Posts Tagged ‘Confidence’

Nothing is Certain Except for Taxes and Rude Professors: How to Survive Power-Hungry Teachers

Friday, April 5th, 2024

Most people come to college looking to diversify their skill set and dive head-first into their chosen fields. But unfortunately, not every professor has the same intentions when teaching their students. Some of them genuinely care about nurturing young minds to be the next generation of talent in their fields. Some of them are mostly there to further their careers but still try to put as much care as they can into the work they do. But unfortunately, many of them are there to fill whatever powerless void is troubling them in their personal lives and forget the fact that a student-professor relationship goes both ways. This results in teachers taking out unnecessary anger on students, and searching for whatever time and place they can exert their power over their students. 

My freshman year I had a professor who saw potential in my writing talent, but his recognition of my talent made him feel like he had the right to correct my wrongs in whichever way he saw fit. He never missed an opportunity to harshly critique my work in front of the class, suggest changes that completely misinterpreted my vision, and argue back and forth with me during class discussions. This constant ridicule made me feel anxious to go to class, as I was afraid of having my feelings hurt by this professor. The anxiety seeped into my self-confidence, and I started to blame myself for feeling this way. I began to feel that I wasn’t tough enough and that it was my fault for taking things too personally. 

This anxiety and lack of self-confidence began to affect my personal life. My friends started to notice as I became quieter and more nervous in my day-to-day interactions. One day, a friend of mine brought up my change in attitude, and I opened up to them about how I’d been feeling nervous in this class, and how it was making me second-guess myself and the work I produced. 

As I talked it out with them, I realized that it wasn’t me who was the problem; it was him. My friend pointed out that this professor saw both my talent and vulnerability, and used this sweet spot to exert power over me under the guise of helping me. Coming to this conclusion was so important, it helped me contextualize his actions and reframe the situation for myself. I wasn’t the weak and unconfident one, he was. There was nothing I could ever do that would please him, and ease my anxiety. His recognition of my talent to a lot of valuable feedback and advice on my work, but it also led to a lot of emotional turmoil and stress.

Through dealing with this experience, I learned a few tips about how to deal with professors who might not always have the best intentions. The first is to remember your worth. Chances are you’re gonna get critiques on your work, and sometimes they’ll be harsh. Either way, the work you do is still valuable and special. Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Constantly reminding yourself of your worth ensures that you can’t let anyone take it away from you. 

My second tip is to use your voice. I know it’s scary standing up to authority figures, but don’t let yourself be silenced in fear. It’s worth it to set up a one-on-one meeting with your professor to voice your concerns, as maybe they’re unaware of their behavior and you could help them change your mind. My anxiety steered me away from talking to my professor in person, so at the end of my semester during course evaluations, I wrote a letter detailing my feelings toward this professor’s behavior. I knew the evaluations would be read by both the professor and the administrator above him, and that my words would actually be heard and considered this way. If you’re worried about talking to them directly like I was, try sending an email, or setting up a meeting with an office on campus that can help facilitate a productive conversation and safe conversation. On my campus, the Office of Student Success offers services like this, research to see if your school has something similar that could help you. Whatever it is you have to do, if you think you’d feel better by speaking up about it you should do everything in your power to do so. 

My third and last tip is–of course– to take care of yourself. Take a walk after class to clear your mind if you’re upset or anxious. Make it a habit to treat yourself with your favorite snack or candy after each class so you have something to look forward to at the end. If you can, take a mental health day from the class and do something to relieve your stress. At the end of the day what’s important is your mental and physical well-being. As a busy college student, you have to do everything in your power to make sure you’re feeling your best. At the end of the day, this experience taught me to never forget my worth and to not let any way affect my confidence. 

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By Sidnie Paisley Thomas

Sidnie is a Sophomore at Emerson College in Boston studying creative writing and post-colonial literature. In her free time, you can find her hitting up her local thrift store, playing her favorite records, or reading a new book.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015


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The Gift of Listening

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020

The gift of listening is a power that revolves among us human beings on this earth, it is vital to living and may be considered a scare trait. According to Merriam Webster the term “listen” points out specific keywords. Such as, “pay attention”, “give consideration”, and “be alert”. Listening is a skill and is often unexplored territory that despite our sense of hearing it requires wisdom. It requires wisdom because it involves concentration, effort and the ability to distinguish hearing and listening. Listening is more than a trait, it is a process that is filtered because we often choose what we want to hear and what we cancel out. We also forget that with listening comes feeling connected with one another, spiritually, physically and mentally because we are sharing a healthy space, that makes it important to understand each other. 

The Muse, “Improve Your Conversational Skills in 4 Easy Steps” https://www.inc.com/the-muse/4-ways-you-can-become-a-better-conversationalist.html Accessed 1 Dec 2020.

In spite of our noisy and distracting surroundings, it encourages us to be patient and silent. When you’re silent, you are able to grasp more information, be more observant, and it allows you to learn about who you are. Therefore, we should all want to improve our listening skills with some effort and practice. As it benefits you in the long run and possibly could strengthen your relationships with not only others but also with yourself. Listening is very crucial to being successful. For instance, during a job interview, you must listen closely to the questions in order to give effective answers or during a job training process. In 2019, I acquired my first retail job in the industry at Uniqlo. As a Sales Associate providing customer service, accomplishing floor layouts, also following and listening to instructions got me promoted to an Advanced Associate, after three months. A co-worker once advised me, “don’t work hard, work smart” which could be interpreted from different perspectives. In my understanding, I apply this to my work ethic and in my leadership skills. In other words, working hard is part of what got me promoted but it wasn’t entirely the reason for my promotion. The ability to listen to my manager’s delegation of tasks, listen to the feedback, and comprehend what was expected of my work allowed me to build confidence. Responding to constructive criticism and being assertive through engaging positively with my team members made me have a positive attitude. Listening plays a major role in creating a safe culture and environment because when your thoughts, opinions, and ideas are being taken into consideration it makes you feel involved. 

Furthermore, listening is far more than being a good leader but it is also about building worthy relationships and being a wise person. Being a good listener to a friend or your next-door neighbor may not be a big deal for you, but to the other party, it could mean healing and being valued. It may be known as venting but it creates a safe and welcoming atmosphere with someone else that could possibly be in the same shoes as you once were. When you listen to someone it creates a bond between you and the person, a special connection that engages just you and the other, out of the billions of people on this planet earth. Listening to your significant others helps with your own personal development, it doesn’t have to be career-wise but it can also help with your own healing, learning, and communication skills. Sometimes, this world needs more empathy, respect and to be more caring. It is important to be that change and to give your undivided attention as you’d like to be given. Are you a good listener? 

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By: Yadira Tellez

Yadira is currently enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology, majoring in Fashion Business Management and minoring in English literature. She’s worked in retail and has had the opportunity to work behind the scenes during NYFW. Her dream is to be a Fashion Stylist but enjoys creative writing to relieve stress and express her mind.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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Encouraging Positive Talk and Confidence in Your Friend Group

Sunday, July 23rd, 2017

“Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.” There’s been a fair amount of research on how people are affected by their environments, and that largely means how they’re affected by the people with whom they interact. Have you ever noticed a friend of yours start using a phrase you use? Have you picked up certain habits from your friends? You’ll probably be hyper-aware of it after reading this! Some even argue that you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Much of what I’ve read on this subject warns about the influence of toxic people and emotional vampires, like this cautionary article from https://medium.com. A lot of these self-help articles advise readers to rid themselves of friends and acquaintances who just aren’t feeding their lives in a positive way. I’m not disputing that advice. Cutting ties with draining people is important for your overall wellbeing. But if you’re influenced by the people around you, there’s also a lot you can do in turn to be a positive influence on them—and ultimately that’s beneficial for everyone.

https://twitter.com/mathsnsw

https://twitter.com/mathsnsw

Negativity doesn’t just come in the form of explicit rudeness or friends who deliberately put you down. Some of our most supportive, funny, valuable friends can unintentionally and indirectly propagate feelings of self-criticism and negativity by the way they talk to and about themselves. Author Mark Manson writes a lot about how we measure worth. Take this article for instance (it’s a short read): https://markmanson.net/how-we-judge-others. His logic is that the way we judge others is also how we judge ourselves. In his words, the yardstick by which we measure our own worth is also the yardstick by which we measure the worth of others. Often we aren’t conscious of how exactly we measure worth, but Manson points out that we can choose to be conscious, and from there we can choose our yardsticks. So if you obsess over your grades, chances are you also judge your friends by how high their GPAs are. If you have a friend who is constantly worrying about her appearance, you can deduce that her primary measuring stick is attractiveness. Most likely without meaning to, that friend then judges other people by their attractiveness. By “judging,” I mean ascribing worth or value.

https://me.me/

https://me.me/

These behaviors can wear on us. If someone close to you obsesses over their physique and level of fitness, it’s hard not to wonder how they view and judge your body too. I urge you to point our negative behaviors that you see in your friends and encourage them to be kinder to themselves. For example, I used to have a hard time taking compliments; I always felt like accepting them meant I was cocky. In response, I would make self-deprecating comments, finding faults in myself to counteract anything positive. Eventually, when I would make these comments one of my friends started scolding me, “Don’t be self-deprecating.” And it wasn’t a playful admonishment either. There was a bit of annoyance and a real sense of chastisement in her tone. I didn’t take offense. On the contrary, her criticism of my own self-criticism brought me to see my comments about myself in a more accurate light: not as politeness, but as an unhealthy habit. I learned to catch myself in those thought patterns, and I learned to accept compliments. And you know what? Compliments feel good! That’s how they’re supposed to feel!

So when you see your friend poking their stomach and saying they feel fat, ask them, “What’s something you like about your body?” When your friend does poorly on a test and says they are stupid, tell them, “You know, you’re really good at ______. Be an example; be gentle with yourself and gentle with your friends. Compliment them, and accept their compliments graciously too. If you admire something, say so. When you’re proud of them, show it. It’s often easier to hold on to the negatives, but you have the power to highlight the positives. If what Business Insider says is true—that you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with—then your positivity has the power to make them more positive. And in the end, that positive energy will feed you too.

 

https://www.theworkher.com

https://www.theworkher.com

By Sofia Lerner


Sofia Lerner is a Campus Clipper publishing intern who is studying English as a senior at NYU. Passionate about literature, dance, and wellness, Sofia aspires to help the arts thrive and help others pursue healthy lifestyles. For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services. 

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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Putting Effort into Your Appearance: It’s About Confidence, Not Vanity

Sunday, July 16th, 2017

Picture this: you’re having a rough day. Maybe your physics exam went horribly; maybe you and your significant other split up; maybe you struggle with anxiety or depression and it’s just worse than usual today. Self doubt and insecurity start to creep in, and your confidence sky dives. Cue sweat pants and a trip to the nearest bodega to check out the ice cream selection, and soon you’re a pile of distress, feeling… let’s just say not your most attractive.

https://twitter.com/ohh_deer

https://twitter.com/ohh_deer

Does this sound familiar? I think we’ve all been here. But even though your impulse is to crawl into a hole, and the last thing you want to do is put on nice clothes and style your hair, that’s exactly what you should do. Putting effort into your appearance makes you look more confident, which makes you feel more confident and act it too. Scientists Adam Hajo and Adam D. Galinsky research the effect that your style and clothing choices have on your mood, health, and overall confidence. This is the result of a phenomenon called “enclothed cognition.” In an article for the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Hajo and Galinsky explain that enclothed cognition “involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors — the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them.” That means what you choose to put on has a real affect on how you feel and what your style and clothing are saying to the world.

https://twitter.com/fpjsprobinsyano

https://twitter.com/fpjsprobinsyano

In a Huffington Post article, “How Clothing Choices Affect and Reflect Your Self-Image,” Jill L. Ferguson quotes Karen J. Pine, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire (U.K.) and author of the book Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion. Pine maintains, “When we put on a piece of clothing we cannot help but adopt some of the characteristics associated with it, even if we are unaware of it.” Think about it: how do you feel and act in your favorite outfit? In sweatpants? After a haircut? What about wearing loafers? Heels? Gents, wearing a nice aftershave? I know that when I wear a fancy dress for a night out, I stand up straighter, walk with more intention, and probably project more confidence as a result. This isn’t to say you need to be dressed to the nines all the time. I love my flannel shirts and combat boots, and sometimes I feel more confident wearing that than wearing a form fitting dress (especially on a full stomach). Just a touch of something that spruces up your appearance can make a difference in how you feel, look, and present yourself. Often on days when I have to share my work in front of a group or have a difficult conversation, I’ll put on some lipstick, or as I call it, war paint.

https://www.redbubble.com

https://www.redbubble.com

I particularly like red, since it’s the color of confidence. I’ve always thought there’s just something about the classic red bottom on a pair of Louboutins that projects elegance and confidence. But that doesn’t mean you need to run around in heels on the daily. A few days a week I’ll spritz on some perfume, or wear a noticeable pair of earrings, style my hair differently, or brush on some mascara. These efforts don’t need to be head-to-toe 24/7. In the event of a break up, sometimes a dramatic change like a totally different haircut can do wonders to make you feel fresh and attractive; I just got a chop this weekend! But day-to-day, it’s just about putting in the effort to make yourself feel confident—and that’s inextricably linked to feeling attractive. So shine your shoes, try a new hair style, pull out that little black dress, and start wearing red!

By Sofia Lerner


Sofia Lerner is a Campus Clipper publishing intern who is studying English as a senior at NYU. Passionate about literature, dance, and wellness, Sofia aspires to help the arts thrive and help others pursue healthy lifestyles. For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services. 

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.


 

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Dwindling Communication in the 21st Century

Friday, October 5th, 2012

With all kinds of new technology and social media platforms popping up every day, it seems easier than ever to stay in contact and communicate with the whole world.  It doesn’t even require a lot of effort, just a portable laptop — which come in extra small packages these days – or a smart phone.  So why is it that the real value of our words is going down the drain?

Even he didn't say much and he could be heard almost ANYWHERE

Part of this is our own fault for relying too much on technology.  There’s less effort put into meeting up with a friend or family member for a quick lunch.  Making communication easier has made us less aware of the importance of following through and actually speaking.  Personal relationships have decreased in favor of the blogosphere or Facebook.

With the upcoming Presidential election, it’s important to take more pride and responsibility in our words, our communication, and listening and hearing content.  That annoying little habit of saying “like” after every other word?  That was OK when you were 13.  Part of being a responsible adult pertains not just to our professional lives, but also to our communication.  As students, you’re going to be primed as the leaders of the future; it is important to recognize this gift and own it.

Your Presidential vote is also your future, take some time out to inform yourself on what the candidates stand for. Yes, it is true that many of their speeches and debates will be ridden with white noise you should avoid, but the important thing to do is to INFORM yourself.  Educating yourself on issues is a practice you’ll continue even after the election, making you highly employable. Try news feeds like cnn.com or huffingtonpost.com. If you’re in a real rush, newser is a great place to catch up on headlines with a short and readable summary.

As to the nonsense words you use to fill silences, start thinking a little more before speaking.  This will cause you to have a fully formulated sentence before speaking, but if you should have a silence somewhere…it’s OK! No need to add “like,” “so,” “um,” etc.  Some thoughts to keep your message in line:

Are you really saying what you want to say?

Is that person going to understand your needs and goals?

If not, could you reword it and still make the message clear?

Remember: being too wordy may lose the listener.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in preparing and physically relocating to New York City, it’s that if you can write and communicate your ideas well, your career will soar.  While social media is all good and fun, it’s only effective when used properly.  So go out and use your voice, your thoughts, and yes, your phone (in fact, you could download the Campus Clipper App RIGHT NOW)!

 

Written by: Lauren A. Ramires

If you’re interested in finding out more about my opinions and ventures with social media, social media marketing, fashion, travel and humor, follow me on Twitter, Facebook or my blog.

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