give yourself some grace

One of the most interesting phenomenons I've seen while working in my finance internship, is that people are sometimes so fearful of making the wrong move in the market, that it cripples them from taking any action at all.

I've seen this firsthand with my mom. She really doesn't know anything about personal finance or investments, and she doesn't pretend to. (As a side note, people that don't know anything about investments and pretend like they do are my least favorite types of clients to work with.) She recognizes that she doesn't understand anything about finance, and the thought of learning about it is so overwhelming, she'd rather not think about it at all. So she never educated herself, and she hasn't changed anything in her 401K for years and years, because she was too afraid she would make the wrong move. Instead, she left her investments as is because someone in finance, long ago, set up her 401K for her and told her what to invest in, and she agreed, knowing that he or she knew much more about finance than she did.

You know, gosh, we put so much pressure on ourselves in so many different situations to do the "right" thing and avoid feeling like a failure. Fear gets the best of us and we don't act on anything at all. And in this case, it cost my mom decades of growth in the stock market.

If there's anything I've learned in college with the various projects I'm involved in, if something doesn't work, abort ship and start over. There is no shame in failure. We are so uncomfortable with it, but failure is actually quite valuable. Even though my last blog post talked about my killer interview skills, I actually walked into my first finance related interview last year, and crashed and burned miserably. I mean, I couldn't answer any of the technical questions they asked me. It was awful! But as killer as the experience was (I still cringe thinking about it), it helped me get serious about learning the art of interviewing. Yeah, failing that interview felt so uncomfortable, but I was a 20 year old college student, barely even starting my finance classes at that point in time; what could I have really expected?

In my Psychology class, I learned that college students have the highest rates of depression. A lot of it is linked to the fact that we have lots of opportunities to fail. Whereas a mid-level career person might possibly fail at a project or a presentation once every month or few months, we get the possibility of failing a test or a class nearly every week. With an atmosphere so highly charged with other smart people accomplishing so much, the pressure can get very intense to succeed.

The only person who has the ability to control the amount of pressure on you is you. And, speaking as a Type A overachiever, this realization has brought me a long way. Yes, I still feel the pressure, but now I ask myself if I'm working toward a goal because I'm drawn to it or because I feel obligated to do it. While it doesn't change the desired end result, it definitely changes how I feel about getting there. Sometimes I need to remind myself that I need to give myself grace.

the secret to standing out in the interview process

In the last 9 months, I have gone to about 8 interviews. Of those, I received offers from 6 of those places, one of which was offered to me on the spot following my interview.

Not to toot my own horn here, but toot toot! I tend to excel at interviews. A lot of people ask me for advice when it comes to interviewing, but it is very, very simple.

There are three main components that enable you to get the internships/jobs/positions you want.

1. A good resume (this is what gets you that interview)
2. A good cover letter (essentially, an elevator pitch in written form)
3. The interview

For me personally, I've spent a lot of time and energy crafting a very thorough and professional resume. I've had scores of business professionals look it over and rip it apart, until I believe it's in the best shape it can be. This was really important for me, because so far, my experience hasn't been totally relevant for the positions I've been applying for (mostly financial internships).

I needed my resume to look the best it could so that I could get a second look. The average HR person really only spends somewhere between 10-30 seconds looking at your resume. You have to make sure you make a good impression on paper in that short of a time.

In general, I feel that I can articulate myself well on paper, so the cover letter is essentially a summary of my background, experience, and why I think the company would value me. I know, pretty standard.

In the interview process, I think I've really hit on a winning combination. My ratio of interviews to offered positions is abnormally high, so I would like to think that it gives my theory some sort of validation! (Try it out for yourselves and let me know how it goes.)

First and foremost, you need to be competent for the position you're applying for. You can't fake talent. Let's just get that out of the way. But even if you have just an average level of competency in the skills required for the position, you can still stand out by simply having a lot of humble confidence. What I mean by humble confidence is this: have a firm handshake, look them in their eyes, speak clearly and confidently, but with a smile and a keen interest in your interviewer as a person. I cannot stress the last point enough.

In a corporate setting, people have to wear suits and sit at a desk and act professionally, all day long. They work with coworkers, not their girlfriends (or bros). They can't just talk about anything they want to; their talk revolves around the company and the job. Furthermore, hiring managers have to hear people talk about themselves and the company in interview after interview. It is very rare that interviewees will turn the table around and ask questions to get to know the interviewer. The simple connection on a human, personal level seems almost intimate given what they're accustomed to. In the workplace, individuality is stifled. By astutely perceiving what they're passionate about and politely inquiring further, they feel like you see them as a whole person. It's acknowledging that who they are is so much more than just their job.

That's what makes you stand out. Establishing a personal connection with your interviewer is invaluable! It's refreshing for them. Sure, some people receive offers because technically, they're simply smarter and more experienced. To be transparent, my GPA isn't all that great. I know that there are candidates who are much more qualified for positions than I am. But I'm still getting job offers. It's much easier to make a personal connection than to ensure that you are the best qualified of all the candidates, since you don't know who else is applying. But by assuming that you are average, it's easy to believe that you probably aren't the smartest/best qualified.

Another component that I think is as almost as great of importance is showing initiative. I talk about The Storybook Ending, and how it came to be. I talk about this blog. I talk about EPICONOMICS, which is a 3-part seminar series on personal finance tailored for college students that I concocted because I wanted to help my friends understand their money. Just show that you're capable of self-motivation, however it looks like. It could be hosting dinners every week to try out new gourmet recipes. It could be starting a YouTube channel to showcase your musical ability. These are your natural passions, so you will naturally begin to get excited when you share about what you've done. Once you see your interviewer as a complete person, they start to view you as one, too. Their job is simply one facet to their lives, so that's how they think about you, too. You don't need to be the most qualified candidate. Just give them something to show how you fulfill the necessary requirements, and your natural passion for your hobbies will convince them that you'll be a highly motivated worker.

It is amazing to me how underrated personal connections are in the corporate world. This is not to be confused with networking which is, in general, an over abused process which doesn't bring to mind much depth. By contrast, when you begin to treat a person like they're of immense worth, it's met with curiosity and respect. And they will remember you for it.

One of my favorite stories:

During my second year of college, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one: What was the first name of the janitor that cleans the school?”

Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how could I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank.

Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. “Absolutely,” the professor said. “In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello.”

I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.

by JOANN C. JONES

harnessing irrational behavior for monetary gain: eBay

Question: How can a company like eBay increase prices and attract MORE buyers?

I am an established seller on eBay, and I recently got an email from the company talking about how they've implemented new fee policies. Before, eBay used to charge just to post an auction-style listing, as well as a percentage fee based on the ending price of an auction. Now, they're eliminating listing charges to entice more sellers to sell more items on eBay.

People are lured in by lower costs. Basic economics, right?

Well, here's the catch. eBay is eliminating insertion fees, but jacking up final value fees, which is a percentage of the price an item sells for. Since listing fees run $0.25-$2.00, depending on how expensive the starting price is, sellers are only saving money if their items don't sell.

For me, I normally start listing items in the $9.99-24.99 range, which cost $0.50 per item. This means that for every 10 items I list under the new policies, I save about $5. However, the final value fees increase from 9% to 10%, and the fee amount will be calculated with shipping costs included in the final price. If my auctions ended at an average price of $40 and shipping costs me $5, it actually costs me $9 more to sell on eBay with the new fee policy ($36 would be my final value fees under the old policies, and $45 would be my new final value fees). And that's not even counting PayPal's transaction fees, either. (Not surprisingly, PayPal is owned by eBay.)

So let's take a closer look at the psychology behind eBay's strategy. By simply understanding that people are risk averse, they are essentially eliminating all the risk associated with paying a small premium to list items on eBay. eBay is enticing first-time sellers to try out their services.

It feels cheaper. It feels less like a gamble.

Now, eBay has to make up for that lost profit from forgone listing fees somehow. So they decide to increase their final value fees (which they've been doing steadily since I've joined eBay), and start calculating them based on the ending price plus shipping costs. In essence, they are actually charging more for their services, which, if you've taken any basic economics course, you know would cause buyers (which, in this case are actually the eBay sellers who are consuming eBay's online market services) to stop using eBay. But instead, eBay is appealing to people's risk aversion by making them indifferent to selling.

And that's how they're raising prices and attracting new buyers.

Irrational? Yes. Genius? Yes.

Irrational behavior is profitable.

Convenience is the death of discipline

It's been a while, but finals are over, and I can now reclaim my life! All I want to do is sleep in late, stay in my PJ's all day and order in, watch a movie and lie on the couch in my snuggie.

Sound familiar?

We have a penchant for comfort. We have been trained through positive reinforcement that comfort is a luxury. Spa days and do-nothing days are pure bliss; TV remotes and microwaves give us what we want, fast. So that becomes what we strive for. We want the most efficient washing machine and dryer, the fastest internet, TiVo to skip through commercials, etc.

In the midst of all this convenience, we have forgotten discipline.

If you truly want to maintain a high level of productivity, you must stay disciplined. If you truly want a healthy retirement fund, you must stay disciplined. If you truly want better health, you must stay disciplined.

You see, the problem with convenience is not convenience itself. No, it is the mindset that we slip into when we enjoy it. It is so easy to come home and sit on the couch and reach for a remote. The motivation I have to study dissipates after a few minutes of watching Glee. I start to relax, thinking that I "deserve" a break. As soon as the show is over, I still have no motivation to get back to work.

Discipline is counter-cultural and unexciting, but it helps maintain long-term goals when faced with short-run distractions.

The solution? Barriers. Set up barriers to block yourself from falling into the convenience trap. The TV can be so tempting after a 12 hour day, but if you've taken out the batteries of the remote and placed them on the opposite side of the house in a hard to get place, I guarantee that the extra effort used to find and replace the batteries of the remote will deter you from plopping down on the couch to watch your shows.

Note, however, that if you have planned a movie night, the extra effort will barely be a hindrance at all, because you have intentionally set the time aside. It becomes just another step in your list of preparations, along with cleaning the living room and making popcorn.

Now that spring break is upon us, it is so tempting to go to bed late and sleep in the next morning, but in order for me to maintain some semblance of productivity, I've scheduled myself for morning appointments the remainder of this week.

In the moment, discipline fails. With some preparation and strategically erected barriers, we won't need to rely on how motivated we "feel." We will have no choice but to perform at a high level.

Similarly, no matter how knowledgeable we are on financial matters, when we deposit our paycheck, we get this itch to spend. Now that we know there's money in our account, all of a sudden we start to notice things in store windows we were passing by earlier, and they're looking like they would fit perfectly into our lives. We know that short term gratification will keep us further from our long term goals, but we've worked a lot of hours this month and we "deserve" a little treat.

Solution? Automation, baby. Have your paycheck deposited into your savings account, schedule automatic bill payments and an automatic transfer of 15% (or however much) into your investment account, and then transfer a certain amount (play around with the percentages, keeping in mind how aggressively you want to reach your savings goals) into your checking account. This way, you can only spend the amount that you pre-set to transfer into your checking account. I guarantee you that your savings rates will go up.

By planning ahead of time, we can negate the short term temptations by blocking the enticing convenience aspect, which forces us to stay on target with our goals.

assume you are average

Let's face it; we're human. We have this intrinsic gravitational pull to compare things together. We compare ourselves, our stuff, our achievements, etc with others. We love to compare.

But why?

It's because of our desire to fit in, to belong with a group. Maslow's third tier in his hierarchy of needs is dedicated to mankind's desire for love and acceptance. We want to be accepted. The next highest tier looks at man's need for self-esteem or confidence. We want others to perceive us a certain way. We want others to respect us, to look up to us.

And so we need a benchmark to measure ourselves against. We want to know what the norm is, so we can discern how we are doing in comparison with everyone else. If we excel at something, we only excel at something in relation to how others are faring. If we want to be better at something, we need to know how others are doing.

Sometimes, comparisons can be deadly, like eating disorders that many young women develop by constantly comparing themselves to how they believe beautiful women should look like. Or we get depressed because we feel like we can't measure up to society's standards of what a smart college student is, or even that we are a failure in our parents' eyes because we aren't a doctor or lawyer and we are Asian (or not).

But we can also use comparison for our advantage. Remember when I talked about the dangers of perfectionism? It's the same kind of concept here.

Just because you know that your job wasn't completed perfectly doesn't mean that everyone else does. Remember when your parents signed you up for piano lessons and your teacher would make you have recitals? Remember how you would cringe and feel like a failure every time you messed up a note, but when you talked to everyone afterward, you realized the only person who noticed was you? Yeah, that's pretty much how the rest of the world is, too.

When people pay you to fix stuff for them, they're not really paying you to do an amazing job (well kinda, but stick with me here); they're paying you to just do a better job than they could. People don't expect you to do things perfectly, just better than them.

This means that all the people you're intimidated by, aka all the bestselling authors, influential businessmen, etc aren't any different than you and I; they've just learned to do things better than everyone else.

So find the benchmark, and learn how to become one step above it. For 99% of things in life, this is good enough. Lower your expectations (counterproductive though this may seem), but the projects you'll complete will be good enough to get the job done well while still impressing others. How do I know this?

Because I am average, too. And I am very impressed by people who know how to do things I don't have any idea of how to do, like change the transmission of a car. Or write a software program. The average person has no idea how to do this stuff. If this is your field, major or interest, you can safely assume that a business will hire you to write a program for their company, and they have absolutely no idea what any of your technical jargon means.

No, I am not endorsing slacking off; I am encouraging productivity and a mindset of increased job satisfaction. Think of it as diminishing marginal utility. The more effort and time you put into problem solving, the better the solution becomes. But once you've solved all the main problems, all your left with is basically minutiae, whose results are not worth the amount of time you have to put in. I hope I am being clear here. Your goal is to add value, so do not waste your time on tedious details that do not provide much output for the amount of input you invest in it.

I landed a gig doing website maintenance for an engineering professor on campus. How? Honestly, I have no idea. I had never even used Dreamweaver before. I walked into the job with only basic HTML knowledge (and we're talking REALLY limited HTML here), but this professor is elderly and didn't really know anything about computers...at all. So I got by because I knew more than he did, and what's more, he is actually quite impressed by my technical knowledge. I knew enough to fix his website problems, and that was enough. But if I couldn't fix his problems, if I couldn't complete the task he hired me for, there would be no point in me taking the job, and it would certainly be unethical for me to charge him.

Comparisons are not inherently good or bad; they are merely a tool to help you understand which actions are bringing you value. Ever heard the phrase that 85% is good enough? Comparisons tell you where the 85% mark is.

something is better than nothing

What's a college student to do when she realizes she has three midterms, a job interview, and class registration all in one week?

Well if you haven't already realized, the "she" is me, and I usually start by running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Then I sit down, make a to-do list, get overwhelmed by the to-do list, then tuck myself into bed and whimper.

After that, I snap out of it, prioritize my list, and start my tasks using the Snowball effect. And all would be nice and dandy if life worked just like that and I accomplished all my goals. However, let's be realistic. We have time constraints that prevent us from accomplishing all that we would like to do, even if we're still feeling motivated. The fact is, sometimes at 2 AM, I'm feeling productive and ready to get a bunch of stuff done, but it would be unwise to stay up another 2 hours, because I would be tired the next day and unable to focus on my work.

So when I have a task that will take many hours to complete but only have a fraction of the time to do it in, I find it extremely easy to procrastinate, saying that I'll do it "later," when I "have more time." As we know, later never comes with more time, so I have to figure something else out to maintain productivity even when the satisfaction of achievement isn't involved.

To get around the time constraint and to compensate for the lack of euphoria of completing a task, just work on your task for however long you have.

For instance, at work, I'm supposed to be overhauling our website. There are many revisions on each of the say, 50 pages or so, that will take me hours to complete. While yes, all 50 pages must be revised, I do not have hours and hours of time, energy and resources to just sit at the computer and edit web pages in one sitting. No, for a big project like this, I'll choose three web pages that require major revisions, and I'll get to work emailing the people I need updated information from, etc. This is what I call the "something is better than nothing" approach.

I realize that this seems like a fairly obvious tip, but let's unload this a little more. People know that it's best to break up big projects into smaller, bite-sized pieces to accomplish tasks. Yet so few people do it. I know this, and I still don't do it as often as I should. This is called cognitive dissonance.

What is preventing me from putting this into practice? I hate feeling like I spent a bunch of time on a zillion different things without accomplishing anything. This makes me not want to work on starting a new chapter on a tedious subject (ahem, economics) if I only have 15 minutes, because I won't have enough time to finish it.

The magic of this tip comes from a mindset change. Fifteen minutes of reading a chapter is better than nothing at all. Likewise, $10 of savings/week is better than $0/week. I think a lot of times we feel like our contributions are just a drop in the bucket. We feel like they're so small, they don't matter at all.

This is why we're so surprised at the end of the month when we look at our bank accounts and see that our $5 daily coffees added up to over $100. The little things DO matter. We can harness this for our benefit by eliminating the useless little things while progressively chipping away at our goals/tasks.

The other part of this mindset shift is that we have to set our own goals customized to our life/schedule/finances, etc. And we have to allow ourselves to be satisfied with our progress.

I constantly have to remind myself to be pleased with myself after I accomplish even a little something. Today, I spent 30 minutes working on the website overhaul, and I told myself I accomplished something today that I should feel proud of. I also spent 1.5 hours wading through my economics book. This is also something I should be proud of. Even though I didn't finish my website task and even though I didn't finish my chapter, I finished 3 web pages and I got to the halfway point of my chapter. Now I need to allow myself to feel pleased. When I don't, it's because I'm letting my perfectionism get the best of me, or because I am comparing my progress to what I think it should be. This is dangerous, but can be twisted into a very useful lifestyle hack. I'll be exploring this concept more in a later post.

it's now or never

Cheesy as this title is, it's so true.

There are so many things that we put off completing because we are too swamped, too tired, too overworked, too cranky, too this and too that. But we'll work on it later, we'll swear.

How many times has this happened to you? Just today, I told myself I was too tired to wake up early this morning to finish some reading before class. Then I told myself I was too busy to finish a bunch of projects at work that have been dragging on and on. Then I realized how stupid I was being.

"Later" never comes about. Now is the new later. I realized I had to just suck it up and get 'er done.

Procrastination is such a sneaky bastard. Even knowing how bad I am when I procrastinate doesn't make me change anything. What actually happens is that I get annoyed with how much I'm procrastinating, but I tell myself I'll motivate myself and process through why I'm procrastinating later.

Get it?

Being aware of my own procrastination habits just make me feel more bad and guilty for not doing the things I know I should be. To deal with this cognitive dissonance, I simply push all thoughts of work away and focus on something else that is generally not at all what I should be doing, ie blogging instead of studying for midterms. So what can I conclude? Procrastination simply leads to more procrastination.

So how to break this cycle?

I use the "Snowball effect" to increase productivity.

The "Snowball effect" is a method that is used to pay off debt. It involves listing the various debts you owe in the order of smallest to greatest, and paying off the smallest amounts first. It harnesses the psychological high of achieving small feats in order to keep the debtor motivated to tackle the largest debts. Critics of the "Snowball effect" argue that it's not financially the smartest thing to do, since interest rates on the bigger debts will make the total amount you owe higher than if you paid them off first. This is beside the point. If most people were faced with $10,000 of debt, what do you think they would do? They would probably try really hard to save money and live frugally and at the end of the month pay off as much as they could and then get really discouraged that they still owe $9,500 and figure it's not worth depriving themselves of lattes and going out to lunch just to save their credit score. So they stop their debt repayment efforts altogether and push their guilt to the back of their mind.

Similarly, when I make a to-do list, I write out every single gosh darned task that I know I need to do. While most people would then prioritize them and adjust their time to spend more on the biggest tasks, I actually organize them by the time/effort it will take me to complete them. For instance, my psychology homework takes very little time, concentration and critical thinking. I would start off doing it before I start my economics homework, which takes upwards of 2-3 hours of extreme focus to complete.

Start small, go big.

Psychology is more powerful than you think. Learn to harness it.

failure is not an option

My weekend sucked. Wanna know why? It's because I was in the dangnabbed library from Friday-Sunday for 8 hours a day. This is following a Mon-Thurs week of 15-16 hour days of nonstop class, work and studying.

I am exhausted.

And I have been for a while now. But somehow, I wake up each morning with enough strength to get me through the day. Why? Or more importantly, how?

I used to be one of those types of people who could never understand how people did so much in a day. I used to marvel at my roommate who would go from class, work and leading Bible study from 8 AM to 10PM at night on Mondays without a single break, and never thought I could handle living at that pace. And behold, here I am.

The reason why I never comprehended how people who were struggling to make ends meet could work 3 jobs or how some high school students could manage school with so many sports and extracurricular activities was simply because my mindset included quitting as a choice. Their mindset didn't. It's just like how going to the gym takes so much more mental strength than carrying a 20 pound backpack walking all around campus all day. I do it because there is no option of me just missing class or work for it.

I watched an extremely fascinating segment on strict Chinese parenting on MSNBC. You can watch it here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41005969/ns/today-books/

Although I personally disagree with her endorsement on how to raise kids, I do appreciate my Asian heritage, and I definitely think there are some things that are characteristic of the East that the West could benefit to learn from. (On a side note, sometimes I believe I have such a great advantage by being Asian-American because I get to take the best of the East and combine it with the best of the West.) I actually quite agree with Amy Chua in that Asian students tend to outperform white students because their parents expect so much more than Caucasian parents do. Now, this is a double edged sword and can lead to deep psychological wounds, but I know I can attribute my hours and hours in the library to a refusal to settle for anything less than passing this Economics class.

When there is no option of failure, you learn to adjust and do what you gotta do. If an F is what you are expecting, an F is what you will work for. If an A is what you are expecting, an A is what you will work for.

Now, I'm realistic enough to know that I will most likely not receive an A in this class. In fact, I will be happy to just pass the class with a C or better. And that is okay, since most students end up taking this class twice because they fail the first time. I refuse to fail this class. I refuse to take this class again. I expect to pass it my first try. And that's why I've studied 24 hours in the last three days for this goshdarn class.

power hour

Last weekend, I went over to my guy friends' house for a movie night. I had never seen Inception and I was excited to watch it. Everything was going fine until I had to use the bathroom. As a frame of reference, there are 5 guys that live in the house. As you can imagine, the bathroom was all kinds of nasty.

After the movie, I complained to my friends about how gross their bathroom was. I demanded some cleaning supplies so I could start cleaning for them (I have a thing about cleaning bathrooms...for some reason, I really enjoy it). They stopped me, saying that they were planning on spending a "power hour" later that weekend cleaning their house.

The concept of the power hour really intrigued me. What would it look like to harness the power of my utmost focus on a tedious task that I don't really feel like doing most of the time? I bet I would be able to get a whole heck of a lot more done than dragging my feet and whining.

For me, that means getting started on internship applications. I need to start researching the internships that I'm interested in and then start reworking my resume to fit each company. Additionally, I need to start making decisions on where I want to spend my summer; whether in Hawai`i, SLO or the Bay. There's a lot of factors to think about, which is why I've been procrastinating doing it.

But during my power hour, no excuses are allowed. It will strictly be all work and no play. Taking a cue from this article, I will block my access to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. I will make enough progress to at least come up with a system that lets me systematically attack the heap of things to do. That way, I won't have to make another power hour to get everything done, but take parts of it with me to do when I have a few free minutes. For example, by accomplishing the decision of where I want to apply for summer during my power hour, I can print out the applications and take them with me to complete when I'm waiting for class to start or needing a study break.

This weekend. Power hour. It's going down. Anyone else with me?

the dangers of perfectionism

We just had our winter quarter career fair on my campus this past week. It was so interesting to see all the kids in my classes who normally show up in sweats and t-shirts transform into polished professionally dressed job-hunters.

Even more interestingly, their patterns of behavior changed, as the reality of the "real world" began to invade the college bubble, and students became stressed about landing an internship or job. Suddenly, I had a bunch of people asking me for help on their resumes, interview-appropriate attire and what to say in interviews. The career center was flooded with anxious students trying to perfect themselves for potential employers. Even the freshmen and sophomore friends of mine were looking to the upperclassmen for guidance.

Here's how the typical conversation went:
Person: "Do you have a resume?"
Me: "Yeah."
Person: "Oh my gosh, can you help me with mine?"
Me: "Sure, what do you need help with?"
Person: "Everything! I don't know what to do! I heard you're supposed to have the margins aligned and the font a certain type and blah blah blah extraneous details blah blah."

So often, we get crippled into paralysis because there are too many things we've heard from other people that we "should" do. Trying to do it all perfectly is so overwhelming, we often miss the entire point of doing it in the first place. Or, we end up getting so stressed out by the possibility of not doing everything right, we just push it to the back of our mind and say we'll do it later or just not try at all. None of these options are optimal.

In order for us to make progress, we need to understand the why.

We're not going to do things perfectly. Why? Because there is no "right way" to get an internship or a job, or accomplish pretty much anything in life. Every person's path is different, and there's no point in trying to do things exactly like somebody else.

The point of a resume is not to have a pretty resume, impress people or get you a job. The point of a resume is to show employers that you will add value to their company. Those other things might come with it, but the whole purpose of having a resume is for the company's benefit, not yours.

Sure, details like font type and margin size help with the presentation, but all that just tells companies that you're neat. "Neat" is not a scarce quality. Tell them what you've done that relates to their open position. Tell them what your strengths are and how that will enable you to not just perform the job responsibilities well, but excel at it. Look at the company's objectives and show how you'll be able to achieve them. Employers don't care about you, they care about what you can do to their bottom line. So tell them! And don't worry about the minutiae, at least for now.

Get the content done first, then work on the details. It is much harder to do it the other way around.

suck it up

This quarter, I'm taking a class that might simply be the death of me. I kid you not. It's called ECON 311, which is intermediate microeconomics expressed in terms of calculus. Now if you're a business major like myself, the microeconomics part might be straightforward, but the calculus part? It's just plain awful! Math is my weakest subject, and even though I mustered up A's and B's for the prerequisites, I just don't think in mathematical terms.

If you want to know why I'm concentrating in finance if I hate math so much, believe me, I want to know why too. This economics class has been the biggest source of stress and worry for me, and it's only been Week 2 of the quarter.

In fact, after the first week of classes, I was completely overwhelmed and terrified of what this quarter could do to my GPA/future. I called my dad in near hysteria complaining about how awful the course was, while he listened in mostly silence. When I was done complaining, my dad said, "Well, Sarah, you have two options." In anticipation of some wonderful insight or hidden gem of wisdom that would help to guide me in the right direction, I listened closely.

"You can either drop the class, or keep going."

Gee, Dad. Thanks. For nothing. Tell me something I don't know, please. But as I started thinking about it, he wasn't telling me something earthshaking. He was telling me what I already knew, because I already had what I needed to deal with this class. I could either drop it and deal with it later, or keep going with it and just work really hard. But complaining about it wouldn't solve anything. I'd still have to deal with it at the end of the day. It would still be there every Tuesday and Thursday waiting for me, unless I took action.

I think I have a tendency to over-complicate things that are very simple. Instead of taking action on the two things that I knew I could do, I was looking for an easy way out; a magical way of making the class less hard or dropping the class while still getting credit. There are no shortcuts, there's simply either doing or dropping.

Likewise, I think we often over-complicate our goals. For instance, we think we can't ask for a raise because we don't know all the subtle nuances to the art of negotiating. Or we can't be a social media expert because we've never had training. I have a part time gig working for a professor at my school doing website maintenance, which is slightly hilarious since I have no real experience with website maintenance...at all. Honestly, I really just know basic html. But even with my limited knowledge, I've managed to fix all his website problems and make some side income.

We're more equipped than we think. Why do we let ourselves talk our confidence down?



Oh...for the record, I decided NOT to drop the class. My midterm is next week, so we'll see how all my arduous studying pays off.

why are people so judgmental?

For college students, frugality and Top Ramen are a way of life. I know that my roommates and myself (I live with 4 other girls) are all relatively charmed in that our parents pay for our tuition, books and living costs, but in general, people think of college students as having a low standard of living.

However, the other thing that college students are known for is...partying. What I have never understood is how students can complain about the lack of money they have and why they can't do this or can't do that, yet still find a way to go out every weekend and buy handles of vodka so frequently.

Now, a little background on myself. I currently work 3 jobs, while taking a full load of classes. I also do not have a car.

This next caveat is what makes me so annoyed.

Since I like to shop (and can afford it, since my parents are taking care of my biggest expenses), I incur the judgment and seeming jealousy from some friends.

Does anyone else experience this?!

Now, I know that I wouldn't be able to have this standard of living if my parents weren't paying my way through school, and don't think that I am unappreciative of them. I am so very grateful for their support and feel very blessed that they're willing to invest in me and my future.

I'm also a personal finance nerd, and I love tracking my expenses and creating/tweaking my budget. And here's the thing: I save/invest about 60% of my salary. I tithe 10% and the remaining amount is my "fun" money.

My fun money is used on going out to eat with friends and for shopping. Or saving up to buy myself a really nice designer purse/pair of jeans/shoes, etc.

But people see just the purchases and don't realize the conscious way I choose to spend my money, so they point at and criticize my money habits, saying that I'm "irresponsible" and that there's no way I could be a financial adviser since I "can't" stop shopping.

It's not a matter of "can" or "cannot." I can afford a lot of things. So can you. But I'm not going to buy a $700 Louis Vuitton purse on a whim, the same as you will probably not buy a Mercedes on a whim. We all make decisions on how we spend our money. Most college students choose alcohol. I choose shopping.

achieving balance

So this weekend, one of my friends is in town, visiting from San Francisco, where he now works full time. Last year, he led one of the ministries I'm involved with while he was finishing up his Masters degree in Biomedical Engineering. When he got into town, about 10 of us went out to dinner with him to catch up and hear how he's doing. At the end of the meal, he picked up the tab for everybody. We didn't really know how to respond, since no one was expecting it. It was so sweet, and it really impressed me since he and I still talk pretty frequently, and I know that he's trying to save money.

I think it just struck me how balanced my friend was. He has his priorities as far as paying off student loans and starting to plan for his retirement, but he isn't stingy with people. God has blessed him with a job in this economy and he spent his money in a way that transferred a blessing to all ten of us.

That's the mindset that I want to have when I'm out of college and making a "real" salary. Sometimes, in the midst of my budgeting and planning for my future, I sometimes hold onto money too tightly. I get too stressed out about the future and feel like I "can't" or it's a waste of money to use it on other people instead of myself.

Money, like most things in life, is a balancing act that I have yet to perfect. I think that night was such a great reminder of what it looks like to have money and yet know that all blessings flow from the Lord. It's not MY money that I can spend on anything that I want after I give God his 10%. No, all of it is His and out of His generosity, He's letting me use it. It has less to do with the dollar amount I'm bringing in, and everything to do with trusting the Lord to provide. Worry and stress shows that there's a part of my life that I haven't entrusted the Lord with. He wants all of me, financial matters included.

What good is wealth if you are stingy? People don't feel wealthy, even if they are in the top 1% of the richest people in the world. That's because our mindsets are relative and we live in fear of losing what we have. This gives an excuse to not give to others or live generously within community. And at the end of life, what good is it if we gain the world but lose our souls?