Do you ever feel like you’re too young for your job? I do. Actually, let me clarify: I know I’m quite capable of doing my job, but I worry that others think I’m too young, which in turn negatively affects my work. Fortunately, recent movies provide a number of good (and bad) examples of young professionals doing their thing. Today I’m starting a series of posts on lessons I’ve learned from them.
1. Anna Kendrick is a great role model.
I was born the same year as the Up in Air and 50/50 actress, which is one reason I feel an affinity with her. I also take inspiration from her age-appropriate, realistic portrayals of sincere and capable but sometimes fumbling young professionals. (She also played a high school student in Twilight, but I give her props for breaking out of that mold earlier than many actors her age.) In a great example of the circular process by which life imitates art which imitates life, both Anna Kendrick’s characters (one of which I’ll examine more closely later in this series) and Anna Kendrick herself, who was nominated for an Oscar for Up in the Air, have earned the respect of their older colleagues by doing their jobs well.
Next post: Please your boss and ignore the naysayers
Category Archives: work/career
Read these other blogs.
I did not expect to find inspiration for my blog from a tutoring appointment I had to cover today. The tutee, a native Korean speaker, wanted me to check her blog posts to see whether they sounded like idiomatic English. I fell in love with her blog, banquet365.blog.com. Despite its title, My Continual Feast, it’s not exactly a food blog, though she does occasionally include some pretty delectable-looking descriptions and pictures of her culinary creations. In general, “feast” here should be understood in a metaphorical sense. It’s a feast consisting of notes from friends, watercolor Christmas cards, Central Virginia foliage, good dreams, and a beloved cat. It’s a feast, in short, of all God’s blessings. Looking at her blog made me a bit embarrassed of my long, sometimes pretentious posts. When I showed her my blog, I wished I had included more pictures, more recipes (told in narrative style), fewer words. (She did say she would use my blog as “homework” to practice her English reading comprehension…not exactly what I envisioned when I started it, but at least somebody is getting some use out of it.)
This is another blog that inspires me: allisonscoles.wordpress.com. The author of this one is a native English speaker, a very articulate one, but she manages to keep her posts simple and lovely, and people actually want to read them the whole way through. I want my blog to be more like these two that I’ve mentioned. Maybe that will really happen; maybe it won’t–after all, I’m me, not them. But you can probably expect a few changes over the next few weeks. Meanwhile, you should start following these other beautiful blogs.
the Dr. Tess blog 