Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's tip is to strengthen your story. As you are
Speaker 1: figuring out how to talk about yourself and your next moves,
Speaker 1: you can choose how to spend your time to create
Speaker 1: a coherent narrative. Today's topic came to mind because I've
Speaker 1: been spending a lot of time looking into college admissions.
Speaker 1: I have a handful of teenagers, and as everyone keeps hearing,
Speaker 1: college admissions are more competitive today than ever before. Lots
Speaker 1: of kids have good grades and good SAT scores, So
Speaker 1: what makes you stand out?
Speaker 2: Enter the narrative. College counselors advise young people to construct
Speaker 2: a story about the great things they've been doing that
Speaker 2: make them unique. And then, if you are doing this
Speaker 2: before your senior year, you can add activities or projects
Speaker 2: to the mix that make this narrative more cohesive. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, if you've spend a lot of time playing
Speaker 2: on your school's soccer team, but you're not getting recruited
Speaker 2: for this, you could spend your summer volunteering at a
Speaker 2: youth soccer camp and start a podcast devoted to high
Speaker 2: school soccer. Now the admissions committee can start referring to
Speaker 2: you as the recreational soccer fan, which is a more
Speaker 2: interesting hook. If you have been doing a lot of
Speaker 2: art in high school, maybe you choose one format to
Speaker 2: make yours. Let's say it's mosaics, and stage some project
Speaker 2: that makes you stand out. Perhaps you do a mosaic
Speaker 2: about each zip code that sends kids to your high school,
Speaker 2: and you display this project at the local library. You
Speaker 2: get it now. Of course, all this can inspire some
Speaker 2: eye rolling. How many seventeen year old kids actually think
Speaker 2: this way? They generally don't. It's their parents or the
Speaker 2: college counselors they're paying for advice who help come up
Speaker 2: with all this. But be that as it may. This
Speaker 2: is a useful life skill because it turns out that
Speaker 2: people are going to be seeking stories that make sense
Speaker 2: for your entire life. Being able to identify a narrative
Speaker 2: and then strengthen it can make it seem like whatever
Speaker 2: you'd like to be your next step seems like the
Speaker 2: natural next step. So, for instance, if you're changing careers
Speaker 2: from accounting to teaching, that is awesome. Your math skills
Speaker 2: will be in demand. But as you are applying to
Speaker 2: teacher certificate programs. People are going to want to know
Speaker 2: why you are doing this. If you've taught a night
Speaker 2: class in financial literacy at your church or at a
Speaker 2: local community center, you can note that you enjoyed that
Speaker 2: experience and decided that teaching was what you wanted to
Speaker 2: do from now on. That story makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: People running for office need to do this too. You
Speaker 2: often hear that someone has a great story. Some of
Speaker 2: this you can't control, like your family background, but ambitious
Speaker 2: would be politicians think about their early jobs and volunteering
Speaker 2: gigs with this in mind. It generally doesn't work to
Speaker 2: just say, well, you know, I worked in this congressman's
Speaker 2: office and figured I could do it too. You need
Speaker 2: a story about growing up in the town and seeing
Speaker 2: your family's business struggle to do X because of a
Speaker 2: certain policy, and you spent why time working on it,
Speaker 2: and now you're running for office to change it. That
Speaker 2: story makes sense. Every time I write a book, people
Speaker 2: ask me why I wrote the book, and again they
Speaker 2: want an origin story. Some of my competition will come
Speaker 2: up with a story of their hitting rock bottom and
Speaker 2: life craziness, and then into time management or productivity to
Speaker 2: pull themselves up from the muck. I will freely report
Speaker 2: that my life is not that interesting. But for every
Speaker 2: book I do dutifully construct some moment or situation where
Speaker 2: the book idea came to me, even if that was
Speaker 2: the culmination of a year of thinking about it. In
Speaker 2: any case, think about how you'd like to tell your story.
Speaker 2: Why are you doing the job you are doing. What
Speaker 2: would you like to be doing in the future. What
Speaker 2: could you do to strengthen the story so that this
Speaker 2: next step makes sense. You can think about projects you
Speaker 2: could do, volunteering, gigs, you could take on, conferences you
Speaker 2: could attend, articles you could publish, and so on that
Speaker 2: would make this seem like a coherent narrative On some level.
Speaker 2: All of this is a little silly. Life doesn't really
Speaker 2: work like this in a perfect story, but the human
Speaker 2: brain likes stories best to deal with this reality. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 2: to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening
Speaker 2: to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 2: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 2: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
Speaker 2: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.