Blog your way to a better career (the sequel)

February 25th, 2009

Blog your way to a better career, not bloody likely. Now I have one person in particular telling me I need to be on Twitter. I’m online too much. Usually it is reading dubious content, but at work I spend a lot of time Googling and keeping up on the latest news.

I’ve blogged a lot. I’ve been online a long time. I’ve blogged extensively about finding a job online. What I have to say should be taken with a grain of salt probably with a boulder. I had far from an ideal experience as a Grad student. First off by way of the Church of the Customer blog came a post on Word of Mouth Marketing for Graduate Students, which is no longer online in 2024. Having done a graduate degree albeit an MBA, I can say that I did a lot of what was advised and my experience doing my MBA was the worst of my life.

Here are Diane Cline’s top ten tips, plus my snide comments:

Be nice. I used to think I was a nice guy. Even Marlene Lau said she noticed how I went out of my way to treat people kind, even people who could do me no good. That didn’t stop her from lying to me, maligning me, having me threatened, and generally taking pleasure and amusement from ruining my life. I have to advise in business school, especially the Sauder School of Business, that the people who get ahead, who get rewarded with the scholarships and the fancy jobs are those that connive and conspire.
Don’t gossip. Gossiping was the number one past time of my Sauder MBA Classmates. They would rather gossip than study. MSN was used almost exclusively to spread rumors and innuendo about other classmates. I tried to avoid all this. I kept secrets. Even after March 17th 2005, you can ask Gary Lau, I defended and never badmouthed Marlene Lau, at least initially…
Think about your personal “brand”. I’ve blogged about this. I tried to get the importance of this across to my MBA Classmates, but they preferred to gossip, cheat, and use people. I haven’t forgotten some of the things they said. They had no problems damaging my reputation, especially when I kept silent and continued to go out of my way to help everyone in my class.
Maintain and build relationships with others. I tried this. I was LinkedIn to a lot of people, I tried to be careful, but I never expected to be so thoroughly broken, betrayed, and belittled by people who continued to insist they were my friend, right up until they decided I was a violent psychopath.
Work on your self image. Another thing that was completely destroyed by Marlene Lau and Anne DeWolfe on March 17th 2005. Of course Anne couldn’t be bothered to investigate or perform a “reasonable person test” before or after threatening me and punishing me. Even after I begged people to believe me, they still insisted I was lying, or “nothing could be done”, or that this wouldn’t have any negative affect on me, my ability to enjoy or participate in the Sauder MBA program, my health, or my grades, or of course my career.
Be remarkable. I was certainly that. People will never forget some of the things I said and did, doubly so if they use Google. I’ll never forget Marlene Lau. I’m still haunted by her and other classmates’ faces in my nightmares. I still suffer panic attacks when I see them or even people who look like them.
Help others. I went out of my way to do this, doubly so after March 17th 2005, when I was informed it was in fact a crime in the eyes of Marlene Lau and Anne DeWolfe, to care, to tell the truth, and most of all to go out of your way to help a classmate with their studies and internship search, even if that classmate was your “friend” and had thanked you for helping them a few days before. People change their mind, they also change their stripes. They definitely don’t believe in reciprocity. I know because when I begged my MBA Classmates to believe me, to stop hurting me, to help, they finally just turned their backs, pretended I didn’t exist and left me to die.
Leave places better than you found them. I know after I left the Sauder School of Business people were still going to guest speakers I arranged while I was on exchange in China. And future classes of MBA students used my study notes and guides, some even thanked me for it. Only Sverre, Gary, and possibly Jason thanked me for all that BAIM work and only two of my classmates ever apologized to me.
Be appreciative. I tried, but after I was treated worse than I could even imagine, I just felt things people shouldn’t have to feel, shouldn’t have to describe, shouldn’t have to beg people to believe.
Being remarkable in your field and being a remarkable person are two different things. I thought there were some remarkable people in my MBA class, but I learned people weren’t who I thought, they weren’t even people worth knowing, certainly not worth suffering everyday for the rest of your life all because they refused to believe you and didn’t like hearing the sad pathetic truth.

I don’t know if I should thank Miss Cline for giving me an opportunity to link to so many of my 600 plus blog postings, or if she’d be happy to learn that her article brought back so many painful memories.

I am also going to link to a Guy Kawasaki posting, but I’m not sure he wants to be in the same Internet neighborhood as me. No one wants to associate with a pariah, even one who tells the truth. He’s advocating using LinkedIn to find a job. I tried that, but LinkedIn just gave my classmates another way to use me and to show how duplicitous and callous they really were.

Update February 2012

Experts continue to advise people to blog, especially people looking for work or trying to advance their career or build their personal brand. I can’t say that blogging or doing grad school helped me. Quite the opposite, my time as a Sauder School of Business MBA student was the worst of my life and did damage I’ve never recovered from. People still insist I must be lying or that I wasn’t negatively affected, mostly they pretend I don’t exist, but unfortunately for everyone I continued to blog.

Update March 2015

Having battled depression for over ten years, I can not recommend blogging about your personal problems. Some people will never believe you and they just do not care how much their words and actions hurt you. I doubly do not recommend blogging about your personal problems while looking for work. Depression has left many gaps in my resume and I’ve never recovered from doing my MBA at the Sauder School of Business, but I’ve continue to blog and update old posts to try and improve them and my personal brand.

Updated April 2024

In 2024, I decided to redo my taxonomy as too many of my recent posts ended up in the default category, uncategorized. This necessitated going through all my old categories and posts and recategorizing them. This meant I had to read some old painful posts such as this one. Many of my oldest and most painfully embarrassing posts have been removed from the Internet, but a few I kept online out of spite or since I’ve maybe finally “moved on” out of self-reflection or to potentially benefit some future generation.

If you have advice to future generations, especially those trying to blog or use social media such as LinkedIn to better their career, perhaps you can leave a comment below.

This entry was originaly posted on February 25th, 2009, it was last edited on April 22nd, 2024 and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: Blogging, Depression, MBA.