Welcome to The GeneralGist

How Relationship Advice is Going to Get Me a Job

As I go into my post-grad, early career, I have found that I need to completely change how I think about finding a job.

For the longest time, my idea about finding a job was to take whoever takes me. Tailor my resume and cover letter to fit their needs. Look up the company, act interested in them, learn what they like, like what they like. Here, I had to stop myself. This sounded awfully like the terrible practices one might fall into when they are so desperate for companionship that they lose themselves in the search. While some of this can be seen as great advice, as someone that tends to take things to their extreme, I needed an analogy to really understand what was wrong with this approach. Let’s switch out this employment advice for romantic or platonic companionship advice: Hang out with whoever shows interest in you, find out what they like, and tailor your personality to match that, find out what they are interested in and make them your interests.

When I made this comparison, I thought it was high time I changed my relationship with finding employment. I have always been an advocate for consciously putting people in your life, changing the narrative of needing to find “the one” or needing to fit in. Now, I am becoming an advocate for conscious job finding, and I will share with you the most influential advice that has transformed my outlook: Better yourself and you will attract what you are looking for.

This is a great piece of advice for those who have been burned by several subpar dating partners and friends. They reach their limit and swear off the entire practice. I have definitely seen myself fall into this pit of pouring myself into countless applications and receiving either rejections or no response at all. I get burned out and stop putting out applications. Which is not something someone who is graduating soon should be doing. So what does this piece of advice mean? Simply: work on myself.

Now, this is advice that I have been given before. Advisors will tell me that companies want to know what you are working on, they want to see your work, and they want to know they are hiring a competent worker, not just a degree. However, this advice has never hit home as much as when it was put like this. I don’t want to base my personal projects on “what the companies want”. Within the narrative of “bettering myself”, my personal projects are just that: personal. They are projects and questions that I am interested in that happen to incorporate a major that I love.

Of course, I cannot discredit the value of putting oneself out there, searching in the right places, and making the first move. These things definitely get people jobs and probably should be done in conjunction with what I’ve mentioned here. While the method itself may not have changed, the ideology behind it has been a game-changer for me and I hope it has also resonated with you. It definitely has me jumping back into the job-finding game with passion projects and certifications on the horizon.

Gone are the days of wondering how my peers’ eccentric video game designs or complex data visualizations of a niche interest got them the job of their dreams. Now I know. There was never a secret project that caught the employer’s eye. It was always someone doing with their love and someone else noticing.

Learning Like a Generalist

Hello everyone, and welcome to The GeneralGist, or The Generalist, or The General Gist, depending on how you read it. Above is an example of what you can expect to see from this blog. It’s all about trying to understand the world through different connecting perspectives, metaphors, and analogies.  

The name of this blog is meant to be read multiple ways in order to simulate the way that different people can understand the very same thing, or, more importantly, the multiple ways one person can understand one thing. First and foremost, “to gist” is a Nigerian English term for chatting with friends. So at the end of the day, this is not meant to be a professional teaching their students. This is meant to be a casual chat with like-minded learners. Secondly, the interpretation of “The Generalist" refers to the practice of, as I define it, gaining a working knowledge of multiple skills or topics. It appeals to me. As you will come to read, there will be multiple examples of the many topics we will be covering.

We won’t get too in the weeds of these topics, but rather opting to get the “general gist” of the matter (a third interpretation of the blog name). For example, if someone was trying to understand creative writing, crocheting, or singing, I'm not going to start with topic-specific jargon such as**:

• “third-person omniscient unreliable narrator"

• “back-loops-only pattern with color pooling and blocking instructions"

• or “belting solfège in your head voice"

I would to start with something general: simply “self-expression through creation".

Creation and, most importantly, sharing that creation are the most important parts of the learning process. As someone who is continually amazed with the world and how she can interact with it, I am prone to interest-hopping when something new comes along. In true generalist fashion, this is a phenomenon that goes by many names, such as “shiny object syndrome,” “new relationship energy,” or “recency bias.” In short, it is the act of leaving past interests or commitments behind in favor of starting something new. It is this fault of mine that draws me to the structure of learning like a generalist. How else will you know you have a working knowledge of a topic if you never finish working on something? This, I think, is why teaching or tutoring is such an effective learning tool. So I thank you for joining me on this thought journey as we slow down and take the time to learn together and try to gain a deeper understanding of the world.

To keep the discussion going, consider the following questions in the Let's Gist section that will be and the end of every blog post:

Let's Gist

• What appeals or does not appeal to you about learning like a generalist?

• What obscure connections have you made in order to help yourself to gain a better understanding of something?

• What advice has helped you stay encouraged during your professional, personal, or academic development?

I can’t wait to continue gisting with you next time on The GeneralGist.

Notes :

**

• ❝third-person omniscient unreliable narrator❞

  • unreliable narrator: a writing device where the narrator cannot be trusted to give an accurate account of events,

  • third-person: the narrator is outside the story and uses third-person pronouns to talk about the characters in the story

  • omniscient: the narrator knows the thoughts, actions, and motivations of all characters at once

  • (*I was just kind of writing words here, I don't even know how this would work, so if anyone knows a book with a narrator like this, please let me know lol)

• ❝back-loops-only pattern with color pooling and blocking instructions❞

  • back-loops-only: to crochet in specifically the inner or back loop of the project

  • color pooling: lining up multi-colored yarn to form a consistent color pattern

  • blocking: stretching and setting your project with pins, glue, water, or starch so that it does not roll up on itself

• ❝belting solfège in your head voice❞

  • head voice: using the upper limit of your vocal range (head voice) to

  • belting: producing a powerful, consistent sound

  • solfège: the syllables assigned to certain points on a musical scale (“do, re, mi, fa, etc"...)