Honor Thine Meeting

Outlook is kind of sacred. If you create an Outlook meeting intend on sticking to it. For a while I was working closely with a guy who had terrible Outlook etiquette. He would double book meetings and then blow off one of them at the last minute. He would schedule meetings and then disappear when it was time for the meeting, show up 30-90 minutes later and pretend that there was no meeting ever scheduled. He would schedule meetings, ask to postpone them, and then go play video games in one of our break rooms or hang out and chat with people near me. In short, he drove me crazy!

As a result, I now try to be especially cognizant of the fact that other people plan their days around meetings when I schedule them, and I also try to respect other people's meetings- being punctual, being prepared, and understanding the agenda ahead of time. These actions establish mutual respect and appreciation.

The fact of the matter is that when you have one or more meetings in a day, you prioritize your workload, shuffle around to-do tasks, plan lunch, etc. based on that meeting or those meetings. That's why when someone ignores the commitment that you have made to that meeting it feels so rude.

What meeting scheduling annoyances and pet peeves do you have? Share your bad experiences!

Making The Best of Unpaid Internships

While I was in college I had three unpaid internships. For some of you, the idea of working for free may seem strange, but in the Boston area this is incredibly common. This is due to the fact that there is a huge student population around Boston so businesses know that they don't need to pay students to attract them as long as they promise the kind of experience that can be touted on a resume later on down the road.

Having one or more internships before graduating is standard at Bentley. I had internships at a financial planning office, an internationally known shoe manufacturer, and an events planning company. The common thread between the three was that I was mislead before accepting all of them. Going in I was told that I would be doing one thing (i.e. something that had to do with my major) and I ended up being asked to do something totally different (i.e. grunt office work, manual labor, and needless busy work). The moral of the story here is that when you accept an internship expect to do things you never signed on for. What will decide how beneficial the internship ends up being to your professional networking and career development is how you handle those unexpected duties. If you grudgingly do the least amount of work needed to complete them you'll end up getting bitter and cynical. It's very easy to fall into that trap! You think to yourself, "I'm paying $35,000/year to get an education where they tell me I need an internship and then I get one and I'm filing all day without even getting paid for it?!" But trust me, if you find a way to turn it around you'll get a huge payoff!

Here are some tips to make the most of those undesirable tasks:

• Go above and beyond- provide more than you were asked for, and provide it sooner than expected
• Find room for improvement- make the process more efficient, more complete, or more detailed
• Do it without being asked- if you see something that needs to be done just do it
• Brainstorm- come up with ideas to supplement what you've been asked to do

If you've had the same experience share it with our readers! What crazy things have you been asked to do at your internship(s)?