nonprofit uses computer
science, and to incorporate some of my values into researching companies that I might
want to apply to.

Class 02/17
After talking with the entry level panel last week, I worked on several of the things that
they suggested. I connected with a few new people on LinkedIn and looked at a couple
of nonprofit computer science companies. One in particular that caught my eye was
Blackbaud, who builds cloud services for nonprofits, and I plan to try and talk to them at
the next networking opportunity. They also host a conference called BBCon, which I will
look at attending. Looking forward to the mid-level panel, I tried to think about where my
career will be a couple years after graduation, when I’ll be into my career and thinking
about starting my own family. When we looked at our values and took the Work-Life
Integration test in class a few weeks ago, we talked about how these values and
priorities can change as we age and as our life circumstances change. I was particularly
curious to know if these women had that happen to them, which turned into the question
I posed.
Our guests for this panel were Shelby Klemm, Tabitha Efobi, and Katie Maloney, and
we received a mix of advice that we can use now and will use later in our careers. The
advice I’m taking to heart is to give myself some grace, and that it’s ok for me not to
know what I want to do right now. After all, I’m trying to figure out at 21 what I want to do
for the next 20-30 years of my life! More general advice that we got included being
smart with our money, and that no matter what others tell us, we CAN do the hard
things. Specific career advice that builds on what our entry level panel discussed with
us about networking was to track our achievements, and the things we’ve done,
because the higher-ups may not, and you want to network yourself to the best of your
ability. Tabitha also made a good point about with anything in life, saying yes to one
thing means saying no to another. This point hits home for me, because in some cases
to get the achievements I have under my belt it has meant saying no to hanging out with
friends, or other events that I was interested in going to. Regarding my specific
question, the panelists said that you don’t have to stop learning, that you use new
knowledge and changes to build on your initial career goals. Sometimes being
resourceful or reshifting to open up new opportunities can give you a boost or change
your direction to something even better. They also suggested that if you’re unsure about
the direction your career is going, to build a list of likes and dislikes about it and be able
to explain your reasoning about them. This is really important advice because someday
if I decide to have children my foundational value of family might impact my career
decisions, and I will need to list the likes and dislikes of both of my choices. Or, if my
company does not bring me joy or allow me to be creative, then I might want to look at a
change.
After our panel discussion we had another guest speaker, Andy Perley, come to link
back to and further our talks about positive intelligence and our saboteurs. We had
already considered ways to change our brain circuitry, but Andy told us that we should
take value in all our experiences, good and bad, because they teach us about who we
want to be. He told us that while the saboteurs come from a need for safety, and its
important to acknowledge the Judge and our saboteurs, we also want our PQ to go from
exercise to fitness. We started playing with the idea of a saboteur interceptor and
getting into the space of pausing like we discussed earlier with the STOP method. A
way of practicing this is to work on our mindfulness, through taking stock of our body
and our breath. It was suggested that apps like Headspace or Calm could help with this,
and I plan to try those on my own in the next week. In class with Andy, we practiced
focus exercises with our minds, controlling our breathing to fall into a mindful state.
Another topic Andy discussed is how looking at our childhood photos takes us back to
where our saboteurs started, and that a way to combat this is to start looking at these
photos in the new light of remembering the importance of empathy. Empathy is
important because we want to work towards—when triggered—making decisions with
empathy directed at ourselves and others involved. Doing so will combat the Judge and
saboteur’s efforts to make us judge circumstances. After our class discussion, I started
thinking of ways to use the Pleaser in me to please myself, instead of others. I hadn’t
thought about basically playing a reverse Uno card with my saboteur, but it does make
sense. I can think about what my saboteur would tell me to do, and then think instead
about what it would please me to do. Looking at it this way will help me to start pleasing
from my Sage, instead of my saboteur.

Class 02/24
Last week, we were asked to try practicing mindfulness to help combat our saboteurs. I
tried using the Calm app to help with this, but ultimately, I found that listening to ASMR
videos on YouTube really helps me to let go of everything that is bothering me to focus
on myself. I practiced this in the sunshine on Sunday afternoon, and felt as good if not
better than when we do our short yoga sessions in class. I’ve never really gotten into
the meditating scene, but I’ve noticed that doing the yoga sessions and even focusing
on myself for 15 minutes, without any distractions, makes me feel calmer and allows me
to view situations with my saboteurs differently. In preparation for this class, and the
senior level panel, I thought about my mom, particularly since I had just listened to the
podcast that she and I made, and how I might feel when I reach her stage of career. I
had two main questions from this, one about balancing a long career with family and
one about the skill that has been the most useful over the period of a career. I was
interested in the second particularly because if there is a skill that I can work on that
would benefit me similarly I want to know.
Our first speaker was Dr. Holly Hurlbert, who actually works at NC State in Academic
Enrichment. She was really engaging, and excited to talk with us. In her career, she
moved from a professor role and then into management, which she fell in love with. As
someone with that kind of career transition, she told us that you can always change jobs
—you have the skills, it’s just a matter of applying them and muffling the saboteurs that
tell you it isn’t possible. It’s important understand that you don’t want to stay where you
aren’t valued, and to not be afraid of change if you do need to leave. At the same time,
she wanted us to know from an early point in our career journeys that we should “stop
and smell the roses”, and not rush through things. I liked how interested she was in
what each of us was doing at NC State, and I look forward to getting to interact with her
more. Our second speaker was Dr. Jackie Olich, who had valuable points about building
a strong career. The biggest things she recommended to start with were internships, an
accountability circle you can turn to for advice, and a sponsor of sorts to encourage you
and support skill development. She also mentioned to look into leadership programs,
some of which are geared towards women and some are not. I was a little taken aback
by her statement of “our culture is misogynist and racist whether you go out or not, so
why not try?”, but it makes a lot of sense. If you let the haters hold you back you won’t
go anywhere, and so you should stand up for yourself and put yourself out there.
Something I hadn’t thought to ask about but that Dr. Olich mentioned was that even with
your values and goals, sometimes the place or space you’re in can anchor your
decisions. This hits home for me, since my boyfriend and I are both from Raleigh, but he
wants to move to Charlotte on graduating.
We closed out our class today with part two of our PQ discussion with Andy Perley. We
connected back to what we talked about in the last session with breathing and focus,
noting that it’s just as important to DECIDE to take a moment. This is critical when we
are stressed or anxious, since in those cases we are particularly susceptible to our
saboteurs. Andy also told us that we’re tougher on ourselves than anyone else will be,
but that with practice we will get to the “ease of flow”, where pivoting to our Sages
becomes unconscious and will combat this. I know that my self-judgement is deeply
ingrained, so it will definitely take time and practice to move beyond it. However, Andy
outlined five superpowers our Sage has to help: Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate
and Activate. These will help us to refrain from negative judgement, break down issues
into bite-sized chunks, and my favorite, play a game of “yes and” with our accountability
circles. We practiced this yes and in class with what I believe was Cassidy’s issue of not
feeling like anything is helping her to pass her classes this semester. By playing this
game, we came up with things that all of us can do, like creating lists of people who
might be able to help and creating a thinking journal of things that we have
accomplished that day/week/month. I plan to start my own thinking journal, so that I can
start working on my own list of accomplishments like the mid-level panel suggested.

Class 03/03
While I continued to practice my breathing exercises this week, I also started looking at
who I might include in my accountability circle. My tentative list included some of my
classmates, long time supportive friends, and some mentor figures that I know in my
life. Having this good mix will allow me to get help from a variety of perspectives, and
further my own. This tied in nicely with today’s speaker, Dr. Leigh Shamblin, who came
to talk to us about advocating for ourselves. I admit to not being the most confident in
myself and my abilities, so getting tips and tricks for doing so was really important. Dr.
Shamblin showed us that self-advocacy is a pyramid, with knowing thyself as the base,
knowing what you need as the middle, and knowing how to get what you need at the
top. The hardest one, and the one that holds us back, is the middle one since women
have a tendency to fall into roles assigned to them, not necessarily the ones we need.
Another thing that holds women back is fear; fear of being masculine, of being shot
down or being told no. We as women tend to worry about interrupting a conversation, or
not pleasing everyone, and we need to break free of that. We need to “embrace the
suck”, and to understand that how things are is socially constructed and as such we can
change how people believe. I myself spoke up about how being a Pleaser means that I
tend to avoid talking to companies at career fairs, out of the fear of rejection or not being
enough. In our small groups though, my partner and I discussed how I need to start
standing tall and proud and know that when I’m in line to talk to a company they are just
as eager to meet with me and tell me about their company. Dr. Shamblin also pointed
out that there’s no such thing as perfection, although many of us strive for it especially
with social media to compare to. It’s exhausting to be “perfect” all the time though, and
we need to find ways to push through and love ourselves. I liked her advice of starting
to look in the mirror and saying that I’m enough, which I don’t do very often. We also
talked about practicing active-constructive responding, where we are actively engaged,
interested and authentic with the people who we are having a conversation with. This is
a skill that I definitely want to perfect, not only to build better career relationships, but
also to connect better with the people in my life who I care about, since this is a way of
showing to them that I do want to know what is going on with them. Dr. Shamblin
connected directly to what I’d been working on this past week with her point about
having an accountability square, a square with a few names of people who you can talk
to about everything in your life, and who will practice active-constructive conversations
with me. Thinking about it this way made my list of people much smaller, to those who
will be there with me through the thick and thin areas of life.

Class Notes 3/10

I just wanted to make a few short notes before today’s class, about what I’ve developed
to this point. After last class active-constructive responding was directly on my mind,
and there were several situations where I caught myself not doing so. I was able to
utilize my STOP method here as well, pausing, taking a breath, and then actively re-
engaging in the conversation. I’ve also continued my mindfulness exercises, and while I
haven’t done so well this week with exams and projects, I do feel better about myself
and my mental power than before the class. It’s surprising to me how something that
seems so small can have such an impact on my mood and my thinking skills! I’m
looking forward to today’s wellness class—as I said, it’s already been a long week and
it’s only Wednesday, so I hope today will recharge me.