How does one decide whether to pursue their most outlandish of dreams? And when that dream is a career in the performing arts, how does one reconcile the risks and uncertainty? Ever since I can remember I have been obsessed with stories. As a child, I would create compelling melodramas involving the models in the [...]

The less an employee treats his or her manager as a superior, the more damage he or she does to his or her career. In other words, in a society that bends over backwards to ensure no person or institution ever be considered greater than another, it’s tempting to subscribe to this same blurring-of-the-ranks in [...]

I got my first full-time job in politics by bluffing my way in. I was first recruited for the job by someone who went to summer camp with the daughter of the owner of the political consulting firm. They needed a computer guy because the last guy was an alcoholic who stole all of their [...]

The Importance of Being Solid What is the best way to grow your career and find new and better opportunities once you enter the work environment? One thing that I have learned over the course of my professional development is the profound impact personal behavior and attitude has on career potential and opportunities. Specifically, I’ve [...]

When I started as a freshman at W&L, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. So much in fact that I had started going by my middle name (Elliott) the summer before freshman year so that I would have an awesome pen name (J. Elliott Walker). I loved every second I spent inside the [...]

From The Classroom I’d love to tell you that my attention to detail, hard work, and academic excellence have landed me all of my jobs after graduation. Since the speech during freshman orientation on the Honor Code still sticks with me, I won’t lie to you. While all of those are certainly qualities of a [...]

Ever since junior high school, I have been planning for my career. Back then, I didn’t know precisely what it would be, but I knew what I needed to do to be successful – work hard, get good grades, load up on extracurriculars, ace the SAT, and get into a great college.  Check. Work hard, [...]

As the chief architect for the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s capacity building, professional and leadership development offerings, I spend a lot of time thinking about the skills and expertise our next generation of creative leaders will need to be successful, particularly in an environment where change and complexity are the rule, not the [...]

There is an old saying in the army that says, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” I think that these days we can also swap out “enemy” with “the job market.” Truthfully, the idea of the job market being tough is not really a new thing. It has been that way for a generation [...]

A lifelong lover of school (the structure! the learning! the new supplies!), I realized mid-way through my college career that I wanted to become a teacher. Like many Washington and Lee students, I committed myself fully to achieving my goal: I volunteered my time at Lexington middle schools; I completed a summer teaching internship at [...]