The Professional Side of the Mountain
A few weekends ago, I found out that my twin had entered into a consulting case competition and put me down as part of her time. On one hand, I was excited because the idea itself seemed daunting, but as part of my push to bring myself to do more things that scared me, I was willing to do it (not just because it had to do with consulting). On the other hand, I was a b s o l u t e l y exhausted. I sent a picture of my schedule once to a friend who kept complaining that I never had any free time and that I h a d to have a hour free somewhere, and after looking at it, she just stared at me dumbfounded. People never believe me when I say I have my entire schedule planned out for me at the start of the week, but I have to because it has me going from 8am-midnight every. single. day. Frankly, it's exhausting and disconcerting, but sometimes I'll sit down and think about how far I've come in a year, and then I'm just left with quiet gratitude.
A year ago, I was a depressed miserable wreck. I had transferred schools because of a guy and had no self-confidence because I almost failed out of Chemical Engineering. My mother constantly reminded me that switching schools was a second chance, though, so I was determined to make the most of myself. I joined powerlifting. Ten weeks after joining, I placed second at my first ever competition: Collegiate Nationals. Not only was that almost unheard of, but I deadlifted 275lb @ 97.6lb bodyweight and earned the rank of All-American, a prestigious rank named to only those who placed in the top three of their respective sports at the collegiate level. A few months later, I competed at Southern Regional Championships and placed first, deadlifting 298lb and moving up the ranks to 6th in the entire country and 3rd for deadlifts. The most important thing I remember about that day was finding out that I had been accepted into the prestigious Talent Incubator Program at Texas A&M University (300 people apply, and only 24 get in) because students in the program work directly under the C-Suites of their respective companies on projects that most people in the industry only get to handle years down the line. As a transfer who had only been in the program for one semester, it was especially a honor to know that the heads of the program had seen my potential and were willing to take a chance on me.
From the start, I was lost. I had never even heard of the field I was supposed to be assisting the company in, and I panicked as soon as I saw the hundreds of technical products they sold, especially because the majority of them reminded me of Chemical Engineering. I immediately started researching coagulation and flocculation to learn as much about the company as I could until my partner told me to calm down and stop being ridiculous because we would probably never be expected to know that. So, we sat down and methodically worked out a strategy. First, we would research best practices about what our project lead wanted our assistance on (channel partner management). Through this, we realized we needed to create a survey for reps and conduct interviews with management to understand how the two groups felt about each other. As our project finally started to figure itself, the scope changed one last time a few weeks before our midterm presentation to include a dashboard that we would have to create by hand. I, of course, flipped out immediately; my partner, on the other hand, was not worried. Over break, I would try to spend just a few minutes a day forcing myself to look at what needed to be done while wishing I had anybody to show me. And then I realized that I was so concerned about having some expert to show me that I never realized that even the experts start from the basics and that if I maybe had a little bit of confidence, that could be me as well. Slowly, I started to put together how Power BI worked and saw how the data and the caliber of the datasets themselves influenced the quality of the dashboard I could create (i.e. I wasn't necessarily always the problem). As the start of the next term got closer, I worried about my partner and I being able to pull this project off. And then, a few days after school started, we were off to Pittsburgh to present. As I had done the bulk of the research, my partner took the liberty of creating the powerpoint presentation. We hadn't really become good friends or anything like many of the other partners had, so I wondered what it would be like to spend two days with just her. To my surprise, while it was a bit difficult at times, it wasn't unbearable, and I decided to spend my time getting to know her. We worked on the presentation together, rehearsing our lines and analyzing the impacts we wanted our team to gleam from certain slides and found that we each brought certain strengths to the table that actually made us a strong partnership.
For example, while I was very good at researching and understanding the significance of data and how to convey it, she was skilled at presenting information in a way that made a clear impact on people. Most people tend to underestimate how important of a skill this is. You can have all the data in the world and derive fantastic conclusions from it, but unless you know how to present it in a way that makes other people understand, the data is essentially useless. Thus, when we presented, we both spoke with confidence and clarity. As she presented each point, I would follow it up with the significance of the claims, and she would pick up the slack again any time I needed a reprieve. Our project team was floored. They hadn't realized how their reps felt about certain policies or why they hadn't been willing to prioritize the company previously. They also appreciated our insight into training research and the plan we had put together to fully equip reps with all the tools to answer their customers' questions (management had thought that reps weren't making sales because they were lazy, but hadn't realized that many simply didn't have the information to make the sale and that reps felt like the company didn't trust them enough).
* * *
In the past two weeks alone, I attended a 9-hour workshop with my twin sister to become certified in the Fundamentals of Deep Learning for Computer Vision from the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, entered a consulting case competition at the last minute and managed to win third place despite having little preparation time, and hit two PRs for double-paused deadlifts after switching from mixed grip to hook grip just 3 weeks prior. While I worry sometimes that I'm not doing enough or reaching my full potential, sometimes I have to sit back and go, "Damn, Riti...remember when you swore to yourself that you would make the most of every opportunity and do everything that you were scared to do? YOU DID THAT!!! You boss-ass b*tch...you were so f*cking busy but recognized how important these opportunities were and did them in spite of being terrified of not knowing enough. And more than that, you did well because you gave it your all. You may not have been the best, but you're constantly trying and asking people for help and putting your ego aside to learn from others with more experience, and I am so f*cking proud of you."
A year ago, I was a depressed miserable wreck. I had transferred schools because of a guy and had no self-confidence because I almost failed out of Chemical Engineering. My mother constantly reminded me that switching schools was a second chance, though, so I was determined to make the most of myself. I joined powerlifting. Ten weeks after joining, I placed second at my first ever competition: Collegiate Nationals. Not only was that almost unheard of, but I deadlifted 275lb @ 97.6lb bodyweight and earned the rank of All-American, a prestigious rank named to only those who placed in the top three of their respective sports at the collegiate level. A few months later, I competed at Southern Regional Championships and placed first, deadlifting 298lb and moving up the ranks to 6th in the entire country and 3rd for deadlifts. The most important thing I remember about that day was finding out that I had been accepted into the prestigious Talent Incubator Program at Texas A&M University (300 people apply, and only 24 get in) because students in the program work directly under the C-Suites of their respective companies on projects that most people in the industry only get to handle years down the line. As a transfer who had only been in the program for one semester, it was especially a honor to know that the heads of the program had seen my potential and were willing to take a chance on me.
From the start, I was lost. I had never even heard of the field I was supposed to be assisting the company in, and I panicked as soon as I saw the hundreds of technical products they sold, especially because the majority of them reminded me of Chemical Engineering. I immediately started researching coagulation and flocculation to learn as much about the company as I could until my partner told me to calm down and stop being ridiculous because we would probably never be expected to know that. So, we sat down and methodically worked out a strategy. First, we would research best practices about what our project lead wanted our assistance on (channel partner management). Through this, we realized we needed to create a survey for reps and conduct interviews with management to understand how the two groups felt about each other. As our project finally started to figure itself, the scope changed one last time a few weeks before our midterm presentation to include a dashboard that we would have to create by hand. I, of course, flipped out immediately; my partner, on the other hand, was not worried. Over break, I would try to spend just a few minutes a day forcing myself to look at what needed to be done while wishing I had anybody to show me. And then I realized that I was so concerned about having some expert to show me that I never realized that even the experts start from the basics and that if I maybe had a little bit of confidence, that could be me as well. Slowly, I started to put together how Power BI worked and saw how the data and the caliber of the datasets themselves influenced the quality of the dashboard I could create (i.e. I wasn't necessarily always the problem). As the start of the next term got closer, I worried about my partner and I being able to pull this project off. And then, a few days after school started, we were off to Pittsburgh to present. As I had done the bulk of the research, my partner took the liberty of creating the powerpoint presentation. We hadn't really become good friends or anything like many of the other partners had, so I wondered what it would be like to spend two days with just her. To my surprise, while it was a bit difficult at times, it wasn't unbearable, and I decided to spend my time getting to know her. We worked on the presentation together, rehearsing our lines and analyzing the impacts we wanted our team to gleam from certain slides and found that we each brought certain strengths to the table that actually made us a strong partnership.
For example, while I was very good at researching and understanding the significance of data and how to convey it, she was skilled at presenting information in a way that made a clear impact on people. Most people tend to underestimate how important of a skill this is. You can have all the data in the world and derive fantastic conclusions from it, but unless you know how to present it in a way that makes other people understand, the data is essentially useless. Thus, when we presented, we both spoke with confidence and clarity. As she presented each point, I would follow it up with the significance of the claims, and she would pick up the slack again any time I needed a reprieve. Our project team was floored. They hadn't realized how their reps felt about certain policies or why they hadn't been willing to prioritize the company previously. They also appreciated our insight into training research and the plan we had put together to fully equip reps with all the tools to answer their customers' questions (management had thought that reps weren't making sales because they were lazy, but hadn't realized that many simply didn't have the information to make the sale and that reps felt like the company didn't trust them enough).
* * *
In the past two weeks alone, I attended a 9-hour workshop with my twin sister to become certified in the Fundamentals of Deep Learning for Computer Vision from the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, entered a consulting case competition at the last minute and managed to win third place despite having little preparation time, and hit two PRs for double-paused deadlifts after switching from mixed grip to hook grip just 3 weeks prior. While I worry sometimes that I'm not doing enough or reaching my full potential, sometimes I have to sit back and go, "Damn, Riti...remember when you swore to yourself that you would make the most of every opportunity and do everything that you were scared to do? YOU DID THAT!!! You boss-ass b*tch...you were so f*cking busy but recognized how important these opportunities were and did them in spite of being terrified of not knowing enough. And more than that, you did well because you gave it your all. You may not have been the best, but you're constantly trying and asking people for help and putting your ego aside to learn from others with more experience, and I am so f*cking proud of you."
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