Embrace the Uncertainty
If there is one thing that I will walk away with from Yvonne’s lecture, is to always embrace the uncertainty; which in my eyes Yvonne Leow did exactly that. Usually when people come to lecture at the University of Oregon, they tell you how successful they are with what they’re currently doing. But they never take a step back and tell you process of it all, how difficult of a journey it really is. That is why Yvonne Leow is a true inspiration for me who is about to be a soon to be graduate.
Yvonne pulls up her first lecture slide and it lists all the jobs she worked at before she became a Senior Snapchat Editor at Vox. Just when I thought she was going to start talking about her experience at Vox, she did the exact opposite. She told us how much she struggled before she could actually succeed, and for me I admired that most about her.
Yvonne’s lecture was definitely different than most, instead of flaunting her success, she embraced her failures. Throughout her whole lecture, she gave us life lessons that she learned along the way through own journey. Not only did these life lessons help her grow as person, but also they are what helped her become so successful today.
The first lesson that she learned was when she started off as an intern at “The Daily Bruin”. She didn’t know much about Final Cut X, so she basically had to teach herself how to work it completely on her own. Eventually, she ran the whole department but her takeaway from that internship was, “Put in the long hours to gain new skills.” She admitted that new skills do not come naturally, and that you have to put in the time if you want to succeed.
“Put in the long hours to gain new skills.”
The second lesson she learned was from an Online Associated Press conference she attended in 2009. She ended up connecting with someone from that conference who remembered her from her internship at “The Daily Bruin”. Since she built such a strong relationship with that person previously, they helped connect her to another job. She said, “Cultivate relationships, not contracts.” Yvonne said that building relationships is key to starting, and it’s not about the quantity of relationships you have, but rather the quality of them.
“Cultivate relationships, not contracts.”
Her third lesson came to her after she left the AP and spent a few months trying to figure out what she wanted to do. This is when she realized she needed to question everything! She asked herself why she wanted to be journalist, where she saw herself in the next few years, and what she wanted to do with journalism. She told us if we didn’t question ourselves, then we will continue to be compliant and never really push ourselves. Questioning everything is what makes us a true journalist.
“Question everything!”
Her final lesson that led her to become the Senior Snapchat Editor at Vox came right after her Knight Fellowship in 2015. She was unemployed and confused what her next steps were going to be. She saw that Vox had an opening but they wanted someone who was living in Washington D.C., not San Francisco — where she’s currently residing. She emailed them expressing her interest, and they ended up rejecting her at first because they wanted someone who was living in the area. She could have given up right then and there and continued searching for a job, but she didn’t. Instead she emailed them back asking if they could do a Skype interview and send her out to Washington D.C. and see if they liked her in person. She didn’t know how they would react with that response but she went for it anyways. She embraced the uncertainty and went for what she wanted.
“Embrace the uncertainty.”
There were so many great things that Yvonne taught us that day, and I’m thankful that I was there to listen to it all. I learned that being a journalist requires patience and time. That not everything will come easy, but if you put in the hours and work you will succeed. But most importantly I learned to not internalize every fault as failing.
