Week 5 - book

One of the chapter titles, "Make your partner a real partner" is a very interesting chapter. Even though I don't have to think about marriage for a while. It is interesting to hear her perspective on how to balance home and work life. Sheryl Sandberg talks about her personal struggle of trying to balance being at home for her kids and to be at work and how during the beginning it was hard to balance things because her husband was away for work most of the time. 

She also talks about a study at Harvard Business school a professor asked about what men can do to advance women's leadership? The professor said to do "The Laundry" like do the mundane household tasks like buy groceries, wash the dishes, etc. I think that this is important because men should take more of an initiative to do these tasks.

She also says that the most important decision for a career women is to choose a life partner and who that person will be. Which sounds logical and simple but when you think about it there are a lot of aspects in choosing the right person. Obviously you want to choose someone who would support you in all your career decisions. She also quotes many married female CEOs that said they couldn't make it without the support of their husband, helping the children and their willingness to move. 

Personally when people ask me if I want to get married in the future (which is a long time from now) I usually say no. Mostly because if I say yes, people ask if I am in a relationship, when I plan to get married, etc, Actually mostly my grandmother on my dad's side asks this but I still don't want to think about these things. I want to concentrate on myself and my own future not about settling down. I am too young for that and I have so much more to explore in the world before I start to even think about it. So I say no, even though I do say yes in my mind. I don't want to be held back by the expectation of dropping everything and taking care of a kid(s) in the future. 

Also I feel like when girls are young the expectation that is put on them is to grow up and get married. I just don't promote that. I think a girl needs to figure out what she likes and wants to be when she grows up and a marriage can come later. Because there isn't enough women in many fields like STEM. As a woman I want to break the glass ceiling and I hope to encourage many young girls to aim high and never stop trying. As cliche as that sounds, young girls just can't stop fighting. Also I have heard from one of my french teachers that Ms. Gurry (a french teacher at BHS) wanted to be a pediatrician when she was in high school but one of her science teachers told she wasn't good enough to be one so she became a teacher. That truly upsets me that someone would say that to her but also she would give up like that. I have taken a class with Ms. Gurry before and I know that she is smart and very capable. I could definitely imagine her being a doctor. I just hate how people feel that they need to bring women down in society. Is it because they feel a sense of authority or power from it? Or they feel that it is their right? Either way it is just upsetting and disappointing. I know that whatever I do with my life in the future, I won't let anyone tell me I can't because I know that I can and that I will.

week 5 - in class work

This week has been crazy and hectic. We put together the slide for the presentation and it was hard to make the slide short without putting too much information.
I was trying to find more ways to market the water bottles to students. One of my teachers suggested that we try and sell them at a sports game. So Peter and I tried to sell them at the freshmen basketball game. Unfortunately, people weren't very interested. But I did request a table outside of the cafeteria for lunch, Nitzan, Alex and Noah were there at lunch. When I saw them at second lunch it seemed that they sold water bottles. Right now we are calculating how many we sold and how much we made.

week 4- book report

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In, is an enjoyable book. Her advice to be honest is good because it can be hard to honest to people at times depending on the situation. Sandberg brings up a office situation where people might be afraid to speak their mind because of their bosses or colleagues perception of them. She recounts a story about Mark Zuckerburg learning Chinese from employees who are native speakers. One employee tried to tell Mark about her boss. But he couldn't understand so he said simpler. The employee eventually said that her manager is bad. She furthers explains that this is good, if people were more honest and simpler with their words organizations would perform better.
She also says that give feedback to people is important to build good working relationships. She also says it is okay to share emotions because it builds deeper relationships. That emotions influences are decisions.
I feel this is important because people try to be detached from their personal lives at work but it cuts of this certain part of yourself. Once you share the other part of yourself with people you do build stronger relationships and it feel more comfortable to work with them.

In chapter 7, Sandberg talks about how women are expected to get married and have children at a young age and that some women plan for it before they should. Women tend to start leaning back and not taking new projects or promotions because they are worried about juggling work and having children. When women do return to work they don't feel accomplished and they feel unfulfilled. This is were she came up with the saying "don't leave before you leave" meaning that women need to keep working hard for their career until the child actually arrives. I believe that holds a lot of meaning for many women. Parents expect their daughters to settle down and have kids and put that in their mind at a n early age. I think that women need to keep pushing themselves forward even before the baby is born.  

Week 4- In class work

This week we started to officially sell the water bottles for the $200 project. I think we struggled with the price. The group didn't make it clear what the price was for the water bottles. One person said $10 which is really pushing the profit margin. Another person said $7 which is better but still pushing it. I think the bottles should be sold for $5. We would make a $2 profit and people would be more willing to buy it. Also I believe that we have sold less than 5 water bottles so far. I did suggest a table before and no one liked the idea but when we got no response from the flyers that were placed in homeroom mailboxes. The group started to agree with me on getting a table, so I requested one for Thursday at lunch because we get more foot traffic during this time.
I am starting to truly believe that we won't be able to make a profit. I feel like this idea wasn't well planned out and that there wasn't enough action taken to market them. I think the group automatically thought that people would buy them which isn't always the case.