 Hello everyone and welcome. This is a career talk for the master's in language and communication program, and I'm Alex Johnston director of that program at Georgetown University Department of Linguistics. And we are so happy to host today Dr Anna Marie Truster who will be launching her second book about linguistics and career. So I'll start with giving a short introduction about Dr Truster and welcome here, welcoming her back to her home institution. She's one of our own. She got her doctorate in linguistics from Georgetown University. She calls herself an interactional sociolinguist. And in addition to that she is a story researcher who applies narrative inquiry to career and to self. She spent a good part of her career examining career and solve through the lens of storytelling and story listening, and through improvisational theater, which she's also an expert in. And in using this lens of narrative inquiry as a guide to doing what we want to discovering what we want to do in the world of work. She draws upon her various work experiences, such as just to name a few. The financial services sector, where she worked at Goldman Sachs in New York City, the nonprofit sector at organizations like frameworks Institute here in Washington DC. She worked in broadcast journalism on a documentary called Do You Speak American hosted by the great McNeil. His name is Robert but for some reason he goes by Robin. I've never seen that before. That's right. I think it's a Scottish heritage. And she's also taught and led programs in higher education at institutions like Stanford University, Howard University, American University and of course here at Georgetown, where she has a very special place in our hearts. She served as director of the MLC program for over six years, taking over from our founding director, the great professor Deborah Shiffrin. And Anna Marie is also founder and principal of career linguist, a clearinghouse for career resources for linguists that she started developing in 2013, and which continues to this day. For the past five years, she's been the convener of the career linguist mighty network and leader of career camp, in which she gathers people interested in career and story around a metaphorical campfire in a warm zoom room to focus on next steps in career through the lens of story. Another of bringing linguistics to work a story listening storytelling and story finding approach to your career, which serves as one of the texts of the MLC pro seminar, and her newest book has been published by Bloomberg. Following linguistics thinking and talking about careers for linguists. It's out right now in ebook format, and will soon be available in March in soft cover and hardcover editions. We are thrilled to open Anna Marie's book tour with a launch at her home institution. Please give her a warm welcome back to Georgetown. Welcome Dr. Truster. Oh my goodness you said you're going to make me blush. Are you. Yeah. Thank you. It's so good to be here. Thank you all. And hello Nancy I just saw Nancy Frishberg join the community. Okay. So yeah, you guys are my. The book launch starts now, like, right now. You were here you can say that you were here to tell the tale. So I have a few slides, but I would love questions throughout, you know if a question comes to you please chime in and Alex you'll help me with that. If I can't quite see the chat. Oops, not that kind of share. I want to play the slideshow. Are you seeing my slides now. Okay, so you'll see this term being now here that will make sense in a minute. But I'm going to share three kind of ideas from my new book and I understand you're reading the old one. I'm just starting this launch so I'm learning how to talk about the new book and how it is some ways the same in some ways different from bringing like with six to work. One way for sure it's expanded. It's got a bigger global remit, and just way more stories. I felt like we needed way more stories. There are ways that I realized some of the stories were geographically and kind of sect, sectorially focused in ways that I hadn't realized until I started working on another book. But still, this was the quote that I use to begin bringing linguistics to work. I'm still here, like, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. What the world needs is more people who've come alive. And I mean that just seems truer and truer and truer as time goes by. We are living in tough times, and the world asks a lot of us. What we need to be asking ourselves is not, you know, who does the, you know, world of work want me to be, but instead, what do I have to give. And, you know, when you know that it can help you meet the task it is, it is, it's a big, it's a big deal bringing yourself fully to the challenges of today. We need multi faceted challenges so we need multi faceted. I would say linguists especially but you know we need people who are able to navigate ambiguity to deal with complexity we'll talk more about this as we close out today because hopefully over the course of today you'll get a chance to kind of remind yourself, what makes you tick. So we're going to be pulling three ideas three themes from employing linguistics. I was delighted that Bloomsbury let me have. I asked for playful cover art, and they obliged. I want this to feel playful I want this to feel inviting I want this to feel creative exploratory. This is your space and I'm going to fiercely protect it for you to be radically curious about your career. And so three themes from the new book and and yeah, since you're reading the old one you can probably tell me which ones seem probably they're all extensions of the same same ideas but I felt very strongly that we needed to normalize uncertainty. Now, and I, I, I assert that it's partly to do with the stories that we tell about career. You tend to get these stories from people who are 20 years into a career right and they tell the story. And there's this ever thus quality, you know, like, it almost seems like they always knew where they were going and they always. There was never any there was never any confusion. Not only do I think uncertainty is normal. I want to celebrate it and I want to foment it because if you're going to do something new. Of course there's going to be uncertainty and and and confusion and moments of disorientation because you're doing something that no one has done before. And I think that's more and more true of the world of work nowadays we're, we're encountering challenges that never existed before, and we have tools that never existed before so uncertainty should be expected and celebrate it, I would maintain. With this book. I introduced the acronym Brighton, and I understand you're going to be reading this chapter soon. I think you guys will enjoy it, because it was. It's based around 10 students who did the pro seminar, and then it's 10 years later. So, hopefully you'll see yourselves and I would love to hear from you as you as you read that. But the central organizing metaphor of this book, and that is different. The central organizing metaphor of bringing linguistics to work is a journey. In this case, I have come to. I've come to this metaphor of like looking at the night sky looking at the constellations in the night sky and thinking about how. And then you have a full range of stars that you are able to organize into patterns, such that you have the ability to see your own organizing constellations that this is a metaphor that makes sense of all the various activities of exploration self exploration and the activities that you do over the course of pro seminar right like these may seem to be kind of like I'm doing this networking and then I'm doing this self reflection and then I'm doing this thing and I'm doing a research project and I'm making connections I have this idea but like they really all do come together. And I really, I'm enjoying talking about this constellations metaphor as a way to, and I hope that it helps you all kind of organize. You know, organize activities as well. But also stories are doing work. Throughout this book, and I'm kind of pushing stories to do a little bit more work and like, I'm hoping that they do the work, you know, as author I don't necessarily always point out that the stories are doing this work but you all are narrative folk. I think that you get to experience some of this narrative work. So first of all, when it comes to normalizing uncertainty, I was adamant that I have a number of stories in the book I begin and end the book with people. Okay, the stories are in the midst of their unfolding. I talked to people as they are in like, and you have to know like as an author I would ask people will you share their story and I heard a lot of nose. I didn't take no for an answer, because I believe so strongly that we have to hear these stories. While they are. While they are emerging while they are new and chapter one I spent a lot of time with one story. I've done some workshops with her story, and people hear uncertainty in her story in her, you know, discursive presentation of self. And I mean I think that's because there was uncertainty, and there was. When I talked to her, she was launching her business she didn't know how it was going to go. I really wanted to be there with with her in that moment. So that's one of the ways that I use narrative as a tool to normalize uncertainty is to use like I zoomed in on these most reportable events where something was just happening now like I interviewed someone who's retired. And I wanted to talk to her about what she's doing now. Not, you know the traditional structure where you hear like tell us about when you left academia. I'm a firm believer that we need to stop eliciting stories always that way. That doesn't need to be centered in all of our storytelling in our career storytelling. So I made a deliberate effort to try to focus on what's happening now in in the stories that I share in in this new book with Brighton, I tried to share a range of stories. I think it's, it's a nice set like to have these 10 students 10 years after they graduated. It's a tight set but they also showed a lot of difference in their interests and and I thought it was fun to kind of tell the story over the course of 10 years because I've known them for 10 years so I have this perspective that maybe not everybody. You know when you're first starting out you might not have that perspective. And I, there's a way that I think that perspective can help you realize uncertainty right. When you hear about the twists and turns, but you know, you see how it works out for these 10. Maybe you take away an understanding that you know even though you're maybe not 100% sure where you're headed. But that's, that's the work and that that's okay. So today we'll spend some time playing with this nested set of metaphors. The idea that that you should be paying attention to sparks that we can use sparks to build out stories. Using this star framework. This is not my framework this star storytelling is, it's out there, it exists in the world. I think it's kind of convenient for me that it fits within my metaphor, or the metaphor that I'm playing with, and that the activity that we're going to do in in groups today is going to be helping one another find patterns in stories. So, we'll start with this idea of now here. This is a story. I was able to go to Finland in the before times this is just before everything came to a crushing halt. When it comes to, well, my travel anyway. In 2019, I went to Finland, and I was giving a workshop with students about career. You know exploration, and again they had specially requested that I talk about imposter syndrome and I was so shocked, but I shouldn't have been. Imposter syndrome is pervasive because part of the reason is because we are in uncharted times and uncharted territory. And there are so many ways that our careers kind of as linguists exist outside some sort of story norm of what is supposed to be the career path. So I found a plane to Finland, and I opened up my in flight magazine to this campaign about now here. So this is the art from the campaign fin airs. Now here campaign the idea is that if you come to the middle of nowhere, you can really find yourself now and here. I love that play on words. I love that. Just idea of just really embracing where you are and if you're feeling like you're in the middle of nowhere, like that's exactly where you are that's exactly where. That's exactly where you're starting from that's exactly where to be. And I share a little bit of this. This idea and some activities for for kind of embracing the here and now. I'm going to give this acronym bright and then on the heels of that ambiguity to say okay so you might be navigating new terrain but like it's not like there aren't people out there doing really important and interesting and great things with their skills and training in language so I offer this acronym to you as an answer, you know if you've got somebody in your face saying what are you going to do with your degree in linguistics. Here's an easy answer. Brighton is a is an easy response to all the things that a linguist can do. It is deliberately positive it is deliberately on purpose it is optimistic and right illuminating. That's not an accident that's because we need to be reminding one another to that this is, you know, while challenging. Yeah, you know, it is formidable to try to reinvent or invent career pathways in many cases. We have a community of fellow explorers. We have resources, you know we have in in in bringing linguistics to work I talked about like the traveling companions that you have within that metaphor. But in the metaphor of stars right. And I really want to pull from the domain of energy that going back to how we started today, you know, thinking about what gives you energy, what makes you come alive, what gives you strength. So, in that chapter that's chapter two I share stories of people doing. Stories are not mutually exclusive business research ingenuity government healthcare communications technology education and nonprofits these buckets are, you know they're intertwined already. In many cases the stories that I tell somebody is doing kind of three at once, depending on and many people on this call could speak to their experience of working in government but also, you know, doing work that involves education or research or you know, intersects with the business world. Our jobs are multifaceted, but I guess I really wanted this acronym is a place to begin. So that you have somewhere to start. Kind of doing the work of locating yourself this helps you but it also helps other people to help orient to you and what you have to bring to the world of work. And so then the third idea is this, this idea of stars in the night sky, and you'll notice, you know, here we have hundreds if not thousands of points. I want this to be a reminder to all of you like as you are taking the pro seminar and you're being asked to do informational interviews and do research into organizations and think about your own research projects. It's going to be kind of starting to uncover hundreds of ideas, you know, illuminating ideas sparks, if you will. The task is to hang on to those and start thinking about how they, how they mean for you, and let's move into an activity to kind of start thinking about those. So I have, I created a little jam board. Helen I think has the link, if you'll share with us. Okay. So the idea is, as you're hearing me talk or as you're starting to do the program and you're starting to think about who you're informationally interviewing, you know what sparks are starting to suggest themselves to what are some of your bright spots. So the picture of me doing this activity. In the book I share this, this image. But what are some of yours, you know, I think it could be stuff that you, you know, as you as you read the 40 or so stories that are contained in in employing linguistics, once you have the book. It's designed to sort of spark curiosity interest engagement. But then I hope that these stories invite you to think about you know projects and tasks that you tend to be drawn to. What other people tell you about what makes you come alive what where they see you sparking. I should pop over to the jam board maybe I'll stop sharing for a minute so that we can look over at that. The thing about the jam board right is that you have little post it notes. So I would love it if, if people start seeing patterns and maybe even start labeling those patterns, you know you could do that with your little post it notes saying like, hey over here I see a lot of skills. I know I think you're at the part of semester where you're just starting to think about skills that you have and, and I think all of you have been being trained in a similar with similar paradigms and similar, you know, analytical frameworks but probably they spark for you differently. Maybe after here, you know, how does it spark with you. You know you all might have learned something about narrative analysis but I'm imagining every one of you would take narrative analysis and use it to a different, different purpose. I love doing interviews makes me feel alive. I want to know more about that. What about doing interviews. Can you be even more specific. What is it about the interview process is it the crafting the questions is it the you know, putting the insights. Following an argument following an idea chasing down somebody's life story. Yeah, few minutes to pop ideas here. Yeah, those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear that I'm, I'm finding that I want to ask why to all of these. Why, you know why does learning from and interacting with native speakers of other languages. Why does that give you energy, and I'm not just asking why to be, you know, annoying. I would guess there's different answers for for any of you. You know we all became linguists but we all became linguists, likely for different reasons, and want to do different things with them. Oh yeah, observing people doing things without being aware. All right, we're starting to have lots of good raw material here material for star stardust. So Alex, could we keep keep popping things in. What we're going to do when we get into. We're going to get into partners now for 10 minutes. And I want you to let me go back to my slides. If you're with a partner, each of you figure each of you has five minutes as speaker. I want you to share three sparks. And it could be, you know, something that you put in that Jamboard or something that you're seeing in that Jamboard that's reminding you about something that you spark to, but share three things. The partner's job is to help you illuminate some patterns, among those three. And now patterns can be a lot of things. When I talk about patterns, I'm talking about, you know, as linguists when you hear somebody present their three things. You notice anything about how they're ordered. How are they sequenced. Does one seem to be in a larger category than the others are their subsets. As you hear this person talk about their three interests are those three interests very similar to you to yours, are they very different. You know this person IRL, you know, as they share these three patterns to, as they share these three sparks to those seem to, to do they seem to jive for you like are those the three things that you would say are these North stars, or maybe something different that you want to offer to them, or maybe you've seen these one or many of these, you know, bright spots maybe you've seen them show up in some different contexts. So the, the true star in this breakout room is the, is the listener, the story listener, but have fun. Look for patterns and when you come back they want to hear. Did your partner help you discover something different about how you make meaning, how you make connections, how you find patterns. It's a little bit exploratory it's a little bit fun there's no way to do this wrong. There's no way to do this right either. You're, you're playing with with meaning making. Okay, if you're ready and Marie I can open all the rooms and invite people to, to move and the timer will be set for 10 minutes so when you see that 60 second countdown, feel free to take that and or come back to the main room. Well, my slide says how did that go. I can put a slide of how did it go. I'd love to know if anyone helped their partner or their partner help them recognize a pattern or a theme, anyone willing to share. And then we can kind of open this up into more discussion Alex and I were chatting. We might do some story prompting and discussion now. Yeah, and to me chase you have your hand up. Yeah, I'd like to actually share something that Hannah shared with our group, saying like, because like I think that's just like, I shared from like my perspective that like I think a place that I have found catharsis is like being comfortable. Maybe identifying with other things that isn't a linguist, because I feel like I've like kind of like in the past when I've like called myself a linguist that's made me anxious about what I want to do. And so it's like I've almost had to dissociate from the term or like the title to like see myself in different spaces. And then like something that Hannah said that I just thought was like great I think really kind of like ties into like all of the sparks that like we see on the like the the board is like yes I may have a degree in linguistics but I can do a lot of things and like there's just a kind of like a sense of empowerment like being something more than just a linguist, even though like linguistics are like what get our mental cogs going. Yeah, I love in this metaphor right I can see maybe like, like linguistics is a set it's a constellation right, and it's, it's got some like really interesting. There isn't bearing markers for you, but then there's this whole other galaxy or, you know, but it's, you get to choose where that sits in your, in your night sky, in your guiding. Who else wants to share. Dima has her hand up. Oh yes. Quickly something I think Helen helped me identify that was really kind of it was a spark for me. So I was talking to her about how my data collection, mainly observation like fieldwork observations interviews was really rewarding for me even though it was very tense to negotiate like very difficult relationships very, you know, very I had very tense moments, but it was still very rewarding, and Helen pointed out that, you know what I think that's a good point like identifying our sparks at our most difficult moments, maybe rewarding because that's what we're going to be that's basically those are sustainable sparks. I don't know Helen maybe you can explain more about I love what you did to me. Yeah, just very shortly I think Rima's example was very illuminating for me in terms of understanding sparks in adversity, like certain things you know we might like I was thinking about how much I love working in teams. And as of now I've always chosen my teammates. So when, when I'm having a career in the future when I get placed in a team that I don't get to choose, will I still enjoy teamwork, or is it going to be very dependent on the circumstances. So we had a bit of a discussion about that. I love it. And you know, you, you will be asked here. I'm hearing from, I'm still hearing from a lot of folks that this is a very popular interview question tells about a time when you had a challenge or a problem or a conflict. And employers really want it they do really want to hear about a conflict. They don't want you to blow smoke and say oh you know, I'm just so hard working, you know, it's too, I'm too good. They really want to hear about a, those people are challenging right like, you're going to be, you're going to be tried and tested, and they want to know that. And metal. So fantastic it's so good to have an example of, of adversity, and still hanging on like I think these are. I like with the metaphor you get the idea of the North Star, you know that there are certain things that are going to just be your. No matter what I know that this is, this is true for me, and that can help you in times of challenge and struggle. Yeah, Nancy's my problem is I get along with everyone that's my problem. Yeah, though. Nicole I saw you had your hand up earlier. Love to hear from you. Yeah, so I mean mine was kind of like an addendum to what do we true was saying how, and I think you and I talked about this a little where essentially I, my answer would always be if you asked me like, Oh, like, what are you going to do with linguistics like if you're not going to do academia what are what are your plans. And my answer was always like everything but nothing. Because I like the way that I thought about it was like, maybe there isn't like a direct career that I can like think of that I can like matriculate into as like I don't know like investment banking like you do something with that and then you just go into investment banking whereas like linguistics like you can truly do anything. And so it's like I'm very glad this activity happened just because it's like a very good way to like sit down and be like okay like I can do everything with linguistics but like what about what I do with linguistics can I employ further like identifying these these points that are like transferable. So that is my little addition. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, and I hope like if you have an informational interview, how fun would it be for you to bring these three if you if you had three little sparks and say like yeah I could do anything with my training. Here's three things I'm thinking about right now. Here's three things that like, I'm excited about boom boom boom. There's an informational interview we interview. You're the interview or they're the interview. Yeah. And then like they can just kind of play with you and discover and explore and sense make right along with you. I went to a panel. Stephanie I see your hand up so we'll go to you next. So you saw this recent over the summer the American Anthropological Association had a bunch of career webinars. And I love this one along these same lines of everything and nothing, everything but nothing. Somebody was just she kept coming back to like, I can show you so much more easily how I think as an anthropologist, like I can show you so much easier than I can tell you. I was always trying to get, you know, some context where she could be able to show right if that's like doing a demonstration project doing an internship, just joining along for a meeting, or even just in that moment getting that person to kind of disclose a little bit of the challenges that they're working on. If you can get somebody to share those with you and just like demonstrate on the spot. So this is how I would approach that and this is skill that I would bring and like you can show them how you think and work. I play scary we are. And personally, there you are because I wasn't quite sure if the sharing was over. Sorry, I got a little bit carried away. You go. I was just going to kind of connect to the a bit to the every everything but nothing because I was in a I was in a group of Mario and he actually he kind of he actually kind of helped me make kind of a broader generalization of like environments that I might be comfortable in which wasn't kind of a way I've thought about things that excite me more because I feel like when I'm telling people about what I might want to do with linguistics I'm always kind of. I call was kind of default to bringing up like specific fields just so it sounds worth sailing but I guess I guess when I do it too much it kind of constrains it a little bit so it was kind of cool to hear like kind of that environmental like generalization because actually so our conclusion was actually two out of three of the things that I listed that excited me were we're mostly environments where people who don't want to be there are already gone. So it's like it's it's kind of it was kind of interesting because it sounds a little. It sounded a bit like constraining words like I clearly enjoy certain environments where people are already invested in but it's also like I, I also need diversity within those environments like there needs to be a lot of stuff in them so I don't really know what that means but it was pretty. It was an interesting conversation. So, yeah, I hope, like I say this gives you the sort of a mechanism for sharing and getting feedback. So I'm going to share the story that we talked about because it's, it's sort of similar. I mean it's sort of what I, in creating this book I kind of did the same thing to myself. Where. Yeah, I see in the chat, you know, gosh, you know the imposter syndrome is real. I began the book. So chapter one features Charlotte Lindy which I don't know if folks know Charlotte Lindy to me. She's the. She's the. Yeah. Charlotte Lindy is a big to me she's a big badass. And I start the book with a story where she was approached by NASA and quite frankly scared to death. Because NASA came to her with a challenge that she had not studied before. She's a meditator now I told you that I told the story of someone who's retired she's that person she's a meditator now she's a meditation teacher. And I can hear the seeds of being an experienced meditator already in her story when she shares that moment because she says that when NASA contacted her she could see and see through the fear at the same time. She could see that she was scared, and she could see through it. See it for what it's what what it was, which was that. Yeah, she didn't know if she could help them, but she knew that she wanted to try and she knew that she was curious and she knew that she had formidable skills which you all do formidable skills and training to bring to the work. So she felt the fear did it anyway. And so, I wanted her in chapter one I also really wanted Samantha beaver I was talking to Alex during the, when you guys were in your break out and she and I were talking about Samantha story. I met her when I was, I was visiting different schools to promote bringing linguistics to work. I met her at Madison. She was a graduate student and just, you know, starting to think maybe I'm going to launch my own business. And I asked her could I talk to you while you're launching it and we had a zoom call every couple months while she was deciding. Am I creating my own business is this is this what's happening. And you can hear it in her. You know in in the in the back and forth in our conversations, there's moments where she is actively kind of like, Okay, I'm going to do this like I am going to she's discursively creating the identity at the same time that the identity itself is emergent but you know that's sometimes that's how it goes, especially for people who are going to be doing something entrepreneurial. It's also important in chapter one. I include a story of and a charity hardly because I wanted to include a story of a professor, because I think there's, there's not it's not a trying to disrupt that binary right like you can be a professor or you can do, you know, I think it's an and right and and that is one of the really exciting things we can do with our skills and training and I think there's really exciting ways that I see and working as a linguist at the same time that she's working like a linguist. I think all of us, I hope you will move through this world now and forever like linguists whether or not you have that. We've already been talking about you know what relationship you take up and carry and maintain and share to the term linguist. You are being trained to think like linguists and I want you to carry that as a North Star as a bearing. Because it's, it's really key it's really important and the world needs it. So, Alex, and Helen maybe I'll share my slides with you. I'm not looking at my slides right now but the, the last slide was basically a call to arms like the world needs us. And here's some reasons why. So I'm going to start with Anna Marie I'll make sure that we get those slides distributed to those who registered for this talk. And I want to draw attention to the next stop on Anna Marie's book tour, which is being hosted by the linguistics career launch. And I have a sign up to that event in the chat, that will be a little different in format Anna Marie will give a short, a short talk about her book sharing more stories and more tips and strategies. And of course, talking about her, her metaphor her guiding metaphor of Brighton, and then we'll have a mixer where you can interact on the gather platform. So if you'd like to try that out, that's going to be on February 18 and the sign up is in the chat. I've also posted links to Anna Marie's website so you can access all of the resources she has available for career linguists. And I want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and can we all give Anna Marie a warm thank you for her talk. Thank you so much Anna Marie. Please don't be strangers.