Andrea Gets Schooled

It was final – by January 2022, I set my sights on the Executive Masters of Business Administration program at SFU’s Beedie School of Business.

With the rolling deadline for applications to the SFU EMBA program, I knew I wanted to be earlier than most but also didn’t feel the need to rush the process. What was required:

• Complete resume
• University transcripts
• 3 essay questions
• 3 reference letters

Based on that portion of the application, you may or may not be offered an interview.

AS IF it’s been a decade…

It’s been a hot minute (like 10 years) since I made a resume. Even at that time, I was already offered my Physiotherapist position and my employer asked for a resume as a formality.

So, I started from scratch. It started with a google doc file. I posed a question to myself – what have I done in my life? Over the next week, I jotted down everything that came to mind. One Sunday, I looked up the dates and details of every course, volunteer experience, workplace, and teaching gig that I could remember.

For anyone who hasn’t done this in the recent years, I highly recommend it as an exercise! Because:

1. It’s good to keep track of experiences, in case you ever have to recall them
2. It was an incredibly satisfying/validating exercise to look back on all my accomplishments, when it was easy to feel like 10 years had passed by
3. Recalling these experiences allowed me to reflect on my learnings, growth, and integration of those experiences – looking at it from the matured lens that I have today (as compared to reflections I may have done at those times)

Next steps were to format this 4-page-single-spaced document into a succinct, visually pleasing document that would represent me. Thank goodness for design programs like Canva, which offered beautiful templates that I could choose from and customize to accurately represent me.

This was the part I really enjoyed – I love design, aesthetics, branding, creative wording – and making this resume encompassed all of that.

It took me 3 weeks to complete my resume, roughly 20 hours in total. When I reached the 80% completeness mark, I could feel a familiar friend (and foe) knocking on my door – perfectionism.

As I shifted text blocks, adjusted font size and colour, worded and re-worded the descriptions, I became aware that I was simultaneously enjoying this process as I was accountable to no one else but myself and my own deadline, but also felt burdened by it. It was borderline addictive – in the evenings, I would look at it, and even though I told myself that it was quite good, that it didn’t need to be perfect, that I was tired of looking at it, I couldn’t help but make ‘just one more adjustment’ here and there.

My journey with perfectionism has shown me that I once learned it as a coping strategy to seek attention and validation, and in my early years, it contributed to feelings of insufficiency if things weren’t perfect.

Now, I’ve learned to thank that perfectionism for the work ethic and standards of excellence I developed, AND now realize that I don’t need to be perfect to gain approval. Rather, I strive for excellence because I know I’m capable of it, and my overflowing joy and love for each project will support me in creating outputs of excellence.

In the end, I was very pleased with the final 2-page, clean, bright, detailed and attractive document that accurately summarized the last 10 years of my life.

Hunting Down Transcripts

I completed my Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Northern BC, in Prince George.

Subsequently I pursued my Master of Physiotherapy degree at the University of BC, in Vancouver.

A google search for both schools’ processes indicated that I needed to log into my student portal. For both schools, I either couldn’t remember my log-in information, or my account was paused due to inactivity (#facepalm). Both schools required me to [remember to] call their IT department during business hours, answer security questions, then re-gain access to my accounts (read: doing logistical shit that I can’t stand).

Re-examining my grades from both programs, I was pleasantly surprised at my final marks, and this gave me a confidence boost in the process of applying.

Note: when applying to any program, ensure that you look for the address where your specific program wants you to send documents, not just the general school or faculty address.

Who knows me best?

Through reviewing many applicants to The ScoliClinic over the years, I’ve learned that there’s an art to choosing references.

I considered:

• What type of person this program is looking for? What traits, accomplishments, characteristics might they want in their program?
• Who in my personal circle knows me deeply and is familiar with the person and leader that I want to become, multi-dimensionally? Who could truthfully attest to me having some of the traits that perhaps this program is looking for?
• Who is a strong writer? Who’s written work have I read, and who do I trust to eloquently describe me?
• For each person, which aspects of Andrea would I want them to highlight? Several years ago, I asked someone for a reference for another application. She taught me that it’s common practice (and actually very helpful to the referee), if the applicant provides a bullet-point list of aspects that they suggest to be highlighted in the letter. Especially for people who know me multidimensionally, it would be quite burdensome for them to write a letter with no outline. I’ve experienced this myself – as an employer, I’m often asked to write references and I now utilize this same practice (of course, I don’t include suggested points that I disagree with, and don’t expect others to do the same for me).
• I chose the following people, as I felt they all knew who I was, who I’ve grown to become today, and are familiar with my aspirations for the future:
  • my long-time business/leadership coach
  • a colleague in the rehabilitation world who I work closely with, discuss the bigger picture of our businesses in the context of making change in scoliosis, and
  • my business partner at The ScoliClinic

They each wrote strong, articulate, and complimentary pieces that made me feel proud of how I showed up in each relationship.

Showing Up As Authentically Andrea

I was THRILLED to be invited for an interview! To keep this section short and sweet (and confidential), what I will say is that the two interviewers from SFU’s diverse admissions team were kind and non-threatening, asked thoughtful questions, and genuinely seemed like they wanted to get to know me for me.

Getting off the 30-minute zoom, I overall felt good.
But IMMEDIATELY, the all-too-familiar Ms. Perfectionism popped her head around the corner…

“…yo, you done in there? I’ve got a few thoughts…”

…and subsequently went on a rampage in my head for the next 48 hours.

I played the shoulda-woulda-coulda game, repeating the questions and better versions of my already-given answers while I showered, drove, and cooked. I hyper-analyzed my responses, hand gestures, and hair tosses while folding laundry; and intensely reviewed the mental images of the interviewers faces while creeping them on LinkedIn (for reals), hoping for an indication one way or the other.

Although it’s not healthy to stay in these vortices long-term, one approach that has worked for me is to intentionally allow myself to go to ‘that place’, to overanalyze the thoughts, and to exhaust my circular patterns; I journaled pages of ‘what I wish I said’ and got them out of my body.

In the end, it helped me move through that phase within a couple [very draining] days, and I believe I was able to get on the other side of it quicker than if I had tried to push those thoughts away in the first place.

I wrapped up that vortex with a deep knowing that I have:

1. intentionally directed my personal and professional growth over the past 15 years
2. spent significant time reflection on all my experiences and learning from them, and
3. learned to love who I’ve become

I was ready to accept any decision determined by SFU, because I was anchored in the knowing that an acceptance/rejection would not fundamentally change me, nor would it change my potential for this life.

I showed up to the interview authentically as Andrea, and that’s all I could have asked for.

Looking Down The Mountain

Although the experience of creating my resume and going through the interview process brought up past tendencies of perfectionism, my journey of getting to know myself over the years enabled me to identify the tendency and consciously choose how to move through it.

More importantly, this exercise gave me reason to pause and reflect on my career that was beating to a fast-paced drum. As a future-oriented person (more on that later), I tend to ‘look up the mountain’ to tackle what’s ahead (thanks to Karen Craven for this analogy). But this process made me ground through my heels, look over my shoulder, and breathe in deeply to really appreciate how far I’ve come.

– Andrea

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