The term “networking” elicits a mental image of a conference or a trade expo.  While most adults network routinely, you may wonder how it applies to children.  Anyone can network, anywhere.  Networking is about establishing relationships that can be important in every aspect of life.

As a child, the most important relationship after the family is friendship. Often, these friendships are based on what games kids like to play or who was nice to them at lunch.  Too often, children don’t realize the importance of having these acquaintances.

I am not advocating for children to learn to use people.  Networking should always be done with mutual respect, and both parties should feel some sense of fulfillment from the arrangement.  Children should not just use someone to get what they want, but they should also know that they may only have one interest in common with someone, and it is okay if their association with this child can be limited to that activity.

This can also help foster respect for a child your engirlneer doesn’t necessarily want to play with outside of the shared activity.  For instance, maybe your engirlneer really wants to learn how to play piano, but she has no idea where to start.  Encourage her to be vocal about that interest, and if she hears that someone else plays piano, she can strike up a conversation to figure out where she can take lessons or what she needs to do.  The girls can use their love of the piano to foster a friendship based on that mutual interest.

The skill to network will help them in high school and college as well.  If your engirlneer is struggling with a class, but she knows a classmate is grasping the material more successfully than your daughter, she could reach out and ask for help from her classmate.  Your engirlneer could use her networking skills to improve her grade, and perhaps in the process she could find a way to help her new tutor with something she is struggling with.  The whole idea of networking is to have people you can lean on for help should the need arise.  It will help your engirlneer learn to ask for help if she needs it.

In college, attending career fairs, professional organization meetings, and even establishing a good relationship with a professor should all be considered networking.  These will give your engirlneer a way to connect with others she may need to lean on down the road for advice, professional development, recommendations, and many, many other reasons.

As a professional, networking is vital.  I’ve met so many people in so many different careers because of both my professional and personal interests.  I’ve connected with many of these people to fulfill both business and personal needs.  It’s so much easier to call someone to get a marketing quote if I have a relationship with them.  I’ve met so many people from so many backgrounds through my ability to connect, and it has helped make me a more rounded person.  The connections your engirlneer can make through networking can be just as rewarding!

How do you teach your engirlneer to network at a young age?  Encourage her to join activities related to her interests.  Encourage her to speak up in class about and activity she is interested in.  Teach her to never be embarrassed by an interest she has, even if it doesn’t fit into the traditional roles assigned to her by others.

Don’t let your engirlneer float through life without having to deal with other people.  The more connections she has can expand her world in so many ways, but she needs to be open to exploring these connections and not only interacting with people who think and act like she does.

Many Americans hate their jobs. This hatred can be blamed on many things: dislike for your boss, monotony, being unfulfilled at work, the list is long and varied. It’s disheartening to know so many people are unhappy in their careers, especially when you consider they took out an average of $37,172 in student loans in 2016.

There is no guarantee that a person is going to love their career choice, even if they’ve dreamed of it their whole life. Many people decide what they want to be at a young age, strive to achieve it, then hate it because it doesn’t live up to their expectations. Rarely will we find a career that syncs completely with our expectations, and even if it is everything we imagined, there is no guarantee that we will love the actual practice as much as we dreamed we would. In the real world, we must push to find one that matches us enough we can overlook the minor flaws.

So, how do you help the engirlneer in your life find the right career for her?

Here are some things for her to consider:
1) Does she want a desk job? Or does she want a job that requires physical labor?
2) Does she want a job that requires travel? Or does she want to primarily be at one location?
3) Does she want to work alone or with groups?
4) Does she want to deal with clients? Or does she want to focus on projects?
5) What is more important: money or fulfillment of another kind?

How can she determine what type of career she should have? I’m a huge fan of career and personality quizzes. Part of me just loves the psychology behind them. I suggest taking as many as possible.

Some of my favorite quiz websites are:

www.sokanu.com
www.16personalities.com (for your free knockoff Myers Briggs personality type)
https://www.princetonreview.com/quiz/career-quiz
https://www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip

Or you can find several more quizzes here: https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-11-best-career-quizzes-to-help-you-find-your-dream-job

Most of these quizzes give your engirlneer a broad idea of what she might be interested in pursuing. These quizzes are based on personality as opposed to abilities. It’s important for young girls to realize that much of their happiness in a career will be about whether it suits their personality not necessarily their technical abilities. For example, your engirlneer may be great at math, but the idea of sitting in a cubicle all day crunching numbers makes her cringe. Or maybe she enjoys geology but traveling for extended periods or working in extreme weather conditions might not be something she likes to do. These quizzes will help her determine what types of career environments and surroundings would best suit her.

Your engirlneer needs to be honest when answering the quiz questions. She should not try to answer questions the way she thinks they need to be answered, but rather answer them as truthfully as she can. For instance, some quizzes might ask if a white lie is acceptable. If she thinks it is, she should answer it that way (some careers may require stretching the truth, or have a lot of people in them who are dishonest). Career and personality quizzes will only help provide her insight if she is truthful with her answers. It’s important that you, as a parent and guide, explain that to her fully, because you don’t want her to end up in a career or environment she hates any more than she does.

Once she gets her results, don’t let her get discouraged if she is pointed away from a career field she had her heart set on. Help her analyze the results and encourage her to stay positive even if they don’t indicate the career she really wanted it to. A good way to do this would be to explore some of the careers that were suggested to her. These quizzes can help her figure out why her idealized career might not fit her personality or strengths, and exploring the other options with you may enliven another area of interest that she hadn’t even thought of as a career.

If she refuses to alter her ideal career, these quizzes will give her lines of inquiry about what aspects of a career are important to her. This can help her determine if she is willing to compromise on different aspects of her career.

Determining the type of work environment she ultimately wants to participate in can also offer great insight into whether her ideal career fits into her preferred environment. Most majors lead to a plethora of career opportunities: academia, consulting, government, private companies, research, etc. Each of these industries can have very different types of demands and work environments. If she loves engineering, but she doesn’t love the business side of things, maybe she should consider getting her Ph.D. and doing research and/or teaching. By exploring her likes and dislikes in this way, she can focus her academic and early career work toward a specific set of ultimate career opportunities.

By identifying what your engirlneer really wants to do with her life as early as possible, she can take a path that will lead to her desired career as seamlessly and stress-free as possible. While there will always be forks in the road, knowing her destination will help her keep her compass set to her ideal career.

Conflicts start at a young age; whether it’s a fight over toys or who spilled what, disagreements are inevitable. When kids go to school, they face conflicts over friends, who gets to pick the game, ride the playground equipment, etc. In the course of the conflict, feelings can get hurt, and your engirlneer may choose to not say anything for fear of losing her friends or making them mad. These fights may even turn physical or extremely hurtful, and you want to do something about it before someone really gets hurt. However, before you go to the teacher or even the friend’s parents, give your engirlneer the opportunity to resolve the conflict on her own. You, as her parent, won’t be able to fight all her battles for her. Encourage her to talk with her friend. Teach her that no one has the right to put someone else down, and that if she and her friend can’t resolve the conflict, then she should just stop hanging out with that friend.

If she has conflicts in school with teachers or coaches, make her do the initial talking to figure out a resolution. This will also teach her to resolve conflicts with people in an authority position, and can help her develop skills for her career. Let her have a voice and encourage her to use it proudly. She should stand up for what she believes in, and fight for it.

In her career, your engirlneer will need to advocate for herself in order to get a job and move up within her career. From the start, she will need to talk about her skills and accomplishments; most importantly, she will need to negotiate her salary. Companies want to save money and are not in the business of giving someone more than they have to. Your engirlneer will have to tell a company why she is worthy of a better salary. Her starting salary will have a huge impact on her overall earnings throughout her career. Someone who starts out earning $55,000 will earn almost $128,000 more over 20 years than someone who starts out earning $50,000 (at a 2.5% increase/year).

Your engirlneer will also face conflicts with her coworkers and her supervisors. There will be times when others take credit for her work. There will be times when she gets blamed for something going wrong when she had very little control over it (if any, at all). There will be times where she is “rewarded” for her good work by being given someone else’s work to do because they do a poor job. Her coworker will then be “punished” by getting paid to do nothing. Your engirlneer needs to have enough confidence to talk with her supervisor about the situation, and to advocate for her best interests.

Women have a hard time advocating for ourselves. We just don’t like talking about our accomplishments. For us, doing a good job is inherent, not something to be praised. So how do you teach your engirlneer to advocate for herself? Teach her how to PREPARE for instances when she will need to advocate for herself. She needs to write down the reasons why she deserves to be treated better, paid better, etc. She needs to have examples supporting her arguments. Then she needs to practice. Help her prepare by listening to her arguments. Encourage her to be relaxed and calm, but firm. Frequently ask her about something that she feels proud of, and why it makes her feel proud. And lastly, don’t put her down if she does tell you something amazing she did. Let her brag just a little.

No one really wants conflict in their lives, but the fact is that it exists in nearly every aspect of our daily lives. The earlier your engirlneer learns how to successfully navigate through these issues, the happier she will be.

Texting has become so prevalent that people text more than they call.

Even at work, texting has become the preferred method of communicating with your coworkers or subordinates.  It’s so quick, and it makes it so much easier to call in “sick” when you don’t have to feign a stuffy nose or the sound of death in your voice.

You can text someone when you don’t need an answer right away and don’t want to bother them.  It’s just so simple!

Along with texting, it seems like people also tend to communicate via email instead of calling.  Emails make it easy to include a lot of people in a conversation.  You can get input from multiple people who can’t agree on a time to actually meet. Email makes it easy for you to communicate with coworkers halfway around the world who are working while you’re sleeping.  Email makes it easy to organize your thoughts before you run them by someone else.  Email also automatically creates documentation of a conversation, whether you just don’t like having to write everything down, or you have other reasons for needing to document conversations with coworkers, clients, regulators, etc.  Email is also just a really easy way to avoid feeling embarrassed or nervous by having to pick up your phone and call a stranger.  I even email coworkers who are on the other side of my cubicle, just so they have a reminder of my needs instead of keeping track of it all on paper.

However, emailing or texting can be less efficient than just calling someone.  With technological communication, you may have 10 different exchanges before you actually come to a conclusion.  You may also have several emails that go off on a tangent, as some people continue moving forward with a group conversation before others have even read the first message.  You may get emails every 10 minutes and have a hard time ignoring them, so you get distracted from what you’re doing to take a peek and see what someone else wants.  If you close out of your email for an hour to accomplish something, you feel like you’re cheating someone out of a quick response.

Don’t misunderstand me, emails and texts have their place in the office.  But by far the most detrimental aspect of emailing or texting is loss of the personal connection you get by hearing someone’s voice or by walking over to talk to them.  We’ve all heard that texting or emailing leads to miscommunication.  We tend to “read into” people’s messages, assuming there’s a negative tone to the message, even when the sender meant no harm.  When you email or text more than you pick up a phone, you tend to read into messages so often, that you begin to get the wrong message from your coworkers.  You can feel like you don’t fit in, or like your isolated from your group.  These feelings can make you question your job or your abilities.  Picking up the phone instead of sending an email can take a weight off your shoulders.  You will also likely get an answer quicker, or work out details that you can’t quite “talk through” in an email.  If you want to document a phone conversation, take notes, and then send a follow-up email with important items to all concerned parties.  It’s a simple way to make sure everyone is on the same page, and it allows you to document the conversation.

As an engineer, I have to make a lot of cold calls to find out information for clients.  I still get flustered on phone calls, even when I’ve written out what to say, or at least have talking points in mind.  The phone calls never go as planned.  However, I’ve accepted that they never will, and that sometimes I will have to research more information and have a second call to hash out more details.  I don’t enjoy calling someone that I’ve never met or talked to before, but I’ve accepted it’s an important skill to learn.

So how do you encourage your daughter to pick up a phone to call, instead of texting or emailing?  Require her to do just that.  Have her help you plan a party or an activity where she needs to call someone.  Have her help order pizza for dinner one night, or help you schedule an appointment for her.  If she wants to be involved in an activity, and needs to register, have her call and talk to a person.  If she needs to contact a professional for a project for her class, have her call them.  If she’s worried about interrupting them during the day, then have her email an introduction about her needs, but once she has introduced herself and has received a response, have her schedule a time to call this person; or, better yet, have her set up a time to meet this person (with the proper precautions, of course).

With enough practice, she will realize that she has nothing to be worried about when she’s calling someone.  There’s no reason to be anxious that she will embarrass herself or say the wrong thing.  We are all just human, and there is nothing scary about talking to each other.  The earlier she learns this, the easier she will find it is to call a stranger.  In our modern society, being able to carry on an actual conversation, as opposed to a virtual one, will better prepare her for the future.

There is a lot of push for a degree in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).  In September 2017, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum for the Secretary of Education which included “a goal of devoting at least $200 million in grant funds per year to the promotion of high‑quality STEM education, including Computer Science in particular.

There are countless organizations devoted to increasing the number of people, women and minorities in particular, in STEM careers.  With an expectation of employment in STEM occupations projected to grow to more than 9 million between 2012 and 2022, it’s no wonder everyone wants to get in the STEM game.

Many people believe that with a degree in a STEM field, the career possibilities are endless.  After all, who wouldn’t want someone who is smart enough to obtain a STEM degree to work for them? This is an extremely common misconception, and it makes me cringe every time I hear a parent say, “I tell my kid to major in engineering, because with a degree in engineering, she can do anything!”

A degree in a STEM field is great if your child is interested in a STEM career, but just isn’t sure what path to take.  It’s a lot easier to switch from a major in engineering to one in marketing than vice versa.  However, if your child has absolutely zero interest in a STEM career, majoring in STEM could be detrimental to her job prospects.  Let’s take a look at how a major in STEM can affect your child’s job prospects throughout her career.

Straight out of college, your child is going to be competing against many other outstanding graduates for jobs.  There are three reasons why a STEM degree may be a negative thing if your daughter is trying to get a job in a non-STEM field:

Personality – A lot of employers base entry-level personnel decisions on personality as much as, if not more so than, credentials. Most employers expect that entry level employee is going to need some training, so the degree isn’t that important for an entry level position. However, people who major in STEM are often viewed as rigid, overly analytical, cold, and introverted.  If an employer is looking for someone who is flexible or can get the job done without overthinking, they may prefer to hire based on personality versus credentials.

• Salary – Many employers pay pretty well for STEM professionals, even for an entry-level position. Many hiring managers fear they won’t be able to match the salary expectations of someone with a STEM degree.  Even if your daughter lists her salary expectations on an application within a reasonable range, there is still a good chance she won’t hear back.
• Boredom – Your daughter majored in STEM, and yet she wants a career that doesn’t require much critical thinking or data analysis? Hiring managers will fear she will get bored quickly, and move on to a career that is more challenging.  They may fear the only reason she’s even applying for this type of position is because she hasn’t been able to find an entry-level position in STEM.  Hiring managers often think that since this non-STEM position will likely lead to boredom, she’ll quickly leave the job once she finds a STEM career, and then they will be attempting to fill the position with a new hire after they just filled the position and invested in training.

I’m not saying any of the above bullet points are true about your daughter, nor should someone be dismissed just because she is “overqualified.” Unfortunately, that’s how the hiring process works a lot of the time, and your daughter (and you) should be prepared for this difficult reality.

If your daughter gets an entry-level position, but 5 years later she decides she’s really unhappy and just not that interested in STEM, she may have a hard time finding a new position without going back for a second degree or certificate of some sort.  She’ll be facing the same issues as entry-level person: the stereotype that her personality won’t fit, her salary expectations will be too high, and she will get bored easily.  However, now instead of just having a STEM degree, she’ll have a STEM degree AND 5 years of experience, which will make prospective employers even more nervous about even giving her an interview.  Additionally, she likely won’t have experience in the type of work that will now be required.  She won’t know certain programs or regulations.

If your daughter becomes a senior level STEM professional with project management experience, she may have an easier time moving into a management position in a different career field.  Project management for STEM professionals isn’t much different than project management for other careers.  However, this assumes your daughter really wants to go into project management.  The business side of things isn’t for everyone, and if your daughter has zero ambition to be a business leader, her hopes to transition to another career will face the same obstacles as an entry level person.

So, your daughter is good at math or science, or is interested in STEM, but she isn’t really sure about a career STEM – what can you do???  In this case, I suggest your daughter do as much research as possible throughout high school and college to determine if a STEM career is right for her.

She should sit down and decide what is most important to her in a career.  Does she want to be in an office, or work with her hands? Does she want to be creative, or follow set standards and requirements?  Is she willing to move for her ideal career, or does she want to stay in the area? If she wants to stay in the area, then she needs to do research on what opportunities are available where she is. She should shadow professionals and intern as much as possible.  In college, she should join college sections of professional organizations so she has more resources to learn about STEM, and possibly double major in a STEM field or get a minor.  These suggestions will likely even help her decide which STEM career is right for her if that’s the way she wants to go.

No matter what, help your daughter be an advocate for herself.  Help her learn to research careers online.  Show her resources she can use to get in touch with professionals in her chosen field of interest.  Above all, encourage your daughter to do more than blindly accept the career advice of her counselors based solely on her grades and academic achievements. STEM careers are not for everyone, and that is okay.

Women are constantly apologizing for things we didn’t do.  We are trained from a young age that we need to apologize anytime someone disagrees with us; anytime we don’t share someone’s feelings; or anytime something bad happens to someone else, even though we had nothing to do with it.  This constant need to apologize for everything also means we tend to take the blame when something goes wrong, even when we weren’t to blame.

As women, we feel that we should have planned better, or explained something in more detail to whomever was picking up from where we left off.  If something goes wrong after we pass off a report, or send someone into the field, we take the blame.  Forget about the fact that we had no control how the next person in line completed his or her task; it is somehow our fault.

In a male-dominated field, constantly taking blame for something you didn’t do can be a career-killer.  It can make you seem as if you don’t know what you are doing, which in turn affects your salary and your career prospects.  Additionally, feeling the need to apologize for everything can make you feel insecure about how good you actually are at your job.  Feeling like everything is your fault, regardless of how much control you had over it, can you make question your choice of career, as you feel like you’re always messing up.  It can make you worry about your prospects at your current employer or make you feel as if your contributions aren’t being recognized fairly.  Maybe you did something really well, and went above and beyond, but small mistakes that weren’t even your fault resulted in you losing credit because you fell on the sword.  Feeling insecure about your job performance can also cause you not to have an opinion or speak up.  You may even end up apologizing for just having an opinion in a meeting!  You feel like you wasted everyone’s time, or you feel like a total idiot for even thinking your opinion mattered.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a male actually apologize in the work place for making a mistake.  They’ll say, “I thought I had already done that,” or “Thank you for following up,” when you ask them where something is they were working on for you. They’ll always have an excuse, but they rarely say, “I’m sorry.”

This constant need to apologize affects our personal lives as well.  I’ve stayed in relationships for longer than I should have because I was worried about hurting my boyfriend’s feelings.  I’ve been told by others that the reasons behind ending a relationship or a friendship were ridiculous, even though these feelings were very real to me.  Then, I felt the need to apologize to my friends for how I felt, along with my boyfriend for breaking his heart.  While I felt bad for him, I shouldn’t need to apologize for ending something that I was unhappy with.

So how, as a parent, do you break the habit of your daughter apologizing for something she shouldn’t apologize for?  First, teach her to recognize when she truly did something wrong versus when she just feels a certain way.  She should only ever apologize for an action, not a feeling.   If she was blatantly mean to a sibling, friend, parent, etc., yes, she needs to apologize for her actions.  If she lied to you, she needs to apologize.  If she made an honest mistake, sit down with her and figure out how it happened. Teach her how to walk through the entire task, determine what went wrong, and what could be done to fix it.  The most important question she should ask before she apologizes is, “Did I have control over the outcome?” If the answer is, “No,” then she should not apologize.  Even if she did mess up, tell her the most important thing to do is to figure out how not to make the same mistake again.  Maybe there needs to be a better procedure in place.  Maybe she or her entire team needs to work on communication.  Identify the reason an issue occurred, promise to correct it, and move on.

STEM education is a huge topic of discussion among educators and parents.  It seems like everyone wants to know how to encourage children to enter a STEM career.  One of the best ways to get students interested in any career is to introduce them to the subject, and children typically learn about careers through exposure to the profession. Usually children can explain what a doctor’s job or a police officer’s job entails, because they experience it through play, media, and first-hand from the professionals themselves. Unfortunately, children don’t realize they are exposed to what engineers do every day.

So, how do you connect them with STEM professionals?

Aside from connections with family and friends, the best way to meet STEM professionals is through professional organizations.  Many professional organizations have resources committed to outreach.  Most professionals involved with a professional organization truly take pride in their careers, and love talking to other people about them, especially children.

Do a quick search for a national organization related to a career you’re interested in.  From the national organization’s website, search for a local chapter.  From that local chapter’s page, search for an outreach chair, president, or other member’s contact information and reach out.  Don’t be worried about bothering anyone, WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

If you are worried about bothering someone during the day, send an email or leave a voicemail  at the end of the day.  S/he will call you back!

Many of these organizations have a mission to reach out to students, and by you contacting them, you’re actually helping them out.  You’re helping set up an activity that the professionals would otherwise have to organize on their own.  It’s so much easier to go into a classroom and do an activity with the students who are already there than it is to organize an activity at the local library or children’s museum. Being invited into a group of engaged teachers and students is always more productive than starting from scratch.

These organizations can also point you toward resources available, activities to do, and are always more than willing to answer emails or any other questions your child may have about engineering.

I want to leave you with two organizations that I am involved with that love doing outreach activities with children.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has a pre-college outreach page: http://www.asce.org/pre-college_outreach/

You can find a list of its sections and branches here:
http://www.asce.org/regions_sections_branches/

Find the closest section or branch to your area, and do a quick google search using its name and “American Society of Civil Engineers” or “Society of Civil Engineers” and you will quickly find its page.

The other organization is the Society of Women Engineers.  Their outreach page is here:
http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/swenext

You can find your local section and a link to its website here: http://societyofwomenengineers.swe.org/membership/swe-sections

Please don’t hesitate to use these resources, that’s what they’re here for! I eagerly await to hear from my local STEM parents, students, teachers, and even other professionals. Do not be afraid to reach out and utilize these amazing people and programs. The world needs more STEM professionals, so start your journey today!

Life is not a Competition

We are programmed to be in competition with everyone around us. From the time we are born, parents “Oooh” and “Ahhhh” and tell their child they are the smartest, most talented child in the room.

For parents, this competition can start long before pregnancy. It will certainly start by the time their child enters day care or preschool. Parents are always comparing themselves to other parents and their child to the other children.  If two one-year olds are in a room together, and one is running and the other is crawling, the parents of the little caterpillar feel as if they’ve failed. This competition follows us until we die.

Once a child enters the world of sports, they are encouraged in an animal-like fashion to compete against each other. Sports which used to promote teamwork, communication, coordination and enjoyment are so often morphed into an intense physical and mental competition focused on WINNING! Nothing else matters.

Parents have high hopes that their kids will be a child prodigy and make a living off some rare talent.  If their child ends up on a team with a child who – forbid – couldn’t care less about winning, the parents throw a fit, yell at the coach, the carefree child (and their parents) and possibly even switch leagues all for the off-chance that their progeny could be the next star player in the Major League.  There is so much pressure to win! If the parents haven’t figured out what a child’s talent is by the time she or he is five, they start wondering what’s wrong with her/him. How are they ever going to succeed in life if they aren’t the best at something?

And it’s not only sports where kids pick up on competition mentality. The classroom is rife with competition, real and perceived. This competition takes place with grades when students are ranked as the “top of the class” or compare their standardized test scores.  In high school yearbooks, people are ranked as “best smile” or “cutest couple.” Competition is all around us, and usually it has no bearing on how successful we can actually become in life.

Even as adults, we put too much emphasis on winning, even when it means NOTHING. Many adults play in recreational sports teams, and their animal-like tendencies to prey upon other teams take over. They can’t just play to have fun, they play to destroy their competition. For some reason, the whole point of the game (to have fun!) gets lost on them and winning is EVERYTHING to them. Even if they win, they aren’t satisfied. They’ll try to get better by kicking their friends off the team or yelling at each other or their opponents. They don’t realize that at the end of the day, no one cares how well did they on their recreational sports league.

We also have this competition-mentality in academics and business. We put so much pressure on ourselves as adults to have the perfect life, TO WIN. If we see someone younger than us in a higher a position we get jealous, and wonder what is wrong with us.  Why did they get there before we did?  If we feel there is no logical reason for their success, then we become bitter about our employers or our bosses, which makes our daily lives miserable.  Some of us don’t even want to be managers, but if someone gets that opportunity before us, we get resentful.  Forget the fact that moving up in the company often means more responsibility, more stress, and less time for ourselves.  Sometimes, it doesn’t even come with better pay. However, the perception of a higher status makes us feel like we are losing at life.

To avoid the misery of work, we get on social media sites, and see people getting married, buying nice houses, having the perfect family, taking awesome vacations, and wonder, “WHY CAN’T THAT BE ME?!? Why am I such a loser? Why am I not married? Why don’t I have kids, the house, the whole shebang?!? We ignore the fact that many of the people posting these images are often unhappy themselves, and they need “likes” or comments to fulfill some need they aren’t getting in their “perfect life.”  They need others to tell them they’re jealous so they feel validated in the choices they have made.

Some might argue that aspects of life are competition.  Companies are constantly competing to develop the next best product.  Certainly in these cases, competition in the work place can be healthy.  It forces us to work harder and think smarter. However, we need to remember that we rarely work better as one and that we all have different talents. In engineering, a team is generally comprised of project managers, technical experts, field technicians, etc. Each of these roles is vital to the success of a project. There shouldn’t be competition among team members. We should accept that others are better at certain aspects or are at different stages in their lives or career, and it has no bearing as to how we should feel about ourselves. At the end of the day, we need to realize the only way to win at life is to cross the finish lines that WE WANT TO CROSS.