Never Too Late

• You Are Not Special Commencement Speech

  • ​This video is of a commencement speech given to Wellesley High School by English teacher David McCullough, Jr. in 2012. He tells the graduating seniors that they are not special, that all of their participation awards and even the pure numbers of the planet prove that they are not unique. He urges the students to do whatever they want for the reason being that they love it and believe in it and provides them his personal advice to keep dreaming and reading and working. He encourages students to go on the chase of pursuit of happiness and do good to others, closing with that each person is not special, but everyone is.

    • This video has been influential in terms of thinking of my project because of the message that McCullough gives to people during a significant time in their lives. Similar to being a senior in college and at a crossroads in your life, myself and my main audience is in a (almost more) difficult position just like McCullough’s audience, the time to make a huge life choice. His advice to dream big and love everything and not do work that you don’t believe in are core values within my own project and a message that I believe I’m also trying to convey not only to myself through this project process but to my audience as a whole. 

 

 

• Time Magazine, “The Me Me Me Generation” by Joel Stein

  • In this well-known article by Joel Stein, he gives his thoughts about millennials. He calls them lazy and egotistical yet optimistic and strategic and holding the possibility to save the direction the world is headed in. One interesting example he used was the author of I hope they serve beer in hell as a millennial that wanted to do things his own way and using their education to do whatever they pleased. He describes the generation as one that challenges convention and does things to get ahead like just email the CEO and ask them a question. 

    • I think that the perspective provided by Stein is really important research to conduct concerning my project. It would be easy to solely find inspirational articles about millennials doing what they want, but by reading Stein’s piece I am reminded of the other side of my project. The side that reminds college seniors to take the job and be obedient and that there is a way the world works. While the world and taking jobs are obviously not black and white and there are many anomalies like the author to support either side, Stein’s article has reminded me to think in critically about my argument and interviews about the realistic path of chasing a passion.

 

 

• 50 Things About Millennials That Make Corporate America Shit It's Pants

  • ​This article, written by a millennials, essential for millennials is a response to the TIME magazine piece by Joel Stein. Beginning with a description of the confusion generated by Generation Y, Martin explains all the things Gen Y will not do, like hand over their souls or accept what is given. She apologizes to corporate America for not being interested and makes a collective statement that Gen Y is striving for an ideal life and doing what is best for them. She then gives a list of 50 things about the people of Gen Y as reasons why those on the “outside” are nervous, excited and scared of what is to come in the future. 

    • While I personally don’t associate with most things on Martin’s list about Gen Y’s attitudes, I think that a lot can be taken from this article especially in relation to my project. As a millennial, there is definitely an attitude about not want to settling or do what has already been done. There are obvious trends of changing jobs and later marriages but also trends in attitudes towards resisting typical workdays and jobs. Some of her points really hit home for my project about wanting to pursue passion and realizing that you can quit and change your path, two points that are central in my motivation and message behind this project. ​

 

 

• Millennials Want More Out of Work

  • ​This article, written by a Tribune reporter and mom, explains a parent’s perspective on the job trends of millennials today. While the author explains the scenario of her own son changing his job, she uses US Bureau of Labor Statistics to talk about millennials. Stating that the generation changes jobs three times more than the previous generation and that she believes in the job-hopping reputation. She also explains how many millennials live at home with a great deal of debt and are described as connected by social media and in no rush about their optimistic future.

    • This article was extremely useful in my research for my project. Not only did it provide valuable statistics to add to the credibility of my statements, but it also continued to provide a perspective outside of an actual millennial. This article also provided me with more information about how people perceive me and my generation in terms of our future, as in that we are detached from institutions and it is well known that we will change jobs. The fact that the numbers and opinions exist about the ability to change careers is really a central point in me asking the people I interview because I hope to find out if they did change their mind and the reasoning behind that. 

 

 

• Money-Motivated Millennials No More: Why Millennials Are More Focused On Culture Than Salary 

  • In this opinionated piece written by a millennial explains the effect of big entrepreneurs on Generation Y’s future goals. Fetcher explains that the old American dream no longer applies to this incoming generation and that people want a life greater than the paycheck. The article discusses how a generation inundated with information and wants to make the world a better place. This has caused many members of Generation Y to reach out to smaller companies and start-ups for a more focused a happy culture as well as fulfilling roll, not as dependent on the money. 

    • The article really reached out to me for my project because I have worked in a start up before, so I think I really understand what the author is talking about for a pay cut by changing world kind of atmosphere. I also think it is valuable information to read as part of my research because it focuses on the idea of people making sacrifices in terms of their career for something they want more. People are sacrificing paychecks and make career moves based on what makes them happy and satisfies their personal desires and that is an idea I had been working towards better understanding through my interviews.

 

 

• Complex Systems Class, University of Michigan Fall 2014

  • This is a class I am currently taking at the University of Michigan by Professor Page. We have learned a lot about models of society, like coordination. One aspect of the coordination model is that people who live together can sometimes make their decisions of where to keep things or how to operate based on another person so that they can function properly. This brings up the idea of that you are most like the people you spend a lot of time with. You coordinate with those that you spend the most time with, so you become more similar. 

    • Taking this class while thinking of the idea for my capstone project, learning and researching about the idea that you become like those around you really influenced my project. Initially, I was unsure of how to decide who I should interview as a project and found myself conflicted between interviewing really inspiring strangers or people very close to me. After learning more about coordination, I decided that I would pick people for my project that personally influence me since it is from them that I indirectly learn to follow my passion and not the paycheck. 

 

 

• 20-Year-Old Hunter S. Thompson’s Superb Advice on How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Meaningful Life 

  • ​“Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.” This article discusses a lot about the effect that others advice and experience can have on making your own choices. That what you wanted to grow up and be when you were little is not necessarily what you want now. We have a deep desire to have a meaningful life, and not always float along with the tide but decisions aren’t easy. Thompson acknowledges that the choice must be made or others will make it for you. 

    • This article is a fantastic source for what I am doing my project on. Thompson ends the article with the quote “There is more to it than that--- no one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life.” That is a really central idea in the inspiration and follow through of my project. The goal of reaching out to people that are now doing what they love is to allow my audience to understand that while you have to make choices, they don’t have to be forever and that you can change your mind and pursue new things in your life. 

 

 

• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

  • Published in 2008, the Outliers goes through Gladwell’s examination of some of the most successful people and their stories. From Bill Gates, to The Beatles, and some of the most successful law firms in the world, Gladwell intertwines his personal success story with those that he was examining.  He mentions the “10,000 hour rule” as a key to success and recognizes that being an outlier requires hard work, luck and having the right people around them.

    • The concept that nobody makes it alone in this book of success stories really influenced the type of questions I wanted to ask people. In asking open endly how they got to where they are today, I hoped that the people I was interviewing would reveal to me who helped them in their journey, where they felt supported the most and if anyone really influenced their decisions.

 

 

• NPR Podcast: New ‘Cosmo’ Woman is ‘Interested in Mascara and The Middle East 

  • ​This podcast is about an interview with Joanna Coles the editor of Cosmopolitan who decided to transform the magazines image. The physical page of the interview had a highlights section where you could have the option of being able to get the interview content but not listen to the podcast. In the interview itself, who is being interviewed is told in the beginning and then it broke into conversation. There were smooth transitions from questions to answer and the questions allowed for the interviewee to speak. 

    • Listening to this podcast and seeing how it is displayed online really inspired me for my project. I was able to understand the importance of asking more open questions and not yes and no question to make a better interview. I also was able to decide that I would transcribe the interviews so people could still get the advice and stories from them without needing to listen to the podcast since that isn’t always possible. 

 

 

• Mentoring Millenials

  • ​This article is about the incoming millennial workforce. It explained how millennials expect a great deal from work including: feedback, flexible schedules, opportunities to develop skills, leadership and personal fulfillment. These things are really important in terms of understanding how mentoring can impact the generation and suggests using group mentoring, anonymous or reverse mentoring. While mentoring the generation is difficult, by outlining the goals of millennials in terms of their careers is very important.

    • ​This article was really helpful in terms of thinking about the advice I received from people I interviewed. The importance of things such as flexibility, development and personal fulfillment proved to also be important to those people who were mentoring me. Holding onto the idea of finding a career path was highlighted in a few of my interviews and a key point in this article, which serves as important advice for college seniors. 

 

 

• This American Life: Break-Up 

  • ​This episode of This American Life was broken up into four acts regarding the idea of break ups. Each act was slighting different and the interviews allowed for emotion to come through as well as clear dialogue. Ira Glass really speaks to the audience in her dialogue opportunities to help them connect to each act. Act four is different and interesting becasues it closes the podcast with a story read by Merrill Markoe that was not in terms of a dialogue, but just read by one person.

    • Listening to this podcast, as well as reading through the transcription of this podcast was really helpful for my project. First, the inclusion of an entire transcription reminded me of the importance of accessibility when doing a podcast, ensuring that those who could not hear the conversations could still access them. Secondly, this episode of This American Life resembled a lot about my project, having different acts and people like my interviews and ending and beginning with a little bit of a longer monologue. Being able to see and experience a podcast so similar to my project has helped me figure out the best ways to made it not only available to everyone, but to sound more professional and put together in this genre.

 

 

• My 10 Best Pieces of Career Advice for Millennials

  • ​This Forbes article, written for the millennial audience, gives 10 pieces of advice on ways to help open doors and get ahead in a career. Schawbel offers advice like not settling for a job your not passionate about and taking risks early and often. He recommends spending time with people (not technology), traveling, and finding mentors who live like you would want too. His own journey to success is a main factor behind his advice to the upcoming generation.

    • While this article is written in order to help people, reading it helps me understand a huge conflict for my generation. We are always told conflicting advice. From work extra hard today to do what you want later to not settle, it’s difficult to know who to listen to and what to do. This was a really central idea I wanted to address in my conclusion so that my audience could know that while there is so much advice out there, you need to remember to think about what is best for you.

 

 

• Informational-Interview Questions for Entrepreneurs

  • ​This source provided suggestions for questions to ask entrepreneurs while conducting informational interviews. Questions that sparked my interest included asking advice they would give to college students, what would they do differently and what ignited their spark to do this. This list of questions provided a lot of ideas for me on what to ask someone who is passionate about their career.

    • When looking through this list of questions, I noticed a lot about asking the person about sacrifices they’ve made and when they failed and what they learned. This allowed me to think about how to ask the people I would interview about the difficulties they’ve experienced, without being predictable and asking when they failed. This allowed me to ask them broadly about challenges they’ve experiences and have them embrace the opportunity to interpret that as they please and answer how they saw fit.

 

 

• 25 Passion-Finding Questions to Invite Someone to Talk about What They Love

  • ​This blog post is about prompting someone to talk about their passion and explains how that is much easier to have a conversation about than “what do you do”. The questions suggested prompted the person to talk about what they love to do and brings them to live and enjoy doing, it also asks about the people that the person admires and why. All of the 25 questions are more about the person than anything they actually do.

    • While this post is not very scholarly, it gave me some excellent ideas for ways to approach my interview. Since I wanted my interviewee to talk about themselves and for the audience to understand that each person is passionate about what they do, I tried to craft my questions similarly to this article. I did not ask what they do and how they got there, but instead tried to say how did you get to where you are today and I prompted them to tell me about if they were happy and love what they do and if people inspired them to get here. All of my questions were really rooted in the ideas of inviting them to speak about their passions.

 

 

• 9 Tips on Conducting Great Interviews

  • ​This article provides tips and suggestions for conducting a great interview with someone else. While it is oriented around a professional interview, some tips are broad and useful such as making sure to listen and ask open-ended questions. He also suggests letting the interviewee wander a bit in there thoughts and being prepared with your research.

    • While I’ve done informational interviews before, I have never needed to be so prepared in terms of my questions like I needed to be for this project. Tips like this proved to important to keep in mind when crafting my questions, because I wanted them to prompt discussion while leading into one another, so I had follow up questions prepared under the broader ones incase they weren’t addressed. I also really focused on the advice of making sure to listen because especially as I was recording I didn’t want to let my mind wander and ask repeat questions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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