Cry Baby

Hello.  I am Kara and I am an emotional girl.  I have spent a good amount of my life trying to stamp that part of my personality out.  How am I supposed to succeeded in the corporate world when my voice gets all quavery whenever I'm upset? Is it okay for me to get super excited about things, or does that make me come across as ditzy or naive?

One day at work, amidst months of having way too much on my plate, I felt like I was finally catching up.  This moment where I could see the light at the end of then tunnel, it was small miracle after struggling for months just to keep my head above water.  Then just like that, someone came in and plopped a GIANT, urgent assignment on that almost-clean plate I had.  This assignment was turned out to be the closest thing to impossible that I have attempted, and I did not succeed.  It was an unfair request, and I soon realized I was being set up to fail.  I put all my focus on completing the assignment. I even asked my most valued mentor for help.  Every approach just led to another dead end.  I felt myself losing my composure so I went for a walk outside to clear my head.  I came back and struggled some more.  It was too much, now the assignments I thought I was going to be able to be caught up on were piled up,  and the frustation engulfed me.  I could feel my tear ducts start to burn.  A friend of mine came to check on me, and before I knew it, I burst into tears.   I put on a whole display in front of about 10 cube mates, all who just sat and stared at their normally well-composed, upbeat coworker.  I'm not going to lie, to this day that is still the most humiliated I have ever felt.  The coworkers I am closest with helped me regain my compuser, but not without a word of warning: "don't ever cry in the office like that, the men just don't know how to handle it."  

I, of course, went home that night thinking I had sealed the deal on dooming my career.   However, it turns out that everyone's life and thoughts do not revolved around me.  Life went on, I continued to be my composed, upbeat self and I was given the same respect I always had in the past.  I am sure that some people's opinions of me changed that day, maybe I became more human, or maybe I became emotionally unstable. Who knows, but the end result was that I was still seen as more than capable to do my job.

I don't really know what the moral of this story is.  What I do know is that its damn near impossible for me to "get rid' of the emotional part of myself.   As a gender, women tend to be more sensitive and emotional.  My question is, how can we turn this into a competitive advantage instead of a hinderence?  Does this mean we can bring a different edge that maybe men struggle with a little more?  I think it it does.  Being in tune with your emotions makes it easier to build bonds with new people.  Revealing emotions shows authenticity, which has proven to be the number one trait in this generations most succesful leaders.  Instead of trying to conform to a corporate world of stoicness and coldness, I chose to be myself and continue to figure out how THAT can give me a leg up in the work place.

Leaning In

For a while now I've had the hankering to start a blog about my professional life. My fear of offending coworkers or writing about something inappropriate has so far held me back. Recently however, I read the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, and it inspired me to follow through with my idea.

There are a lot of young women out there like me who are striving to have a career while trying to balance a social life and all the social pressures that come along with being a "career woman."  I'm not sure what this blog will turn into, but I'm ready to plow ahead. 

I love sharing my experience, and find it even more beneficial to have captured my thoughts and emotions in writing the moment I was experiencing them.  Memory has an odd way of morphing our ideas of what actually happened over time.  We lose the details, which many times are the best part.

So Sheryl(if you ever read this), and anyone else who is gracing this page with the presence of their time, this is me "Leaning In."  I hope you enjoy it, and maybe even can take something away from it that will help you.