What is it Like to Experience Career Anxiety at an Employer Networking Event

Hi Everyone, so far I have just worked on adding a foreground to my anecdote and cleaned-up some of the anecdote, part II will hopefully come tomorrow.

On November 4^th I coordinated a career networking event with 54 local employers coming The the TRU campus to share their career advice.  Over 190 students attended the event in the gym.  That afternoon while we were setting up the gym for the event I was talking with one of the volunteers, Anesha,  about how excited she was to meet Geography employers.  Anesha graduates in April from the Bachelor of Arts program with a major in Geography.  She considered this event a first step in beginning her career.  She had her questions to ask and knew what employers she wanted to talk to.  But as the event came and went I was very surprised that I didn’t see Anesha.  When I ran into her the next day she described the experience of how she decided not to attend the event below.   

As I headed to the TRU Gym to go to the career networking event I was thinking “I am going to find someone to hire me.”  I knew this was an excellent opportunity to meet employers and to ask some career questions that are getting more important now that I am almost finished school.  But as I walked up the steps to the gym I felt my jitters increase.  My stomach was unsettled, almost nauseous.  My hands were clammy and I could feel blood rushing to my face.   As I climbed the steps I could hear excited voices behind me accompanied by faster footsteps.  As the group of three students passed me I could hear one of them say she graduates next semester and wants to meet the mentors from KPMG.  “Me too I think!!   I want to meet the employer that will offer me a job.”  I reviewed the list of employers and knew who I wanted to meet.  I even had questions to ask.  As I reached the top of the stairs I moved to the side of the double doors, and stopped.  I was surprised by how much the gym had changed from just an hour ago when it was organized, quiet.  There were just volunteers working, setting up the tables, the balloons, the name cards.   As I scanned the gym I could see the rows of tables and balloons floating in the air. The 54 tables didn't seem overwhelming  this afternoon, but now it was different.  But the energy was different.  There was a hum of voices, dozens of students were already talking to employers and the event hadn’t officially started yet.  I was a little envious of the students already talking.  They seemed so prepared, certain of their questions and comfortable with their conversations.  And I still don’t know if I should continue with Geography or switch to Social Work.   The dialogue in my head was loud and fast. What if an employer sees through my indecision?  What if they see my fraud? My jitters were getting worse. My inner voice was saying it is easy, all I have to do is find a table and sit-down. After my first conversation it will get easier.  I can do this! I have to do this!   All this time, money, and energy put into getting good grades is useless if I don’t get a job out of it.  What will my parents say?  They have worked hard to pay for my tuition fees.  What if I somehow make a fool of myself and leave a bad first impression?  More students pass me as they enter the gym, seemingly with no hesitancy.  “Oh my God, Oh my God, there are a lot of people here.  I’m not ready for this!” I take a step back, my decision has been made and I turn my back on the experience.

Step 2, Reflective and interpretive text, to follow tomorrow (hopefully) when the flu subsides and my cognitive capacity isn't compromised by the congestion, the medicine or the headache.

The Complex Dance of Career, Mortality and Survival in Anne Frank's Diary

The following passage is from The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in 1947.   Through these first-person words Anne offers a reflective lens into her career desires that transcend life and death in a seemingly incompatible dance of acceptance and denial.  Oddly, although the university students I work with are not in such perilous situations as Anne, their life experiences just as heavily impact their career choices.  Like Anne, their careers aspirations are influenced by self-awareness, contradictory feelings, the need to make a difference, and the desire to have a purpose.  The theme of accepted mortality versus a fight for survival help to illuminate these notions.

April 4, 1944

I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ...

And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. Van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ... I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

Through her words Anne is expressing an emerging self-awareness of her identity in the past and present, while expressing a desire to change this identity in the future using her “God given gift” of writing.  And through this desire to reinterpret herself Anne demonstrates a fight for survival.  She expresses a desire “…to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life…” Her fear of being “ignorant” or “unknown"[1] especially considering the perilous world of uncertainty she is living with (being Jewish in Nazis occupied Holland in the War while living in a secret annex), impacts the temporal dimension of time.  She is able to imagine her future taking shape by fighting for survival - while admitting to her mortality.  In her remaining time she wants to leave a lasting impression “to go on living even after my death!”   

The immense uncertainty that Anne is living with also impacts space, which affects the way she feels.  These feelings are often in contradiction of one another such as “sorrow” and “excitement”, “life” and “death”.  Yet the space helps to make sense of the contradictory nature of these words, helping the reader to discover how it is possible to fight for survival while at the same time accepting death may be imminent.  Anne notes that “when I write I can shake off all my cares.  My sorrow disappear, my spirits are revived...but will I ever be able to write something great?”  These words help to reveal the complex notion that it is possible to both deny and accept death. 

Through the lived relation Anne has with other women in the secret annex her social sense of purpose is greatly impacted.  As she states “I can’t imagine living like mother, Mrs. Van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten.”  Anne wants a meaningful life, a sense of purpose, to be more useful.  Her relation to her potential self versus her aspired self is another demonstration of her fight for survival, for remembrance.  In these words Anne is also revealing much about her bodily presence.  She wants to be seen as more than a wife and mother, she wants to be seen as a talent, perhaps as a “journalist or a writer.”  In this modality she will BE, even after death.

This passage from Anne’s diary helps demonstrates an intricate unity, between time, space, relation and body in which Anne is able to weave the seeming dichotic elements of mortality and survival into one fabric. Exploring this theme through a career lens, she is conceding she is mortal and death may soon come, yet in her passion to live, to have a remembered voice, her writing will ensure her survival.  Through reflecting on this the seemingly incompatible dance, the dance changes, it becomes one of grace and poise that leaves me with a sense of wonder.  And this dance oddly enriches my understanding of student’s career aspirations today and how life heavily impacts this.

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[1] Source: http://www.etymonline.com, accessed October 29, 2010.

Review of Phenomenological Paper, TOUCHSTONE: FINDING A LUMP IN THE BREAST

Touchstone: Finding a Lump in the Breast

By Susan Underwood

The Question:

The title of this article attracted me because I had a lump in my breast and was curious about how another woman experienced this phenomenon.  But like this deceptively complex article title, identifying the question was difficult.  It wasn’t until I peeled back the layers of questions and discussion that I concluded the question was simple, the article just had complex ways of attending to it.  The question, “what is it like to find a lump in the breast?”  is addressed through exploring seven  thought provoking topics, however it is not possible to discuss all these questions in a 750 word blog so I have decided to review (1) mortality, (2) Underwood’s sense of dwelling in her body, and (3) her changing perspective on the essence of living. 

Underwood addresses the question on finding a lump in the breast using a complex technique that alternates between her personal descriptions, quoting a poem on bereavement and breast cancer (see link below) and using journal excerpts from cancer patients. In my first few readings of the article I couldn’t recognize the difference between the author’s voice and the quotes, but careful re-readings cleared up my confusion and demonstrated that this technique enriched the article by expanding on the author’s experiences, insight and description – addressing the question on a deeply intimate level. 

How the Article Addresses the Question:

Underwood uses the following quote to launch an inquiry on her changing views of mortality after discovering the lump “Once I accepted the existence of dying, as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?” (Lorde, as quoted in Underwood).  The author goes on to describe the implication of how discovering a lump in her breast, in time, forced her to admit to her mortality.  Through this admittance Underwood was changed forever, recognizing that death would come and that without fear of death there was an enhanced power in living. 

This flows into Underwood’s relational questions on dwelling and the body as separate from being , describing the process of the body changing from an “entity of oneself” to a sense of being “ousted from our dwelling places” when the lump was discovered.  She questions who has the right to be in her - her ‘being’ or her ‘lump’?  Her body couldn’t hold both.  Underwood expands her discussion on this through questioning what is the touchstone, “a black gritty stone once used as a testing base for metals.  They would strike the metal against it and know its content purity by the mark it left.” (Webb, as quoted by Underwood). This leads to an interesting line of questions.  Does the touchstone refer to how the discovered lump (the strike) in the breast exposes her essence, her being, her purity?  Does the piece of metal being stricken (her body) refer to mortality? I don’t think these questions are supposed to have one correct answer. Rather they invite a dynamic multitude of considerations that deepen the contemplation of what it means for Underwood (and perhaps for others) to find a lump in the breast.

Underwood goes on to analyze how finding a lump in the breast caused her to consider the quality of her life, changing her perspective on life-world connection.  This seems to lead to a cathartic realization of the temporal nature of her body and life, learning to treat both with care. Underwood skillfully concludes her article, pulling together all the threads of addressing her main question while including the voices from the journals and poem.  She writes “finding a lump in the breast, searching for an understanding of this experience, deepens the connections to the life-world and at the same time frees us to live in this world in a new way.  For once the immanence of our beings is embodied in our thoughts and actions, we no longer move in silence and fear, but with greater grace and eloquence step slowly toward our end.”

These words resonated with me because of the questions they evoked.  Am I living life with grace and eloquence?  Have I lost perspective on my life-world connection? Do I recognize my mortality?  How did my views on these topics change with my discovered lump? These are deep thoughtful questions, that I didn’t anticipate asking after reading a short article.  Yet asking the questions shows the power of a well written, thought provoking, phenomenological paper where the author uniquely engages in her experience of discovering a lump in the left breast.  

*I am including a link to the poem used in this article, by Adrianne Lorde, A Woman dead in her forties.  Reading the poem helped me understand the context for the quotes, (and the music is very good).  http://poemsandtheirmusic.blogspot.com/2009/07/woman-dead-in-her-forties-by-adrienne.html

Testing

Just testing what it will look like and some of the features.   I am looking forward to learning how to blog.