Week 1- book

The book that I have decided to read is Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. I have so far enjoyed this book. I quite like how she has anecdotes throughout the book to prove a point. I also really like the facts that she uses to back up her opinions. Something she said in the book really struck a chord with me. In the first chapter she says, "We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning on." (8) Reading this made me realize that I tend to not have a lot of self-confidence in myself at times and that I don't raise my hand enough even when I know the answer to the question. This motivated me to raise my hand more and ask more questions. 

An anecdote that she shares in the book is about her grandmother and about how she was very hardworking and never gave up on life. She suffered from cancer but recovered and sold knock-off watches from the trunk of her car to donate to the hospital. She would make an unbelievable profit.

Sheryl Sandberg also shares a story she heard from Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Women and Foreign Policy program. The story was that Ms. Lemmon received a fellowship to travel to Germany for a year to learn German and work for the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Lemmon was in her early twenties at the time. It was an amazing opportunity, but when she told her friends and family. They were mostly concerned about her relationship with her boyfriend. And her relatives were worried if she would ever get married. Ms. Gayle said that many women "still see ambition as a dirty word." In my opinion, I would have gone to Germany. It seems that in women, friends and family are more concerned with marriage. So far this book has opened my eyes and made me realize that as a female I do hold myself back more than I should. I hope that I can take this information with me and try to have more self-confidence in myself.