3rd Blog Post

Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg

This week I continued my reading on Lean In.  I am getting close to the end, and I think I will probably end up finishing it on my plane ride during vacation.  The reading this week was probably not my favorite because although I am enjoying the way in which Sandberg explains the role of gender, I feel that it has started to get very repetitive. Sandberg is continuing to reestablish her stance on this point.  I do continue to like her points about us not being able to ignore gender and bias especially in the workplace.  To say one is not bias towards gender is probably impossible.  I think we all have some biases built in about gender because of the way our society has raised us, weather it be in America or any other country.  It makes me think a lot about how school reinforces gender roles.  Freshman year the girls in health and fitness had to learn self defense, while the boys were taught boxing.  In what way is this fair?  I never really thought about this, but Sandberg is making me question more and more many of the things even in our school that create gender divides.  I think in situations like I described it portrays women as the weaker sex.  This can translate into the workplace, because this is the type of mentality we have all grown up in. Small things like this need to be changed in order to reduce the gender divide.  The more and more we are aware of these things, the more and more emphasis we can put on changing the system.  This book, while getting a bit boring, is still pushing me more forward in seeing women not be labeled as women leaders but rather just leaders. That is one of the biggest things that bothers me, as it does Sandberg.  Why do you always hear female CEO or female president? This bothers me very much.

This was one of the busiest and most exciting weeks of our sticker project.  We had four very successful days.  Day 1 started with us being featured on Portraits of BHS, highlighting our story and it was a great way to get not only the stickers out there but along with our faces.  On Tuesday we had our flyer in homerooms to notify everyone we would be selling stickers on Thursday. Then on Wednesday we got a great Instagram collage posted By Kyle Williams form the Brookline Athletics Instagram account featuring many winter athletes with the sticker.  These were all great ways to get the word out there, not just once but three times to a whole new market of people who may have not even heard of the stickers before.  Thursday selling during both first and second lunch (in addition to E block) went well as we continued to make profit.  It was great that we weren’t just asking our friends anymore to buy them but rather new faces of people, which proved that we did something right t in the way were marketing. In addition the school store has begun to actually sell a couple of the stickers.   Looking ahead Alua had an idea for another product being temporary tattoos.  We are waiting back to hear a quote for those from the company she emailed.  It was exciting this week to finally have the work from the past couple of weeks pay off, because we lost some of that initial excitement we had originally with the stickers, but I think this week we were able to get back on track! On the storefront end we continued revising the different parts according to the comments we were provided with. We are hoping that we will be able to successfully pitch this in a presentation when the time comes to do so in January!

12/14

This week my group focused our attention on both the sticker project and the storefront project.  In the sticker project we worked on finding winter sports players to take pictures with the Warriors sticker.  Then I worked to make a collage of these pictures, which we are planning on using for an instagram post through the Brookline Athletics Account that would also be posted on The Brookline Athletics Facebook Page.  We have secured a spot for Thursday E block including both lunches to sell our stickers.  Through the social media posting, we think we will be able to create some more buzz about the stickers.  We were also thinking about if we were to reinvest the money to buy another product and sell, what it would be.  We have not yet decided what this would be though.  On the Storefront end we worked on revising our first three parts to really create a better understanding of the need, and who we are targeting.  We then turned our focus to the numbers.  This was unique because we had some help from having the original 4A numbers, but we had to readjust them according to what we expected in our location.  The same went for many of the expenses; while some were the same some were different. Creating these spreadsheets took some time, but helps us create a better picture of what exactly we need to start a 4A Coffee in this particular location. I think that this was definitely challenging and tedious but surely as we are aware it is not even close to the amount of work one has to do when keeping track of finances.  It definitely opened my eyes to if I were to start a business in my future I would want a partner who was very good with numbers, because it is certainly not something that I would want to be as the focus of my career.

 

This week I have been continuing to enjoy Lean In (Sheryl Sandberg).  I especially like the way in which Sandberg describes the way in which women are much more self critical of themselves.  It was very interesting to   that women tend to score themselves lower even when they have the same exact abilities at men.   I think Sandberg demonstrates this idea that is very relatable.   Even though she is generation older than me I think many of these points are relevant.  We had a discussion about this last year in my class, about how females tend to say sorry in class when they have questions, and how we have less self confidence in our work.   I don’t know why this is, but I think it is something that needs to change.  As Sandberg says women who are successful these days seem to get pointed out as lucky rather than it be a product of their own hard work.   This makes me think of our own class, and how gender roles have made a difference in the class.  One thing I think is great that the gender ratio is pretty equal in the class.  It is interesting because II feel like the girls in our class who take charge are labeled as bossy, while the males who do so are not.  I also definitely think it is true that in our class the males have more confidence in their own work.  It is interesting to think about these concepts within the realm of our own class, because it was something I had not given much thought too before I read this book and now it is something that I am constantly thinking about.  It is kind of annoying in a way because these are issues that in my opinion a product of the way we have grown up in society, so I do not know ho exactly to go about changing them.  But I think that recognizing it as an issue is one of the most important things we as students can do.

The book I started reading last week is called Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. I'll admit I only picked it because my mom already had a copy of it, but I was pleasantly surprised by this choice.  I was expecting a book about a woman telling other women to fight more for their role in society. While in some ways it is that, I actually found it to be a fresh take.  From what I have read so far it talks about her experience working in Google as a pregnant employee and her life growing up. I like her take on it saying that each generation of women has been growing up in a more equal society but that doesn't mean it's is time to settle. It is easy to be happy with what society has given us, but if we don’t try to change it then it will not improve for the next generation.  I also like that Sandberg is not saying that all women should try to be a powerful figure, but rather think about why she has chosen the work she is doing.  I like that she does not undermine women who have chosen not to work, because I feel that happens a lot. Another thing I liked was about how women who try to lead are often called bossy.  I can completely relate to this because I get called bossy or a control freak all the time even at home and at school.  Sandberg also points out many other interesting points about women in the workplace, one that especially intrigued me that we are one of the only countries without paid maternity leave.  Clearly there are many issues that need to be brought up and fixed.  I am looking forward to reading more of what Sandberg has to say!

            This week my group was very involved in the selling the stickers.  After we learned the reality of dealing with the unexpected weather that we faced at The PowderPuff Game last week, we had to come up with a new strategy for selling. This meant reaching out to a whole new market, because selling to just our friends was not going to cut it. We decided that the best way to go about this was to create some buzz using the help of Brookline athletics. We were able to talk to Kyle Williams who is willing to put up some Social Media to help with our marketing.  We need to continue working with him because he would like to include the other BHS pride products as well in the Social Media, so we will have to wait for the other groups to get their products and work together to come up with a creative post. In addition we have started selling at the school store making it a go to spot we can refer people to instead of just us selling personally. The School Store gets 50 cents of each sticker sold, but we are still making a profit on the sticker and being in the store really helps us create more  presence in the school.   Next week I would like to continue and execute a plan to really sell our inventory in the last two weeks of the project. I am proud to say we have broke even and began to make a small profit and would like to continue with the same momentum.  Next week we are also trying to talk with Jaime, the student who runs Portraits of BHS, to do a photo of us featuring the sticker.  The page more than a thousand flowers at the high school across the grade levels so it would be a great way to get the word out.  We are also going to try to find a contact that will see if selling at basketball games is possible.