HW for 4/1

One of the main points from this week's readings was African Americans and the workforce. As Dawson notes, African Americans had many problems entering the workforce as they felt several constraints were upon them that limited their ability to perform their jobs. Along the same lines, African Americans felt that they did not receive equitable treatment to their white counterparts. It is important to understand that African Americans were simply just expected to blend into the corporate world and with such expectations came a lot of issues. People treated them inferiorly and overall there was a universal lack of advancement of African Americans in most organizations. Through negative emotions and a negative environment, many of them developed feelings of isolation and lonliness. One example of a way to deal with this is the idea of 'passing' from Harrison's article. He describes his grandmother who excelled in the workforce because others recognized her as white based on her features and she never revealed her true identity. She would sit at work and hear thousands of racist slurs, yet pretend to be unaffected. She did so with the understanding that the status of being white was a much more valuable asset in the corporate world. These articles together reflect the important issue of the difficulties faced by African Americans entering the workforce and it is crucial to understand that although things are not currently like that, it took a long time to get to the point we are at right now. In relating this point to my life, I have thought about a great number of my dad's partners or friends that are CEO's and are African American. Some are venture capitalists, some heads of banks, and others who manage divisions within my dad's company of MileOne. The reality is that over the past 25 years, they have had to work much harder than their white counterparts to get to these positions, however as they have excelled they have paved the way for other African Americans in such positions with positive mentors guiding the way for them.

A second important point comes from the Seligson article explaining how girls succeed in school, but how that all changes once they enter the workroom. It is not safe to assume that the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom will just translate effectively into the working world. This girl's story relays that it is not just college students in general having problems, but more so women. Female colleagues would undermine the new female worker and men in the company refused to take women seriously. Knowing the possibilities of this, it is important for women to first find out the odds stacked up against them before taking a job. Also, girls need to learn to build a new arsenal of skills as living in a world of equality in college may have forced them to neglect developing a set of real world skills. Girls need to develop thick skins and feel comfortable within themselves, whether it is through promoting their assets or learning to negotiate. As this article is pretty recent, it is definitely applicable to me as I am trying to enter the workforce. The advice given here is helpful as Seligson explains that perfection is not the pathway to success as well as the feminine trait of 'sensitivity' is not valuable. In trying to assimilate to the working world, I should heed this advice and understand that the knowledge and skill set that I learned in college is applicable but it is NOT all I need to get me through that first job. I should learn to create a professional network of people and feel comfortable with myself as well as unintimidated by male co-workers.

An important point from class was the issue of time management. Time management is crucial to how we organize our daily lives and it is important to understand the things that matter the most versus the things that matter the least. A lot of people's failures compared with other's successes come from the inability to effectively make use of your time. The time management matrix explained in group 3's presentation places urgent/not urgent and important/not important on the two axis. Issues such as crises, pressing problems, and projects with deadlines would be classified as urgent and important. These are the type of things we want to deal with first and put ahead of things like pleasure activities as well as busy work. It is important to be able to classify issues and activities as important, urgent, or both so people understand what they should tend to first. Inability to manage your projects and commitments carefully could cause you to oversee a deadline, miss a flight, or forget to help out a friend in need. As a college student, I am definitely guilty of bad time management. A lot of times, I find myself purposely wasting time on busy work or other activities in order to avoid doing the things that really matter or that I do not want to do- ie- study for a test the next day. My inability to focus effectively on certain tasks has definitely cost me certain grades in classes throughout my undergraduate career. As grades in college are a relatively minor thing to sacrifice in life compared to failed marriages or failed careers, however they have showed me that if I do not stay on top of my time management skills, I may oversee many more important things in life. As I am aware that I have the ability to sometimes get my priorities mixed up, I should learn to create lists for each day or for each week to list things that need to get done in order of their importance as to avoid problems in the future.

A second important point was to think 'win/win' which means understanding the difference between succeeding as an individual and succeeding interdependently. It is difficult for people to cooperate when you have ultimately set them up to compete with each other. Businesses succeed when the whole company experiences a gain (public) versus an individual making money (private). This principle is important because society is innately geared with people having the understanding that someone has to win and someone else has to lose - someone's success is someone else's failure. The reality is that it does not have to be like that and if you work interdependently in social and work settings, you will be able to achieve that 'win/win' scenario. If people understand this important concept, they will be likely to work to avoid approaching situations in a competitive manner in that they will not feed off of someone else's losses. Also, some people want to beat each other out so badly that they end up sacrificing themselves for the sake of making the other person lose- meaning they both lose as the desire to make the other lose has blind sided you in the situation. Throughout my past athletic pursuits, I have always been taught that there is no 'I' in team. It is not about you beating out a specific opponent, but more so as your team working together to achieve that success. Athletics are difficult as there is always a 'win/lose' mentality as one team is always going to outshine another. Aside from athletics, I have learned that in friendships and relationships, it is always important to work together so you are both happy. It never works out when one person's judgment and feelings are superseding another's- a balance of both people's wants have always worked better for me in maintaining personal relationships rather than trying to control the situation and impose my wants so far as to make another person 'lose'.