Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Career Conference

Sounds much stuffier than it has been. The guy doing the program is fantastic and inspiring. I thought a lot of the information would get trashed on me not interested in working in corporate America. But, what do you know, I'm diggin' it. Glad it will be over soon though. Need to get off campus.

For a conference involved in careers, I haven't had any bad knee-jerk reactions to most of the material. There's a bit about pushy networking--but it's manageable and not cut-throat or anything. A bit about finding your way to the top--but understandable. Then today, twenty minutes left of the program, I felt my blood boiling with these words: "I want all of you to always negotiate."

I simply refuse to say always. Example: working at Kohahna. I make zippo. That's not why I work there. Why on earth would I try to negotiate a higher salary for myself? I would never dream of taking more money from camp. If they gave me a raise I wouldn't want it. I would feel awful. So, I did something I really hate which is asking questions with the brim of my heat showing. Our speaker conceded some points, made some good arguments...Overall, I'm glad I asked and glad he is trying to encourage me to negotiate even if I never think I'll use it.

It is these times I know I'm maybe being an irrational liberally-charged college doe-eyed dreamer, but I really feel okay about that.

No comments: