Back in the day, the common way to handle the whole marriage thing was to either have an arranged marriage or get one of those matchmaker ladies to hook you up like on Fiddler on the Roof. No so these days. Finding someone you fall in love with and with whom you want to spend your days with is tricky.

Developing a relationship that can lead to marriage requires work, hard work, patience, and sacrifice. Sometimes, I think we treat our futures in much the same was as those in the past treated marriage, we expect someone else, or mere chance, to take care of the dirty work for us.

Not so.

Our futures are entirely in our hands. If we want to realize are dreams and succeed according to our own, personal definition of success we must be will to work, work hard, be patient, and sacrifice. We can’t expect to cruise through school being uninvolved in classes, squeaking by with C’s because we would rather sleep in than go to class, constantly haggle with teachers for better grades we don’t deserve, and somehow expect to have a sweet job waiting for us the second we walk off the graduation podium with our diploma.

If I want to marry someone great who I love, I’ve got to be great and I’ve got to be ready to work at it and sacrifice. If I want to have a great career I love, I have to be great and I have to sacrifice and work as hard as I can.

As I look for internships and try to figure out the path I would like to take after graduation, I realize that I am in fact, marketing myself….so why not identify some key marketing points about myself?

My Value Proposition: The man with the strongest work ethic, freshest experience, and creativity even Dr. Suess would be jealous of!

My Price: Any, as long as it gives me good experience and prepares me for bigger and better things.

My Product: An employee that: works hard, learns fast, has hands-on experience, loves learning, and enjoys meeting and working with new people.

My Promotion: This Blog, My Website, My Resume, Networking (especially on the ski lift), Career Fairs, and personal contacts.

My Place: Anywhere there is marketing to be done, snow to be slid on, or young women to be swooned.

My Call To Action: Give me an internship now! Not doing so could result in vomiting, nausea, headaches, internal bleeding, or dry mouth. (still working on that one).

So, its spring break for me…however, my mind is still racing on lots of great ideas for my “unofficial senior project” and such. I guess spring break is a break from school but not from learning. I was hoping to have a couple books to read over the break but alas, the library was closed on Saturday and I couldn’t check either of them out.

The first book I was planning to read was “The Wealthy Barber”. I’ve heard good things and thought that would be a good thing to read since I plan in reinstituting the ol’ budget next month. The second book was actually Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, “It’s Not About the Bike”. I’ve read it a couple times but it never gets old. That dude’s story is pretty flippin’ intense and it inspires me every time I read it. Sometimes I just read the part about the Sestrierre climb during his first tour which, if you haven’t read it, is definitely worthy of a few hours of your time.

Anywho, I am off to go skiing in a few minutes…what better place to think and come up with ideas than on a ski lift?!