Career Opportunities

In about six months I'll be wrapping up my fourth college degree and then I'll have a big, wide-open decision in front of me: What do I do next?

Throughout my MBA program I have had many people tell me that they thought that I would land in a great career because my opera-singer-turned-MBA story is so unique. However, the evidence around me suggests that the best way to get ahead in business is to be as homogeneous as possible. Last year I watched as my colleagues with more traditional business backgrounds weighed multiple summer internship options. Because I do have a different background and I'm not interested in the typical jobs that the MBA program feeds into, my own summer internship search was difficult and discouraging, only coming together at the eleventh hour. So despite the votes of confidence from classmates and teachers, I have often found myself thinking, "Alright, but where is this magical job that's supposedly perfect for me?"

Yes or No?

This week I wrapped up a term-length class called Strategic Decision Making in which we read a short book called Yes or No: The Guide to Better Decisions. As a piece of literature I found it wanting; it belongs to this weird subgenre I never knew existed before I started the MBA program, of business books that pretend to be novels, except the stories only exist to provide a setting for flat characters to deliver nuggets of business wisdom to each other (see also The Goal). Our protagonist (known only as "The Young Man") is on a weekend journey of self-discovery (known as "The Hike"), led by "The Guide" who evangelizes a decision-making process known as "The System."

Despite such rampant cheesiness, I was struck by the passage below in which The Young Man converses with a fellow traveller named Wings:

"How often do you make poor decisions because you just don't take the time to get the information you know you need?" 

The young man remembered recently doing just that. He grinned and said, "Never. No. Not me!" Wings laughed. It was good to see that the young man could see his mistakes and laugh at himself. 

Wings said, "So you, a bright young lad who knows in his heart that it would be wise to get the information you need, chose not to. Is that correct?" 

"Well," he answered, "I wouldn't say 'I chose not to' get the information. I just didn't do it." 

Wings asked, "Why would you ever consciously do what you know is not in your own best interests?" 

The young man did not have a good answer.

Reconnaissance Mission

That passage made me realize that I simply haven't gotten all the information that I need. For those with more traditional business backgrounds, the jobs seem come to them - often literally, as the companies send recruiters on campus looking to scoop up a Senior Financial Analyst or two. But the job I'm looking for.... I'm not even sure what it is, but it's probably going to be something farther off the beaten MBA path.

I'm devising a multi-pronged approach to my quest for information about career opportunities. Recently I've had several people say, "You should talk to so-and-so," so I've been trying to follow up with them. Today alone I've scheduled a phone call with one such person and lunch with another. Amy gave me the book What Color Is Your Parachute? a while ago and I intend to start reading it later this week. And I'll do some talking to the career counselor people on campus.

This blog post itself is another prong of my plan. In the aforementioned Strategic Decision Making class we talked about the value of having a trusted set of advisors, and I consider the people who actually read my blog to fit that definition. My friend/frequent blog reader Brady Emmett recently visited Provo, and when I started asking him for some career advice it turned out that he had been sitting on a business idea for me. I suppose some of you may also have ideas about what I should do for a career (though I doubt it - y'all have your own careers and lives to worry about), but even if you haven't until now I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts.

So friends, what do you think would be some good career directions for me? Please leave a comment below.

What's in a Name?

Last Sunday in church we gave a name and blessing to Miles Elliott Tanner.* In honor of the occasion I thought I would break down each part of our son's name:

Miles

When we first found out that Amy was pregnant, the first names generated during our brainstorming sessions were mostly bizarre joke names.** I chipped in "Intergalactic" because a) it's just an awesome word, b) it has cool associations, c) it's gender-neutral, and d) he/she'd have been the only kid in his school with the name (presumably). The name stuck, and we consistently called our little fetus Intergalactic.  

When it came time to pick a real name, Amy and I both liked the idea of a traditional, somewhat old-fashioned name that didn't sound too antiquated (no Ebenezers, thank you) or overused. As we read through lists of names along those lines, "Miles" immediately jumped out at both of us. As his due date came closer we both found ourselves calling our fetus "Miles" instead of "Intergalactic," and it felt right so we stuck with it.

You'd think that as a musician my first association with "Miles" would've been Miles Davis, but the first thing that popped into my head when I heard the name was Gordon and Olivia's adopted son Miles on Sesame Street. (I know that will come as a shock to regular readers of my blog.) However, in my defense as a musician I very quickly thought of the spooky tenor aria "Miles!" from Benjamin Britten's opera version of The Turn of the Screw.

Several people have asked us if Miles is a family name. At the time we decided the name we knew of no family members with that name. However, Amy and I went to the Mormon Battalion museum in San Diego on the 4th of July and learned that our Miles had a distant relative (an uncle 7 generations back - I don't know what you would call that) in the Mormon Battalion named Albert Miles Tanner. So I suppose it is inadvertently something of a family name.

Elliott

Elliott, on the other hand, is very much a family name. Miles' great grandfather (my mom's father) was Elliott Greene Lupton. My mom's middle name is Elliott. She had a brother whose first name was Elliott, but he died unexpectedly while he was still a baby in the hospital (today it probably would have been diagnosed as SIDS). My only cousin on my mom's side has the middle name of Elliott.

Because of all the family connections it has always been a very dear name to me, and I always wanted to name my first son Elliott. When my sisters started having babies I asked them to reserve the name Elliott for me. However, about a year before Amy and I were married her brother and sister-in-law named their daughter Elliott, so it became unavailable as a first name.

But I like it as a middle name, and I think it flows well with Miles. Say it alound: "Miles Elliott." It's very mellifluous, methinks. And it also happens to be the name of the protagonist of a film that both Amy and I cherish.

Tanner

Quick Tanner family history: My great-great-great-great-grandfather was John Tanner, an enormously wealthy landowner in Bolton Landing, New York (I described my visit to his his house, now a defunct bed and breakfast, in this 2008 blog post). He met the Mormon missionaries in 1832, who healed his gangrenous leg before his baptism. He then sold all of his land and went to join the community of Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio, arriving just in time to make a payment on the temple grounds before they were seized from the church. Over the years he gave his entire fortune to keep to the LDS Church financially afloat in its infancy. Joseph Smith himself promised John Tanner that his family "would never want bread." (This story is glossily and sentimentally told in the 20 minute film Treasure in Heaven: The John Tanner Story.)

John Tanner's sons were involved in some of the formative activities of the early Mormon church; aside from the aforemention Albert Miles in the Mormon Battalion, John's two sons Nathan (ancestor of the N. Eldon Tanner, former member of the Church's first presidency and the namesake of BYU's business building where I have all my MBA classes) and John Joshua were members of Zion's Camp. John Joshua is my branch of the Tanner family tree.

Jumping ahead a few generations, my grandfather was Merlynn (pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, "mer-LYNN") M. Tanner. He had six children and seventeen grandchildren. Of those seventeen grandchildren, only two are boys with the Tanner last name, including me. Consequentially, there has been a lot of pressure on the two of us to extend the proud Tanner name into the next generation. The other Tanner grandson has had three children so far, all of whom are girls.

At my sister Amy's wedding right after I got home from my mission, my Grandpa put a firm hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said sternly, "You're next." Whenever I visited Grandma and Grandpa Tanner in the last few years of their lives they always expressed some variation on the idea that they had lived a full life and were very happy, but that 90+ years was a long time to be alive and they were ready to go.*** However, I always got the vague sense that my Grandpa in particular was trying to hang on long enough to finally see the proud Tanner name continue.

Though he wasn't able to be here in person for the Miles' birth and blessing, Grandpa Tanner can finally rest assured that the Tanner name will continue for at least another generation.

Miles at one month, two months, and three months

* If any readers are unfamiliar with this practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this Wikipedia article is actually quite accurate. This post contains several Mormon inside references, so I've included links that will hopefully demystify said references.

**Actually, the first name that I threw into the ring was Conrad. Amy, however, shot it down quickly because she didn't want to name her child after my Nintendo. I had a different take - the fact that I named my Nintendo Conrad when I was 9 is indisputable evidence that I have loved that name for a long time.

*** Here is my to Grandpa Tanner after his funeral and my tribute to Grandma Tanner just before hers. I think they are two of the loveliest things I have published here.

The Wish Ribbon

In August of 2011, my friend/co-worker Fabiana at Yahoo! returned from a visit to Brazil with a bundle of these:

I instantly recognized these little ribbons from my visit to Salvador, a vibrant city on Brazil's northeast coast with beautiful 16th century architecture and a heavily African-influenced culture (it is the birthplace of the martial art/dance capoeira). As a tourist, you are constantly accosted by beggars on the street who try to give you these ribbons as a "present" (though if you accept it they will hound you relentlessly until you give them money). The bands say "Lembrança do Senhor do Bonfim" ("Remembrance of the Lord of the Good End," referring to the moment that Christ died), and the local custom goes that if you make a wish when the ribbon is tied around your wrist, the wish will come true as soon as the ribbon falls off your wrist. But it has to fall off on its own - you can't cut it, tear it, or rip it.

The Foreign Service

At the time I put the wish ribbon I was wrapped up in applying for the United States Foreign Service. A friend had told me that the State Department was looking for Portuguese speakers to fill five-year posts in the U.S. embassies in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasília. The application process was brutal; the friend who told me about it had applied ten years in a row and had only made it past the first round twice. However, I somehow sailed through the first few rounds of essays, phone interviews, and language exams, and received an invitation for the final oral assessment in Washington D.C. It all came together so suddenly and easily. The job sounded like such an incredible adventure and I wanted it really badly. So naturally when Fabiana tied the little orange ribbon to my wrist I wished that I could land the Foreign Service gig.

I bought a very expensive last-minute flight to D.C., finagled a week off from work, and arranged to crash on my cousin's couch in nearby Falls Church. The day of the exam was draining (a multiple choice exam, a written plan of action for an impromptu crisis situation, and a 75-minute grilling from two senior agents. I felt very confident about my performance, and after two hours of deliberation they called me back in to announce the verdict: I had failed.

I was stunned. I was so certain that it was meant to be. The wish ribbon had failed.

Two New Wristbands

The thing I didn't realize then about those cheap little wish ribbons is that they are shockingly durable. I've had that thin orange ribbon around my wrist for 21 months so far, and it sure doesn't look like it's about to fall off anytime soon. A lot of things have happened to me in that time that I didn't think to wish for because I had no way to see them coming in advance. For example:

Less than 6 months after putting on that wristband I got married (even though I wasn't even dating anyone when I put it on), and a week later I got accepted to the MBA program at BYU (even though I had never imagined that I would ever study business). The foreign service job in Brazil would have been a great adventure for a few years, but had that wish come true I would have missed out on all these other unforeseen opportunities with long-term repercussions.

Lately I added a couple other wristbands alongside the wish ribbon:

The plastic one with the holes was given to me when our baby Miles was born, and the paper one was given to me when Miles was immediately rushed to the newborn ICU. Having Miles in the NICU was difficult and exhausting, but now he's home with us, with an oxygen tank and heart monitor in tow until the doctors determine that he's okay without them.

This isn't exactly how I would have wished for the birth of my first child to play out, but as the wish ribbon proves, I don't have perfect foresight about what is best for my own life. So I'm anxious to see what other surprises and unforeseen opportunities life will bring before that little orange ribbon finally deteriorates and falls to the ground.

The Roll-up Café

Amy and I now drive to the hospital four times a day to visit and breastfeed our little baby in the NICU (see full coverage of our baby's birth at her blog). Because we drive past the same stores and restaurants so often we have started to get curious about them and we've decided to stop in and find out what they're all about. First up:

Roll-up Café on State Street in Orem

We rolled in around 6:00 pm on a Saturday night and the place was nearly empty, but that didn't stop the teenage girl behind the counter from being really flustered. Throughout the course of our stay she notified us several times that she was the only employee there and that she was alternately bored and overwhelmed. The place had a really kooky vibe, and it was clear that they would like to be the hub for the Orem/Provo bohemian scene. The decor consisted of melted vinyl records in the shape of flowers, bookshelves made from actual old books, and baskets of quirky local arts and crafts for sale like hand-knitted owl-shaped smartphone cozies (it reminded me of this "Bein' Quirky" SNL sketch, where Björk knits a sweater for an octopus with an extra hole for "its ideas and dreams"). They also had a tiny stage area with a guitar at the ready for their open mic night on Tuesdays.



Amy and I both ordered savory crepes, and when I bit into mine it was cold in the center and the bacon was uncooked. The employee volunteered to cook it for a few more minutes, noting that she had only worked there for a month and her coworker hadn't shown up. While we waited for her to cook our food properly we overheard two teenage boys at the table behind us pontificating about their pot-smoking habits. My favorite conversation snippet: "Dude, if your parents found out you smoke two ounces of weed everyday I don't think they'd even be mad - they'd be impressed."

As our reheated food arrived at our table, a pair of high school girls came in all dolled up for prom. They explained that they had each been ditched by their respective prom dates three days ago, but they weren't going to let that spoil their fun, so they had decided to go together.

It may sound like I'm making fun of the place, but I actually liked it a lot (although the food was merely okay). I like that they are trying to make a place in the Provo/Orem area where kids who are a little different can feel at home. Although we were in a hurry to get to the hospital, I thought I'd try to cheer up the two girls in their prom dresses and the abandoned clerk with a little song. I thought the Buzzcocks' classic "Ever Fallen in Love with Someone You Shouldn't Have" seemed appropriate for the two ditched girls; Amy caught the very end of the performance on her phone:

The girls were ecstatic - they grabbed their phones and were like, "We can't believe you're doing this for us!" It was an easy and fun gesture on my part, but it was something that might just be a highlight when they're telling the story of the night they went stag to the prom. And as we walked out into the parking lot, Amy stopped me and kissed me and said, "I'm glad you're the type of person who does stuff like that."

I am too. One of my favorite posts I have ever written was called "Young at Heart" from 2009. I was 28 and a single doctoral student at the time that I wrote it, but I wrote at the time that I hoped that even though I was "growing up" I hoped that I could still find joy in doing fun and silly things every once in a while. Well, now I'm 32, an MBA student, married, and a new father, and guess what? I still find fun and silly things all around me, and I try to share that sense of joy with others. And I hope that I can teach Miles to find joy and fun around him too, and to share it with others.

Bring Me Close

Last week in my social media class we had a guest speaker: indie singer/songwriter Mindy Gledhill. The name did not ring any bells, but then my teacher played a commercial featuring her music:



I remembered seeing that commercial during the Olympics last year and thinking, "Whoa, what is that song?"

We have had many guest speakers in that class this semester, but she was my favorite so far, not just because she's a fellow musician, but because she laid out her balanced approach for building her brand as a singer/songwriter (promoting concerts, announcing new releases) and letting her personality shine through (posts about her kids, random musings) in ways that let her fans feel like they have a personal connection with her. This is a mix that I am trying to find - it was the topic of my recent guest post about the so-called "Zaxxon Rule" on the social media class blog. And she's really consistent about staying in contact and knowing what her fans like; moments after she left the class, she tweeted:

Honored to be a guest speaker at the Marriott School of Business social media class. And I did not pose… instagr.am/p/WS71IklP-z/
— MindyGledhill (@MindyGledhill) March 1, 2013

She could have just thrown up some bland tweet, but she did something lighthearted, personal, timely, and easy. As of this afternoon, that linked picture on Instagram has been favorited 201 times and has seven comments, so I'd say that quick little tossed-off post had a nice impact.

Let's close with a song, eh? In the spirit of that tweet/picture, here's my own quickly assembled, personal little cover of the song from the commercial above:

Guest Post: The Zaxxon Rule

Another guest post on another blog. This time I wrote a post for the official class blog of my Social Media Marketing class. Here's a teaser about the subject of my post:

Fans of Pop Culture Happy Hour may see where I am going with this...

You can read the full post here.

For those who do click over to it: My teacher took my post, which was just a giant block of text, and divided it into sections with headers. What do you think about that? Since my posts tend to be rather lengthy, does breaking them up like that make it easier to digest? I appreciate any feedback you'd like to leave in the comments.

And next week I'll be back blogging on my own site, I promise :)

Guest Post: In the Mode

This week I contributed a guest post to my friend Peter Shirts' excellent music blog, Signifying Sound and Fury. As a teaser, my post was inspired by this clip:

Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion" from major scaled on Vimeo.

I love websites like The A.V. Club, books like Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, and podcasts like Pop Culture Happy Hour where really intelligent and insightful people use their considerable analytical powers to deconstruct pop culture artifacts like Ducktales or Saved by the Bell. Peter's music blog often (but not always) exists at this same intersection of scholarly analysis and pop culture.

Peter has a master's degree in musicology from the University of Michigan (full disclosure: we were roommates), and the mission statement of the blog is to use actual musical terminology when discussing music to create a more articulate musical dialogue, even when discussing something as seemingly trivial as "Gangnam Style." I think this is a worthy goal in this age where supposed music "experts" like Randy Jackson completely lack musical vocabulary and can only use lazy qualitative platitudes like "I just wasn't feeling it" or pseudo-terms like "Your performance was pitchy" (with a "yo dawg" thrown in somewhere for good measure).

So please check out my post, and sign up to follow Peter's blog, Signifying Sound and Fury.