I got a lot of great tips from you guys about what to say during my Career Day presentation. Every single piece of feedback I got found its way into the talk in one way or another. I was stewing on how to fit it all together the night before when Syd stopped by on an unrelated matter, conducted an impromptu interview with me about my speaking points, took some notes, then magically synthesized everything together into one cohesive presentation. Apparently he used to do this with Sarah all the time when she was writing reports in high school. It was like I had my own personal speech coach.
I went into the building Wednesday morning with a notecard in my back pocket. This is more or less—more more than less—what it said:
- When I was in high school, the web had just been invented, and there was no such thing as a web developer. No one could have told me what I was going to do. New jobs are invented all the time. There’s a good chance you’ll end up doing something you can’t even dream of yet.
- It’s okay to change your mind about what you want to do, as many times as you want to. Don’t worry about picking the right major the first time around. Or the first job. Or second, or fifth.
- The story of my rise from immigrant bean picker to CEO of a multi-thousand-dollar organization.
- College is about trying new things and finding what fits. When I was in college I spent half my time in my major and half the time at the newspaper with J-school dorks. Explore.
- Endearing story about living in CRC, the best dorm ever. I went with Illumi-Hinman.
- What they don’t tell you is that college is about making connections, building a network. Seems like cheating, but it’s true. Real, honest, human connections is what propels you along in life and allows you to have the confidence to do risky, scary things. It’s what’s helped me.
- You guys are smart. You know what’s right. Be skeptical. Don’t be distrustful, but skeptical. Make sure the things people are telling you (including what I’m saying here) make sense to you before buying it. Trust yourself.
Which took me to the five minute mark, because really, shut the boring adult up already. At this point, I’d ask for questions, which would usually come slowly, so I’d turn it around and ask the kids a few things, like who knows what they want to do? Or who has parents who are insisting they do something in particular? One of those got us going, and then we’d riff for the next fifteen minutes until it was time for the next speaker.
Fortunately, it was wasn’t my intention to recruit them into web design or computer programming, because I would have been deflated to learn LPHS doesn’t offer programming or web design classes. Instead I probed them about what they really wanted to do. It was uplifting to find that a lot of kids had really specific ideas. Nurse anesthesiologist. Computer animator. Stock trader. Musician. I made my pitch for web design anyway, and told them to use their resourcefulness to research it online and try it out on their own time.
The kids were genuinely engaged and interested. It wasn’t hard to have a conversation with them for fifteen minutes. They had relevant follow-ups to the points I made. One girl really latched onto the point about networking, saying she found it so frustrating that she’s having to compete against kids her age who are unfairly ahead due to the networks their parents built for them. I tried to encourage her to go out and make her own connections right now; she was a sophomore, after all. If you start now, I told her, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers in no time.
As good as it all went, I’d change some tactics for next time:
- Lean heavily on the personal anecdotes, and less on the fortune cookie wisdom. No one likes to have someone preach to them. Much more effective is first-hand accounts of the benefits of all these lessons.
- Come prepared to drop names… Every class asked about two things. The first was “Have you worked with anyone famous?” I didn’t have a good answer.
- And numbers. The second: money, money, money, just like Lilli predicted. When I told them I charged $5000 to make a website, their eyes lit up and I swear for a few seconds they all wanted to be web designers. But then they asked the gynecological oncologist how much she made, and they immediately forgot who I was.
- Offer a way to stay in touch. I brought my business cards with me, but forgot about them until the last period. When I offered them out, at least 12 kids came up after the class to take one. I was floored. I don’t expect to hear from most of them, but if even one writes me, I’ll be thrilled.
- Collect addresses. Knowing how short their attention spans are, I would love to have a collection of their emails, so I could follow up with an invitation to talk more about web design or programming as a career, if they were interested.
- Have an answer prepared for the inevitable “what good is all this?” question. As in, why do I give a shit about how to calculate the derivative of a quadratic? I was caught off-guard by this one, especially when it was asked by the math teacher, and didn’t have an answer ready, so I kind of stumbled through a riff on how college teaches you about how fun it is just to learn for learning’s sake. It’s an important question, one that I remember wondering when I was in high school. Next time I’ll come with something prepared.