I found Professor Brett Chambers’ lecture very inspiring. He spoke with a confidence that exuded hope for us as students because it was based on a great knowledge of and experience in his field of journalism. He first talked about his own life and experience in school, saying that he always thought he would be a doctor and planned on majoring in pre-med. When he didn’t do so well in those classes and started to really enjoy a radio show he hosted, his perspective changed and he eventually decided to study business and the media. He talked about lessons he learned as he worked his way up in the industry and gave us advice about how to do this ourselves. He ended the class with several examples of how his own students have made outstanding accomplishments and why they got to where they did. Three important pieces of wisdom I gleaned from his talk are:
1. It helps to admit to yourself what it is you really want to do earlier rather than later. This way, you can work to achieving it early on – you’ll either accomplish it or find that you don’t want to continue pursuing it, but either way you’ll get it out of your system. Denying what it is you really want to do will only cause you to have to deal with it when it’s much harder to try something new.
2. Listen to teachers’ and mentors’ advice about improving your résumé or getting jobs. Even if it doesn’t seem like you can accomplish what they’re telling you to do or it doesn’t seem like heeding their advice will pay off, you never know what could happen. Chambers told us about one girl who had low chances of getting a certain internship as a sophomore, but ended up getting the position over juniors and seniors in the end because not many people applied, she was persistent, and she gave it her all in her interview.
3. Look at current and future classmates and teachers as connections. You never know who someone else knows or how they could potentially help you later on.
I think Chambers’ recommendation that we admit to ourselves what we really want to do early on will encourage me to pursue during college what I feel really drawn to rather than what simply seems logical or what my parents and others expect me to pursue. Chambers is extremely successful and satisfied with what he’s doing now, but he believes he should have given himself more freedom in the beginning. Counsel like this is more effective to me when it comes from someone who has already made it and in looking back, says he still would have done that differently. His advice to heed the instruction of those more experienced than me even when I can’t see how the results would directly benefit me was especially good for me to hear. I tend to try to weigh the pros and the cons of all the important decisions I have to make until I can tell that one decision would be more beneficial than the other. However, this could prevent me from experiencing a lot of success that I just can’t foresee.
