Jacqueline Luciano
PSA to Management Students
Dear Management Student,
My name is Jacqueline Luciano. I’m twenty-four years old and graduated from Providence College in 2016 with a major in Global Studies. I work at small, IT consulting company in Waltham, MA as a marketing manager, who primarily focuses on events-based marketing. When I refer to my title as a marketing manager, I really mean I am the only one who works fully in marketing at my company. I work in a very intense, fast-paced environment under loads of pressure to ensure all goes smoothly.
Although the atmosphere of my job is stressful, I would consider myself very lucky because at twenty-four years old, I love what I do. I am empowered to make decisions, run with my own ideas, and find out what works and what does not. My CEO’s office is right next to my cube, and I have the opportunity to participate in strategic business conversations with her and her executive management team. My job challenges me to perform better and ultimately be a better marketer and manager.
However, my professional life was not always this exciting or pleasing to me. I did not begin my professional career off with the job of my dreams or doing the most glamorous work out there. Instead, I took a job in November of my senior year for simply job security. To be quite frank, I would have been embarrassed if I graduated from Providence College with honors without a job. I thought my parents would have been disappointed if I graduated from Providence College with honors without a job. I felt my colleagues would have been shocked if I graduated from Providence College with honors without a job . . . Get my point? I put all of these false ideas in my head because I thought I needed to meet the expectations of others.
Looking back on my senior year, I wish I would have waited until after I graduated to accept a job offer. Call me crazy, but I feel like I needed some time to think about what I actually wanted to do with my life versus being miserable and doing a job for the sake of having one. I should have taken the summer after graduation to do some research on what really interested me rather than jumping into a job less than a month after graduation.
While you are in your senior year, you do not have that time to think about you want to do. If you are anything like I was in college, you are running from meeting to meeting, balancing your extracurricular activities with your friends, all while trying to earn cum laude upon graduation. You do not have time to sit, think, and smell the roses, so how the heck are you going to have time to think about what you want to do with the rest of your life?!
Let me get something straight – I am not encouraging students to wait until after graduation to think about post-grad life and work. I am encouraging students to take time to think about what they want to do, where they see themselves, what makes them happy, and what makes them unhappy. Many of us do not take the time to ask ourselves these questions when seeking new opportunities like work. Students may rid themselves months or even years of unhappiness if they took the time to reflect on these simple questions.
Quite honestly, it was my academic experiences in tom’s classes that pushed me to shift my career in a direction that I knew I would enjoy. As mentioned, I graduated with a degree in Global Studies. Many of you, including me, have probably questioned what the major actually entails. One thing I will tell you is that it is probably the only major at Providence College that demonstrates the ugliness of the real world and encourages you to overcome it. Specifically, in my senior-year capstone class, I learned that you should not succumb yourself to work that makes you unhappy. Instead, you should be passionate about your work and see value in what you do. Unfortunately, I seemingly did not take the advice given to me by this class, and instead, I graduated, went through a 7-week training to be an account manager, and began babysitting a team of representatives.
After 1 year on the job, I hit a breaking point. I was angry that my representatives were unmotivated and unwilling to challenge themselves in their work and rather than seeing them flourish in their positions, I needed to mind them like they were children. I did not feel supported by my senior-level staff to put an end to my representatives’ impish behaviors. I felt like my brain was turning to mush, and I was becoming this sort-of corporate robot, who sat in an office all day-long. I kept asking myself was this what I was going to do for the rest of my life, was this all I was going to amount to, was I going to be a babysitter for these representatives forever? I knew I had to make a change for my professional well-being and pursue work that was important to me.
When I finally understood a shift in my career was necessary, I started to assess my strengths versus my weaknesses, what I wanted in my work, and what made me thrive. I reviewed my past work including my internships and extracurricular activities; I thoroughly enjoyed working on a multitude of projects at one time specifically projects that involved large-scale events like fundraisers and academic functions. I wanted to feel empowered by my colleagues to trust my instincts and make strategic decisions. I conceptualized being in some sort of project management role in a smaller company where I had access to executives and could get my creative side out without being bound to a desk 24/7. It was during that time where I realized I should look into roles involving event planning and management. Fast-forward five months later, I was offered an events-based marketing role at this IT consulting company.
Is my job easy? Absolutely not, but I was never looking for easy work. I wanted a job that enabled me to manage many tasks at one time. Do I find value in my work? Yes, absolutely. I am encouraged to provide my executive team with reasoning as to why I decided to do something and how it ultimately benefits the business. Am I able to be creative with my work? Yes, totally. I plan events. Of course, I can get creative and strategic in what I decide to do for events.
The objective of this saga was not to simply talk about myself. The intention of this letter was to share my story, so you do not make the same mistake I did. I want this letter to make you think; think about what you want for yourself, think about what makes you happy, think about what does not make you happy, and think about what you’re good at versus not so good at. Your work does not and should not make you miserable. You should enjoy what you are doing each and every day, and that your work is valuable to do. So, please, ask yourself these questions before jumping into a line of work, accepting a job offer, and taking that next step post-graduation.