Career Chat with Alan Bersin

10 Tips for a Successful Professional Career

Alan Bersin, Assistant Secretary of International Affairs and Chief Diplomatic Officer for the Department of Homeland Security, visited OCS in March and April to meet with Harvard undergraduates. Alan addressed students’ questions in a casual setting, each visit punctuated by wit and wisdom:

1. Be bold and take charge of your life situation. Even if it’s a job you know nothing about in the beginning, burrow into it and learn about it. Never sell yourself short on the ground by saying that “I don’t know anything about it” or “I don’t have any experience with that.”

2. The only way to gain experience is to seek it out and to live it. Experience can be designed as well as dreamt.

3. Don’t telescope your life. The key requirement is to develop a background of general skill and knowledge, and a constitutional willingness to be flexible. The economy will dramatically change in the next three or four decades and there will be ups and downs to negotiate and adjust.

4. Get knocked down and rebuild yourself. You have to have the professional and personal core solid enough to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. You can only get there from failing periodically along the way.

5. True: experience is what you get when you’re looking for something else — don’t be afraid to take risks and make left turns.

6. Take an extra year or two before the outset of business or professional life to do something you want to do. In the long run it isn’t going to make a difference. Explore the world. Don’t be too harsh on yourself to budget time for travel on Robert Frost’s road not usually taken.

7. Remember that this is not about a linear path. Sometimes you make left turns, sometimes you zigzag, but you don’t get to write the novel before you live it. Young men and women do not make great biographies.

8. Follow your instinct with your education. Right now your education is about developing a way of seeing and forming a framework of perception. Don’t tell yourself “I need to major in this so I can do this.”  Follow something that can prepare you to become the most educated person you can be. Your major won’t foreclose any options.

9. But you do have to take care of paying bills. Graduate school involves adding debts to your life before you get to pay them off. You should make that fact a part of your career plan. Don’t be ashamed of saying that or of making money. That freed up half my career for public service.

10. Don’t be afraid to change your point of view when you realize you’re wrong. Don’t be afraid to be wrong.

 

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Julia Eger, ’14, with Alan Bersin

I was a Showbiz Intern!

There’s more than “Lights! Camera! Action!” to the show business industry, and panelists at OCS last week had the chance to share their work experiences in this field.

“It’s a pushing game – it’s a pushing industry,” Madison Greer ’13, a recent intern at Red Wagon Entertainment, said. “If you want something you have to really go for it. This is not one of those industries that really needs you. It’s all about personality. People want an intern with a smile on their face who can have fun and who is really engaged.”

Take initiative

“As an intern I was doing script coverage at Red Wagon, but also had to do things like wash dishes and staple lots of things too,” Madison said. “I think as an artist I was like, “I want to do something more creative!” and sometimes felt bored. But if you want to do something truly creative, you just have to be vocal about it with your bosses. I would ask, “Do you mind if I come see the scoring session for Halo 3?” And then I got to go.”

Since this is an industry about who you know, it’s helpful in the long run to meet people outside your department while in your internship. “In the middle of my internship, I made an effort to sit down and chat with every department and find out what they do,” Marlee Melendy ’14, an intern for the 2014 Super Bowl Host Committee, said. “And I’ve been able to keep in touch with people from different departments, which is awesome.”

Linxi Wu ’14, a past intern at SONY Pictures, echoed this statement. “People don’t always take the time to mentor you. In Hollywood you really have to reach out yourself. You need to be a self-starter.”

Size matters

Nicole Delaney ’14, who interned at Maven Pictures in New York City this past summer, liked working in a small office because it meant she had a greater daily impact. “I did script coverage every day, which means I would read scripts every day and write critical summaries of them to give to the development team,” she said. “It was really hands-on and nice to have the power to say “this is good” or “this isn’t.”

Use your network

Although many of the panelists said that they had found their internships through family or friends, Marlee found her internship working for the 2014 Super Bowl Host Committee through the Institute of Politics. “The IOP Director’s Internship is a great program because you know your applications are being read and that you’ll get a $4,000 stipend,” she said. Crimson Compass, the alumni mentoring website, is also a great resource for finding internships in the entertainment sphere – as well as programs like Harvardwood 101 and the Harvardwood Summer Internship Program.

In any case, don’t underestimate the scope of your network. “It’s a connections industry, but whether or not you have a family member in the business, there are plenty of kids at Harvard who have worked in this industry who are connections for you,” Linxi said. “Any connection that your close friends have is a really a connection that you have. Don’t be afraid to reach out – the worst that could happen is they say no.” 

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Julia Eger, ’14

Boston Globe Career Trek

Have you ever thought about a career in journalism but never knew whether or not it is for you? During Wintersession, a group of Harvard students had the chance to decide for themselves on a career trek to The Boston Globe.

Students got a special tour of the office by Emily Sweeney, a staff reporter who specializes in suburban news. “It’s never a dull moment here,” she said. “I cover everything from clown conventions to local fires.” She is one of 100 staff reporters that write regularly for the Globe.

Perhaps the visit to the newsroom wasn’t as chaotic as it is in the movies – no phones ringing off the hook, and no papers tossed in the air – but the office did boast some surprises, including some Boston memorabilia like a World Series ring and a samurai sword that the office had collected along the way.

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The tour highlighted the office’s media lab, which experiments with Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and works to keep the office on the pulse of changing technology and social media. With a large open space with large windows and lots of desk space, the lab has a startup vibe with the motto: “you can’t predict the future, but you can show up for the present.”

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The lab has a large display of an Instagram feed that instantaneously populates photos with a #Boston hashtag; since the lab is centrally located within the building and has such large windows, every employee walks past and notices the lab at least once a day. One of the employees who works in the lab, Chris Marstall, explained that there are ways social media are making newspaper irrelevant because people are directly reporting their own news via social media. The Instagram display in the media lab is a reminder of the evolving form of news.

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Students on the trek also got to enjoy an extensive conversation with regional editor David Dahl about the future of the newspaper. David also touched on the shift in the way the Globe has begun publishing news – for instance, they publish news 24 hours a day on their websites, Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com. These two digital forms of their website are variants of each other: Boston.com is non-subscription based and more entertainment-driven, where BostonGlobe.com is subscription based and offers more traditional news.

“We are trying to continue to grow readership and engagement with audience,” David explained. “We have been preoccupied with making ourselves digital on multiple platforms.” This means interacting with readers on Facebook and Twitter, and getting story ideas from social media platforms. Social media is a lot of work, but by attempting at face-to-face and hand-to-hand interaction, The Boston Globe is working to get user content and engage on a new level with readers – and students got to witness the revolutionary endeavors of this historic publication firsthand.


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Julia Eger, ’14

Learn more about newsroom staff and careers at The Boston Globe.