Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.
Part 3: Make the best of it.
Part 4: Be ballsy.

5. Sometimes, it really is pure luck.

When I first started job-hunting, I didn’t have much going for me. My grades weren’t good, I had little experience, and I had no clue what I wanted to do for a living.

I sent out my resume to hundreds of companies and never heard a peep.

Soon, the bank of mom and dad threatened to cut me off. “Get a job or move back home.”

I decided to try temping while still job-hunting, just so I can prove to the parents units that I wasn’t lying on the couch watching TV all day.

I contacted a temp agency, and what happened next was one of the luckiest, most fortunate events of my life.

The first job the temp agency offered me was to work as the personal assistant to the CEO of a large, multinational company (you probably heard of it if I told you). The gig would last two weeks – was I up for it?

Immediately the image of the nightmare boss from The Devil Wears Prada popped into my head. However, I quickly pushed my overactive imagination aside to accept the offer.

A couple of days before my two weeks was up, the CEO called me into a meeting he was having with the VPs. He then said to them, “This is Jenny. She’s a good worker and she needs a job. One of you should give her a job.”

The rest, as they say, was history. I had landed my first full-time job out of school.

I’ve said before that you should take advantage of every opportunity, no matter how small, life throws at you. I’ve preached that you need to work hard to be successful.

But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to make it.

Or you may be living the good life and an act of God comes to take it all away.

We should always keep trying. But we also need to realize that there are some things we cannot control. And we have to roll with it.

I hope you enjoyed this series! If you have any ideas for more, please let me know!

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.
Part 3: Make the best of it.

4. Be ballsy.

I have mentioned before that I am a textbook ISFP. I have terrible stagefright and I shy away from being the center of attention. I’m great at giving others a lending hand and making suggestions, but I’m horrible when it comes to helping myself or taking my own advice.

In short, I’m a terrible at selling and promoting myself.

Needless to say, I hate job interviews.

Now I like to think of myself as a fairly polite person with decent manners and a pleasant (albeit somewhat reserved) personality. However, that doesn’t take you very far in the cutthroat world of business.

I actually never interviewed for my first job – I obtained the position through a stroke of luck. (I will write about this in the next and final part of the series.) So the thought of meeting new people and sitting through interview after interview not only terrified me, it was a fairly new experience in itself.

After a few failed attempts I was starting to lose hope. I was getting better, sure, but it still wasn’t good enough for someone to hire me.

Then, one day I had another chance encounter with lady luck. As I waited in line to pay at a grocery store, my eyes scanned the usual titles that lined the check-out counters. My gaze stopped at a small book that read, “How to Get the Job You Want.” It wasn’t a best seller. The cover wasn’t particularly attractive. In fact, it was one of those generic, small, self-help books that end up gathering dust wherever they are sold.

However, I had time. The line was still long. I flipped through the pages.

I don’t remember exactly what the book said, but the biggest lesson I learned in the 3 minutes of scanning the book was to be ballsy. Act like you have a 10-inch cock. Trust that they need you more than you need them, and make them believe this too.

I figured, “why not?” and decided to try this method at my next interview.

I walked into the room like I owned the place. I asked more questions than they asked me. I acted like I was interviewing them for a place in my life, because when you think about it, this is precisely what should happen at an interview.

At times I was certain that I made the interviewer a bit nervous from my direct approach. He cleared his throat and loosened his tie several times as my voice became stronger and clearer.

I wasn’t afraid to speak my mind. I wasn’t afraid to show excitement either, with wild hand gestures and a raised voice. When the hiring manager cautioned that the job at times can become very tedious as every detail need to be triple-checked in their dozens of printed material, I exclaimed, “Are you kidding? I get off on that stuff!”

To be honest I thought I had lost him there. I almost clapped my hand over my mouth and prepared to apologize. But he loved it. He ate it all up. And when he emailed me to schedule a second interview, he mentioned that my “enthusiasm for the job clearly presented itself” during the course of the interview.

I was determined to end my second interview with a bang. When he asked if I had any further questions, I leaned forward, looked directly into his eyes, and said, “I’m perfect for this position and you know it. I’m not looking for a job…I’m looking for a career. And this is it for me.”

I had to rehearse this in my head many times. This was so uncharacteristic of me! I was so out of my element and so far from my comfort zone that my hands shook for the remainder of the day.

But it worked. After I said this to him he paused and looked at me calmly. “I hope to see you again,” he said. And I knew I had it in the bag.

The next day, I received a call from the company’s head of HR with the official offer. They even offered me more money than I had asked for.

I’m not sure where I mustered up the courage to be a self-confident, strong and powerful person for those few hours of my life. All I knew was that I needed to step out of my comfort zone if I were to prove to anyone that they needed to hire me.

The final part of the series will be 5. Sometimes, it really is pure luck.

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.

3. Make the best of it.

I hated my first job.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a total waste. I gained valuable experience, learned the importance of office politics, and the salary wasn’t bad at all for an entry-level position.

However, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was miserable. I hated the numbers-driven strategy and the mad scramble at the end of every fiscal quarter to meet the quota. I hated the work I did, which was providing administrative and strategic support for my sales group.

I knew I was capable of more.

During my one-year tenure at this company, I befriended a man in the marketing department. To be more specific, he was a designer within the marketing department. And the more I talked to him and learned what he did, the more I knew this was what I wanted to do.

In a ballsy move very uncharacteristic of my usually shy self, I arranged a meeting with the VP of Marketing and discussed my future with the company. “This is what I want in my career and I know I can do this,” I emphasized. “I want to work for you.”

Unfortunately, her staff was full and she didn’t have room in her budget for a new employee. However, she offered to talk to my supervisor on my behalf.

A week later, the VP of my department called me into her office.

To be honest I was scared shitless. I had never expressed interest in moving to another department. Would she think I was going behind her back?

This wasn’t the case at all. She told me that she believed I was a great worker and praised me on the many achievements I had accomplished in the past year. She didn’t want to lose me and so offered additional projects which were more in line with my interests.

I gladly accepted the new responsibilities that she had created specifically for me, but I also knew deep inside that I didn’t want to stay with this company. In addition, I wanted to move back home to New York (I was in Baltimore at the time).

What I really wanted to do was design work and/or marketing but I realized I had a disadvantage for not having had any formal training.

So in my spare time, I taught myself CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. I delved deeper into Flash and the Adobe Creative Suite applications.

I never never taken any marketing classes at school so I bought some books and read up on the subject.

I took on freelance work whenever possible, even volunteering my services for free, just for the experience and to build my portfolio.

A few months later, when the lease on my apartment was about to end, I decided to move back up to NY and started looking for work in my newly desired field.

And I got it.

Currently, I work in marketing and have a wide variety of responsibilities which keep me mentally and creatively stimulated. I write copy and design the material on which it is displayed (letterheads, envelopes, pamphlets, brochures, posters, websites, gifts, etc). I organize mass mailing campaigns that reach almost 100,000 people all over the world. I design ads that are displayed in some of the most respected journals and magazines in the industry.

But most importantly, I work in a field I love (IT) and I no longer dread going to work every morning.

I feel that anyone who feels they are stuck in an unfavorable position can learn from this experience.

First, I decided what I wanted. (By talking to the man who worked in the marketing department and finding out all I could about the position and the field)

Then I went for it. (By talking to the VP of Marketing)

And since I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, I decided to turn the odds in my favor. (By accepting additional projects, training myself, taking on extra work in my spare time)

I retried, and I got it.

It may seem cliché, but when life doesn’t turn out the way you want, you have to make the best of it by taking advantage of every little opportunity.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series: 4. Be ballsy.

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.

2. It’s never too late.

One of my good friends is beautiful and brilliant (and I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend). Not only is she so gorgeous that a well-known, national brand wanted her as a model, she’s also one of the smartest people I know.

A couple of years ago, after working her ass off in a prestigious pre-law program, she was accepted to Stanford Law School and we were all so very proud of her.

That’s when she announced she would be attending culinary school instead.

Say what?

She then explained to me that food was, and always has been, her passion. The only reason she had pursued law school was to land a stable, respected, well-paying job so that she can save enough money to follow this passion.

“Then I thought…why should I wait? Why not now?”

Fast forward a few months, when she was well into her studies in culinary school. It’s tough work, she said. And undoubtedly very intimidating and quite scary to have made such a change. However, she radiated with happiness and I knew she had made the right choice.

She explained to me that her class was full of these types of people. Hedge fund managers. IT guys. Even stay at home moms. All who had realized that it’s never too late to pursue your passion.

To be realistic, not everyone can make a living from their passions. However, just pursuing it as a side job or even as a hobby can do wonders for your health and happiness.

My father is a great artist and won numerous awards in his younger days. However, his family was so poor that he had to drop out of high school to help ends meet. There was no glimmer of hope for art school at all.

Decades later, he has started to draw again. He doesn’t have time to do much, but when he does I can see the calm fulfillment in his eyes.

My mother has always admired pottery. So last year she decided to take up pottery classes at the local Korean community center. Some of the pieces she makes are so ugly that I don’t know what to say to her when she proudly shows them to me. But I can’t deny that they make her happy.

There are always a million reasons not to do something. But are they so cumbersome that you cannot live a happy, fulfilled life?

Next up… 3. Make the best of it.

My office is right upstairs from Madison Square Garden and believe it or not, many schools hold their commencement ceremonies at the Garden. In the past week, I have come downstairs many times to a sea of gowns, caps, and proud families. And I expect this to continue for the next few weeks, just as it has in the previous years.

Graduation season is upon us, my friends.

Last week the mental_floss Blog posted an article called 7 Memorable Commencement Addresses and I read each word (and watched each video) with much respect. What great sources of inspiration! Can you imagine how awesome would it have been to have had Steve Jobs come speak at your commencement?

(The article mentions that Bill Nye is the speaker at Johns Hopkins this year. How come they didn’t have any cool speakers like him when I was still around?)

Now I’m only 27 and I admit I can still be a fool when it comes to the matters of life. However, after contemplating these famous speeches, I began to think about what I would say to this year’s graduates, if given the chance…

1. The world doesn’t owe you anything.

So many people receive their diplomas from top tier universities and expect the world to turn in their favor. They expect multiple job offers, signing bonuses, and six figure salaries.

Even if their demands are not as high, I still read many stories of recent grads who are genuinely surprised that companies are not rolling out the red carpet for them. In fact, they’re actually…*gasp* having trouble finding jobs.

There have been much talk of the “entitlement generation” in the past few years. HR reps at various companies are being re-trained to deal with the new generation of recent graduates who want all the perks without having the pay the dues.

I do not mean to sound harsh, but consider the following three words: life ain’t easy.

You gotta work for what you want.

Unless they were incredibly lucky, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of successful people had to work their asses off in order to get to where they are.

One of my favorite quotes is from an episode of the NBC show Scrubs, where Dr. Kelso gives this piece of advice to a young lady who is looking for the easy way out: “Nothing in this world worth having comes easy.”

Consider a man who made $200 million through a lottery drawing. Now picture another man who was able to save $1 million for retirement through years of working at a job paying just $30k a year.

It’s a no brainer that the majority of people would choose the $200 million over $1 million. And it’s obvious that most people would choose to get the $200 million through pure luck and chance, rather than the $1 million over years of saving and hard work.

But when you think about it, the man who saved the $1 million will most likely treasure and appreciate his money more than the $200 million lottery man.

Think about it.

This isn’t meant to put a damper on your hopes and aspirations. The next piece of advice is more optimistic: 2. It’s never too late.