Danny Cox is: The PRospective Employee

For nearly as long as I can remember, I’ve been a strong advocate for the idea that perception is reality. I don’t find myself easily subscribing to the Platonic ideas of there being a “right” or “perfect” form of anything, and if there is I find it impossible to decide who gets to decide that we’ve reached it. In this regard, I’ve been called (among other things) a moral relativist of sorts.

Recently though, I’ve been starting to expand the idea of perception and try to see the pervasive impact that perspective has on that reality. In fact, in some ways the perspective really defines the individual reality more than the perception. Much like psychiatrist Kohlberg’s stages of actualization, the angle from which we look at a problem, situation, or ourselves has a profound impact on whether we like what we see.

I’ve recently been party to a number of sizeable changes in my life toward which I had a negative feeling until a friend gave me a different perspective to examine everything a little more objectively. It’s amazing how what looks like an ongoing problem from one perspective turns into the dust settling on a problem that’s already been solved from another.

Sometimes when you feel lost or overwhelmed, a fresh perspective can be a breath of new life and energy to help you push through whatever Dip you’re stuck in. Take a step back, and talk to a friend whose only investment in the situation is the interest in helping you inherent to a good friendship, no pressures to get the answer you’re looking for. You might be surprised at what you find.

A caveat: this may result in a situation in which you are forced to confront something you’d rather not acknowledge about yourself or the situation. Though not much fun, this can often be the roadblock that was contributing to your troubles that needs to be faced/addressed/changed before you can move on peacefully.

When has changing your approach come in handy for you? Where did you find the new angle?

It’s amazing how different perspectives can become, how different life can become, in such a short time. In the grand scheme of things, 10 years is not a terribly long time. I find it difficult to accept that 10 years ago today, I was 11 years old and heading back to 6th grade since Y2k did NOT bring about the destruction of life as we know it. Life consisted of going to school, coming home, going to movies on Friday nights, and reading a lot.

Fast forward to today: two days into my final quarter of college, a second childhood rapidly coming to an eagerly anticipated end. It’s a time of excitement, fear, and above all change. Changes within myself and the way I view the world, with the way I interact with the people around me. Changes in technology and opportunity.

Today I had a phone call with Adam Keats of Weber Shandwick’s Chicago office, and he asked me where I saw myself in five years. I replied that I hope to be working in an Agency setting, doing PR that means something. There are so many paths that I could see myself taking, however. Having taken the LSAT and gotten a 157, I could be in my first or second year of law school. Or I could be working on an M.S. in Public Relations and Strategic Corporate Communications somewhere. I could be in Chicago, or New York, or London, or Prague.

The not-knowing provides so much more excitement than knowing, and there’s a lot that I don’t know right now. As someone who nearly always has an answer, if not THE answer, this would typically cause a great deal of stress and anxiety. For whatever reason, right now it gives me comfort. It gives me hope.

Seth Godin had a great post yesterday about there being a surplus of fear and how he’d rather have a surplus of hope. I think I found some of his stockpiles.

I would like to take this opportunity to pause my personal narrative on my, now not-so-recent, trip to Chicago to discuss why said narrative remains unfinished.

At the time of this writing, the first of my remaining two quarters of my college career is roughly 33% complete. Until yesterday, I did not have a finalized schedule- a fact that has contributed to my delinquent blogging. Add to this that I have recently become active in our chapter of PRSSA, our award winning student-run PR agency ImPRessions, The Ability Project, and resuming my role as Dr. Frank-n-Furter for the 2009 rendition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Each of these could constitute a post in themselves, and several of them will- in particular The Ability Project and the PRSSA-related activities- but that’s for another day. The point of this post is to discuss my apparent absence from that which occupied so much of my time and efforts this summer that has nearly disappeared from my daily schedule: keeping up with social media.

Along with my blogging, my tweeting, friend-feeding, and participation on Brazen Careerist have all seemed to have fallen by the wayside. This does not sit well with me: I’m well aware that content is king and stagnation is death in the social media-sphere. Because of this, I have decided to try something that is relatively novel to my college experience thus far- waking up early. Current post as an exception, I’ve found that there is a marked decrease in my productivity once a certain time of day is reached. To combat this, I have committed to waking up each morning no later than 8:00 am. On purpose.

To those of you in the working world, I ask you to hold in your scoffs and sneers and remember that I operate on college time. Remember, college time= living on Pacific Time in the Eastern Time Zone.

The point of this post is simply to make a public pledge to consistently maintain my presence online to not lose any progress I may have made this summer. It’s a post that I would recommend those in a similar position heed: the memory of the interwebs is equivalent to a Hollywood playboy’s thoughts of fidelity in Vegas- practically non-existent.

It’s time like this I wish I had a Blackberry.