In this episode of the OneHaas Undergrad Series, Soo Song, 2017 Haas School of Business undergrad alumna, shares her experiences after graduating from the program. She talks about lessons she wished she had known in the early stages of her career, how she is embracing her Asian American heritage, and how she moved from becoming a Business Administration student to building a career in growth marketing.
During her conversation with host Ellen Chan, Soo discusses Twitter’s newest projects and developments. Make sure to tune in until the end because she’ll be sharing her experiences from studying abroad, her advice for current undergrad students, and her relatable experiences on campus!
Episode Quotes:
Do you have regrets in your career?
“When I look at my career, I don’t necessarily have regrets. I do think that there are lessons that I wish I’d learned earlier. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my career is that at the end of the day, it really comes down to relationships and building strong connections with people.”
Her advice for undergrad students on what to expect after graduation and in building their careers:
“I also think that’s the beauty of a career. More so than when you’re a student, because obviously, when you’re a student, you’re still trying to figure yourself out. In a career, as you switch teams, companies, or roles, you continue to build it and continue to change it. That’s one of the best things about working.”
On how to handle big and small changes that happened during and after the pandemic?
“Celebrate the change. Don’t feel tied to anything that necessarily happened during the pandemic that you don’t want to take back. But if you have changes that you didn’t expect, it’s great to celebrate them.”
Show Links:
Transcript:
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Ellen Chan: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the OneHaas Podcast Undergrad Series. I’m your host Ellen Chan. And today we’re joined by our guests Soo. Soo Song is a 2017 grad from Haas. She worked in customer success and brand marketing at a number of organizations, prior to joining Twitter as a growth marketing manager. She recently moved back to the Bay area after spending four years in New York City. Excited to have you and welcome back to the Bay area Soo!
[00:00:27] Soo Song: Hey Ellen! Thanks for inviting me to the podcast. So excited.
[00:00:32] Ellen Chan: Awesome. can you start by telling us your origin story and how you got to Haas?
[00:00:37] Soo Song: Yeah, like you said, I just moved back to the Bay Area after four years in New York. I actually grew up in the bay. When I think about Berkeley, when I think about Haas, I came to Berkeley, not knowing I’d actually be a business major. So I know that everyone has different journeys getting there.
[00:00:56] When I came to Haas, I was interested in business. I was also interested in linguistics. That’s actually what I thought I was going to be majoring in but ultimately, when I applied to Haas, thankfully, luckily, fortunately, I got in. From there, I feel like my Haas experience was just really defined by the people I met. The relationships I built. I was really involved in student government, specifically Haas student government. That really shaped my experience at Berkeley. And I also studied abroad. I know I covered a lot there though. So I’m happy to dive into any of those areas.
[00:01:35] Ellen Chan: Yeah, linguistics. Where did that sort of passion came from and are you still, doing anything in particular with that passion?
[00:01:44] Soo Song: So growing up, I studied Japanese for about seven years and I took Chinese classes. So I’m Korean. I always loved language. And so I had no idea what linguistics was. I didn’t actually know it was truly more scientific. I thought it’d just be a fun course to take. Freshman year. That class taught me so much. It was also a subject where I felt like there was such diversity in terms of the students that would study it. You have physics students, a lot of actually physics students studying linguistics. Something that people don’t know. And a lot of students who, you know, were sociology majors. I guess it was just a great time for me too. Learn more about people who love studying and have curiosity, and are not necessarily going to school to come out with a specific degree. That was my experience with linguistics. I fell in love with that major prerequisite. So I told myself, Hey, I’m going to take all the classes. I really failed at all the classes, to be honest. I was really bad linguistics potential. Sure. So it was a good thing that Haas ended up accepting me but even now I have such a big interest in working abroad. And I do, I think that studying linguistics and just having such a passion for language inspired that.
[00:03:00] Ellen Chan: Yeah. And you spent some time in Hong Kong and you were born in Korea. Have you thought about spending even more time in working abroad?
[00:03:10] Soo Song: Yeah. It’s a dream of mine. I keep telling my friends. They know that I’ve been talking about living abroad forever. Actually one of the reasons I decided to leave New York, which I loved and thought I will be living there forever, was because I think that this career sets me up a little bit better for moving abroad one day. And I really want it to make that happen. Just to take a step back. I studied abroad in Hong Kong. On the first of my semester in Hong Kong and some of the months that I spent there, before and after. I felt like the most me. I always felt like from high school and from growing up in the bay, they could go into a really competitive school. I had to be the best. And that’s a very common theme at Berkeley, right? Everyone feels like they have to be the best and going to Hong Kong and being a complete nobody. Walking around the campus, walking around the city, no one knew me. No one really cared about me. Like not in a south way. Just no one knows me. It was so humbling or refreshing. And I felt like I found myself. Sounds dramatic. But, truly that was one of the best experiences in my life going to Hong Kong and studying there. Because of that, I realized that at one point in my career I won’t put my life, hopefully, before I settled down, I want to work abroad. So I’m going to make that happen.
[00:04:45] Ellen Chan: Got it. Wow. No, I didn’t realize that studying abroad made such a big impact just in finding yourself and perhaps in your career too. I feel like growth marketing isn’t a typical path for Haas students undergrads. How did you avoid going through the ABC path?
[00:05:05] Soo Song: Yeah, the infamous ABCs.
[00:05:08] Ellen Chan: Yes. how did you get away from that?
[00:05:11]Soo Song: I mean, you said it, the ABCs, right? When you’re going through Haas especially as an undergrad everyone says that Haas is all about the ABCs. I feel like perpetuate that stereotype because we keep saying it. You see it. So you keep saying it. And then you believe it. And you live it. I think that I would add one more letter that could say ABCT cause tech. Yes. I think that I won’t lie. I think I struggled with not knowing what I wanted to do with the Haas degree. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but actually, I lived in a house with a bunch of people from a business frat my junior year. I remember that was the semester right after I come back from Hong Kong and I was not in business mode. I was truly just coming back to try and figure out what to do with starting at Haas in my second semester. I guess the second semester at Haas was trying to figure out what my groove was. I would be sitting in my room every night and hearing people practicing case interviews right outside my door. They just sounded brilliant. I have these moments and they would ask a question and I would just be thinking in my head. I was like how do I answer that question? They’re like, “Tell me how many marketing emails go out in the USA every day,”. And I will just be sitting there and thinking my brain is just like slowly chugging along with processing. And then I hear this amazing answer being fired off. I think in my senior year that really got to me. I kept thinking to myself, “Oh, if I’m not able to answer those questions, if I’m not able to think that quickly, then maybe I’m not deserving of these kinds of positions”.
[00:06:58] I had a bunch of amazing truly brilliant friends who go into the ABCs. That’s why I don’t look down. I don’t think that the ABCs are wrong. I just think that you need to figure out your own path. At that time I really wrestled with that. But yes, I landed in growth marketing. That’s my journey. Wasn’t really like I came out of Haas thinking, “Oh, I’m going to go into growth marketing,”. I had no idea what I was doing. And like you said, in my intro, I started in customer success. It’s funny because. It’s only been recent, I’ve started calling it customer success for what it was. Because when I originally started that role, it was pitched to me as client strategy. I was actually doing digital marketing strategy. Whenever someone asked me what you’re doing, I told them I’m doing digital marketing strategy because customer success, for some reason, didn’t sound like me I guess. You know, you just find yourself thinking, “Oh, no one does customer success right out of school, blah, blah, blah”, which is so wrong, by the way. There are tons of people who do it and do it amazingly. But I think at that time, I didn’t know that the breadth of careers out there. We don’t really understand, Hey, there’s so much nuance to what your career path could look like. So long story short, I started there and eventually moved into brand marketing. Eventually moved into growth marketing. I would say for all the people who are trying to figure out the ABCs or T it’s usually not a street conventional path and that’s okay.
[00:08:26] Ellen Chan: What did you think, before going into Haas, what did you think you would end up doing?
[00:08:31]Soo Song: Trying to think back I think that I learned pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be in banking. I know…
[00:08:42] Ellen Chan: Process of elimination?
[00:08:44] Soo Song: Exactly process of elimination?
[00:08:46] I just had a few friends who were doing banking internships and wanted to do banking. I saw that fire in them for whatever reason. And I didn’t have it. I didn’t think I was going to go into accounting either because numbers weren’t hugely my passion. I know that accounting sets you up for a variety of careers. It didn’t seem like something that I was going to thrive in per se. I eliminated that as well. When I was entering Haas, I thought I could probably do consulting. I also genuinely thought I was going to be in tech, to be honest because all my internships were in tech. But that, wasn’t actually the case in terms of what I envisioned my full-time career to be from the beginning of Haas.
[00:09:37] Ellen Chan: Yeah, that makes sense. I think a lot of people, struggle with that journey and thinking through. What they should try out, with their internship and the first job out of college. It always seemed so important at the time. And looking back…
[00:09:51] Soo Song: We really stress about it.
[00:09:52] Ellen Chan: Yeah, it is important, but I think people may be stressed a little too much about it. Right now at Twitter, I know you just started but what are some of the initiatives you’re working on, and what are your passion projects within the team and the fam.
[00:10:05] Soo Song: Yeah. So I started at Twitter at the time of this recording I’ve only been here eight weeks. I was actually just talking with my team about how it’s surreal. I’ve been here eight weeks because I feel like I’ve really settled in The whole cliche like bring your fullest self to work. I really do believe in it. And to the point that I don’t think it’s a cliche. I think it’s a privilege. I entered Twitter knowing that the culture or what I had seen of it really resonated with me. From a job description standpoint, I find that, and you probably know this too. A lot of times the job you’re interviewing for isn’t always the job you ended up having because there’s only so much the job description that can really encapsulate. In terms of the projects that I’ve been overseeing, what’s been really great is I specifically joined our global small-medium business team, a global SMB, and I’m a growth marketing manager on the team.
[00:11:02] And so my role lets me look at the overall strategy for our business website towards SMB advertisers. In a nutshell, ideally, help the business, grow the number of SMBs advertising. Presenting themselves and growing their brand on Twitter. It’s always really interesting cause they think of Twitter, you think of obviously the social platform. But it’s also social media. It has become such a prevalent part of how businesses run nowadays. It’s how people connect. It also helps businesses sell. And it’s been really cool being able to be a part of that growth. To actually work at a social media company and kind of see how that influences our culture internally. In terms of passion projects, I will say that I don’t know if this classifies a passion project, but I’ve gotten really involved with Twitter’s business resource group or ERG. As most other companies say Twitter Asians. The last eight weeks. And what was amazing was about a couple of into work, Twitter started offering a triple match for any donations towards specific organizations that were helping raise awareness and funds against Asian hate crimes. As we’re all aware that has been on the rise it’s been going on for a very long time, but it’s been on the rise. You know, as an Asian American and as an Asian American woman, I think that there have been times so many times when sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the room, right? Representing my race, my gender. I think that it was really awesome because a couple of weeks into Twitter, I was able to take advantage of that triple match. Raise awareness with my community. Use my social media networks to do a little bit of crowd raising. I’ve been getting super involved with our ERG. In a sense that is my passion project or what I’m most proud of from the last few weeks.
[00:13:04]Ellen Chan: Apart from the donation matching isTwitter doing anything else?Or is your group doing anything else for this initiative?
[00:13:11] Soo Song: Yeah. It’s actually Asian heritage month. When I was growing up, I didn’t really know about Asian heritage month. I saw it in a couple of flyers and posters and be like an Asian heritage month writing contest. I was like, “Okay we’ve got to enter that”, but I never actually celebrated when I was young. I think now as an adult, I’ve been more aware of kind of what this month stands for. What I can do to celebrate. This month Twitter agents are hosting a variety of events. We’re also currently hosting a triple match for Covid India. As you know, the situation there is getting really bad. It’s just been really bad for many weeks now. We consistently have fireside chats. We have some things called sharing circles where employees can just come and share stories. There’s been a lot going on, but I’m very excited to be a part of that and be a part of the momentum. I think that at the core of it, Twitter Asians and actually for most employee resource groups out there, it’s just to provide a safe space for people to connect and feel seen and feel heard. What I’ve really loved is because even at my last company, I was pretty involved in our employee resource group. The space, you can stretch it as much as you want to. You can make it a space where people just bond over food. You can go out to restaurants, dessert cafes and, or you can talk about books. Like that was something I loved about my last company’s ERG. We actually had book clubs, reading books by Asian American authors. That’s where I read Pachinko. That’s where I first read Minor Feelings. I feel like I was introduced to such a richness of Asian-American authors through that. But now at Twitter, I’ve been able to then see another side where we’re able to actually have intellectual philosophical, and just like emotional conversations about Asian-American identity and have that in the workplace. People can talk about that and connect about that in addition to all the celebratory and fun and light stuff. I think that the ultimate goal is to connect and provide a space, but the secondary goals are hopefully to educate and to support. And obviously to help people be more aware of everything that’s going on in their communities.
[00:15:31] Ellen Chan: Got it. How do you think your identity as an Asian American female? how has that impacted your career?
[00:15:42] Soo Song: You and I know it’s a big question. Asian American. First off, I think before I answer that question, I have to just say, I am so proud to be Asian. I am so proud to be an Asian American. So proud to be an Asian American woman. I don’t necessarily know if that pride is easy for everyone. I think it’s definitely been facilitated by such amazing friends, my family, by the community, but that’s bedrock for me in terms of how I approach my identity at work. And how it’s shaped my career from there. I will say I don’t think It’s easy being an Asian American woman in a lot of situations. I’ve been at a company where I was quite literally one of the only Asian women and it was a predominantly white male. I don’t know. I definitely didn’t feel as comfortable talking about things. Even something as simple as Asian food. Or just something being like “Hey, actually, my family does this and this is culturally kind of what we’re used to,”. And it was, I think, as I’ve gone through my career, I’ve learned more and more. At the end of the day, a lot of times what people say it’s not personal. If someone says something offensive to you at that, hopefully in a professional context, it isn’t meant to hurt you. One thing I’ve had to correct about myself over the years is realizing that it’s not necessarily my burden or my duty to take it. It’s also something that hopefully my colleagues and people around me should also do. Some self-education. Have self-awareness and have interest in other cultures. One of the things I’ve struggled with most to be really transparent is as an Asian-American woman.
[00:17:38] I tend to look young. It’s a very small thing. It’s great. It’s a blessing. I really think it is a blessing. But it’s funny because some people tell me that when I say that I’m perpetuating again, like a stereotype, but truly this is from my experience solely. I’ve had several times when I’ve hopped on a zoom call and you can just see the visible confusion for a few seconds where that person is trying to register, “Oh, this person is the person I should be talking to and the person of authority right,?” In this context, I think that I don’t know if it’s necessarily unique because I’m an Asian American woman. But that is something I’ve experienced several times in my career. And there are times when I get very sensitive about my appearance or my age. Or just the fact that I have an Asian name. At the end of the day, I come back to the fact that I’m so proud to be an Asian American woman. I’m so proud to be Asian. And at the end of the day, no one can take that identity away from me, even if they don’t understand it. So those are lessons I’ve learned over the years. In fact, being more vocal has helped me. Teach that to myself again and again. I actually have one small story. I was at a multi ERG event a few weeks ago and it was about 40 or so Asian ERG at a variety of companies. A lot of them in tech. And someone in my breakout room, we had this breakout room of discussion. Then someone said, “Soo I feel crazy because I’m always that vocal person. And I don’t want to be that token, vocal person”. the person always bringing up the issues, the person always bringing up the microaggressions. And I actually responded to her and I said, “Hey, actually I’ve been working at Twitter”, my company at that time for four or five weeks “And every single team meeting, I brought up, Hey, I’m doing this fundraising or, Hey, I’m doing this multi-year G event or, Hey, this is happening. And I felt that I’ve been scared that I would be that crazy token vocal person”. And then right at that moment in the chat, someone on my team actually responded and said, “Soo we really appreciate everything that you do”. And something along those lines. And it was a person on my team who had taken the time to be a part of that event too, because I had brought it up in a team meeting. I was just so blown away at that moment because I think it was just such a gracious reminder that you never know who will truly listen and that more people listen than you think. And it’s okay to feel crazy or feel vocal because most of the time it’s just in your head and people will find an impact from that.
[00:20:36] Ellen Chan: That’s great. I’m really glad to hear. It’s always scary too when you know, things seem to…you are appreciated and I noticed I don’t know.
[00:20:45] Soo Song: What we look for, I feel like a lot of time it’s one of those things where you don’t want to be the basis of the work that you, validation. But everyone wants to. Work with people or at least spend most time of their days with people who really like truly see them. And I feel like sometimes we forget that part of that just comes with being yourself at work.
[00:21:05] Soo Song: It’s so funny. It’s just so hard to not take it personally, but it really isn’t at the end of the day, it’s not personal.
[00:21:12] Ellen Chan: I feel like the pandemic kind of help. I sometimes feel so removed from everything else that oh, it’s.
[00:21:22]Soo Song: Yeah, I agree with you…
[00:21:25] But I’ve also felt that the pandemic has exacerbated the feeling of it being personal because you can’t read body language. You can’t see people. Especially when you’re paying them all day or emailing them. It’s so funny, I don’t know if you’ve seen this article flying around, but I feel like I’m on medium and a bunch of, obviously because of my job I’m always on Twitter. There are two schools of thought around exclamation points and the smiley face. There’s a lot of controversies somehow around that. I think that is something I actually genuinely think about because I really want to be friendly in my nonverbal communication. But sometimes I wonder if it’s out of this desire to not, feed into something like, “Oh, I don’t want to come off too aggressive or too pushy’” or all these other things that I think are things I genuinely try to work on. So it’s so funny because I do think that the pandemic has again accentuated my difficulty in figuring out where I stand on that spectrum.
[00:22:30] Soo Song: Go for all the emojis and all the exclamation points and it doesn’t have any, it just does your bare minimum. Cause that doesn’t matter at the end of the day. So it’s interesting, but.
[00:22:41] Ellen Chan: This is again going in another direction, but it’s good to be aggressive, right? In a male-dominated industry, you’re encouraged to be aggressive, take the spotlight, and run with things. That is something that, I’ve learned over the past year and continuing to do, but it’s not necessarily natural for an Asian American woman. I’m the only one at like a firm.
[00:23:08] Soo Song Yeah. It’s not natural. I think it comes naturally for some folks. And I think for a large majority. It isn’t natural and it’s definitely a practice. I had a really bad habit of saying sorry, all the time, and my first manager pointed that ut. And it was funny because for a while I would catch myself and I would aggressively correct it to the point where I probably should have said sorry at times that I wouldn’t say sorry. I think it was such a good exercise, right? When you think about, okay, what are things that I need to unlearn and what are the things I need to learn, but also maybe in a few years, you’ll change your perspective on that because nowadays I don’t actually have a super big problem when I say, sorry, because it doesn’t really bother me or it doesn’t come out of it. I don’t know. it’s okay for your stance on things to also change over the years. And that’s another thing I’ve realized about communication, right? Like for example, who knows, Ellen maybe in a few years, you’ll be using emojis and exclamation points galore, right? Because your work environment changes and when I was client facing, I had a certain tone and style. Then when I’m now primarily internal and internal facing. I think that there’s a different style you take. And I also think that’s the beauty of a career. More so than when you’re a student, because obviously when you’re a student, you’re still trying to figure yourself out and aren’t, we all trying to figure ourselves out. But especially in a career as you switch teams, companies, or roles feel. You just do so much self-reflection on what your working style is. You continue to build it and continue to change it. That’s one of the best things about working or at least in my opinion about working.
[00:24:52] Ellen Chan: That’s totally fair. I guess taking a step back, is there anything you would change about your time at Berkeley Haas or even like in your career?
[00:25:04]Soo Song: During the pandemic, our student government, from the Haas student government that I was a part of, actually had this mini-reunion over zoom. And in that conversation at one point, I think I said something along the lines of man, guys, I wish I didn’t study so hard in college. I wish I had more of a life. Then someone directly at me said “No, no, no, no, no, no. I didn’t study that much and I wish I studied more”, and it was just so it was such a good reminder that wherever you land in the spectrum of “Oh, I did this and I did too much of this, right? Or too little of this.” There’s always going to be someone else. Who’s like, “Oh, that’s how I wish I had lived”.
[00:25:46] And I definitely have parts of my Haas experience, definitely parts of my Berkeley experience where I wish I could tie in trouble back and just talk to myself, be like “Soo Song yo, sit down. You need to chill out this isn’t the end of the world”. There is actually a time in my senior year, actually, when I was really into running and I fell into a pothole on a run and I completely messed up my ankle. I just refuse to kind of go see a doctor. And anyway, it just dragged out for a very long time. I was going through a really rough period because physically it was hard to deal with this massive ankle while trying to take finals and stuff like that. And I remember at that time, I just didn’t give myself the space to be like, “Okay, Soo Song you need to slow down and maybe take a break from these clubs or these activities and just go to physical therapy get this checked out”. I was just so stressed about trying to get a freaking A. I think it was macro or micro it is one of the economics classes and it just didn’t give me the right priorities. I look back and I sometimes think if I had more time, would I have prioritized better? Or if I have more, I don’t know, time for reflection would I have prioritized better? Or is it just in hindsight? I kind of wish that. I think that a lot of the times I land on it’s in hindsight. You’re a much different person than you were when you were in college. So I can’t necessarily bring that into my perspective. That being said, I think overall, I’m so thankful for the way that Haas shaped me and the friends and relationships that brought me. When I look at my career, I don’t necessarily have regrets. I do think that there are lessons that I wish I’d learned earlier. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my career is that at the end of the day, it really comes down to relationships and building strong connections with people you work with and I think that a lot of times when you’re starting out in your career, you’re just like, how can I get ahead? How can I advance? You view it like college, but your career is so much longer than that. I’m speaking as technically as a quote-unquote freshman in my career, right? We’re still so young, we’re still learning how to really walk this very long race. I just wish I learned earlier in my career that I could slow down. I could put more time. Invest in these really important relationships and that those people would be the ones who would teach you the most. Versus that’s really the projects I was working on. I think I am thankful for a lot of the client-facing I experienced I had in my first job.
[00:28:28] At that time I had moments where I was like, what am I doing? I think being client-facing is definitely hard and it’s really humbling, but I do wish again that I could go back to those moments where I just wanted to quit. Or I was really upset over a conversation I have with a client and just go back and sit down with that Soo Song and be like, “Hey, you’re learning so much from being put in this position. What that person said, isn’t personal”. Going back to our conversation about it not being personal. I think I didn’t learn that until much later. I would say that’s all. I don’t really have too many regrets. I’d say.
[00:29:06] Ellen Chan: That’s great. How about lessons from your time at Haas, anything to share for, maybe current students who are at Haas and navigating this virtual maybe, not so virtual Haas environment.
[00:29:19] Soo Song: Man. I honestly have so much respect for everyone going through school right now. My brother is currently a junior at Yale and curiously seeing what life is like studying remotely. Living on campus, but not having the same campus experience has been super interesting. And also, again, I just have so much respect for all the students going through that right now. I’d say my top lessons from Haas. Yeah. When I think about Haas and I think about my years there, I really go back to, again, some of the relationships I was able to have with a few of the professors. Just like what I learned from those relationships and one professor that comes to mind, I believe he actually got the most recent teaching award, but professor Dan Mulhern, I took a leadership course with him. I just really learned so much from some of the classes I wasn’t necessarily required to take. I know that is a very common experience for a lot of people, but yeah. I learned so much from that leadership class. And they built really great relationships with people I would have normally never probably interacted with. So when I look back at Haas feel like I took away the most in situations. Maybe I expected the least, and I’m really grateful that I put myself in some of those situations. I think also another thing I took away from Haas is that. You could really do as much as you wanted to put in. I studied abroad my first semester at Haas and I actually have some, friends or are rather like siblings or friends who reach out to me and they ask, “Hey are you sure that if I study abroad, do I need to squeeze all my courses in? Is it a bad experience on Haas, what not?” But I tell them, I studied abroad my first semester at Haas, but the remaining three semesters, I was still able to get involved in so much. And, I ran for student government and put myself in a bunch of student groups. I still got the fullness of what I would have probably gotten in four semesters in three. I think that can be translated into let’s say your first year at Haas was really hard because of this pandemic. Some of these seniors or would-be seniors could have been like, “Oh wow. My first year at Haas was wasted” or “It wasn’t what everyone made it out to be”. But the remaining two semesters, you can still get out of it, what you put in. That goes for Berkeley overall. I think it’s such a big school. Sometimes we just get lost and feeling like we’re not that important. But Berkeley is also one of those schools where you can find such cool pockets of people. If you just put your mind to it. I was really involved in a student group called Blueprint, which is completely unrelated to Haas. I met some of the dopest humans at Blueprint, and they’re still some of my best friends today. I really think that I wouldn’t have been involved in such a group had I not just looked outside of my immediate circle and also my major. I don’t have CSR tech experience, but I have a lot of interest in what this group stands for, which is building technologies for nonprofits. How can I use my skills and use my talents to help and just put myself out there? I think that’s probably the biggest advice I’d give to any prospective students, which is, if you have a gift or if you have a talent where you think you just have something to bring that maybe an organization on campus, or maybe a professor or a certain class needs, or maybe they might not need it’d be cool just put yourself out there and dive into it because you’ll find that you’ll get so much richness out of it. If you just take that chance. That’s what I would say.
[00:33:08] Ellen Chan: That’s great. I’m sure our listeners love that. All right. Any um, partying with stone before, before we wrap up?
[00:33:17] Soo Song: Honestly I guess for last words, I would just say that the pandemic has been such a wildly different time for people. I think that one thing that everyone can agree on is that it’s definitely changed parts of your life. It probably changed parts of you. I just say to the students, or whoever’s listening too as we transition back into more of that normal kind of pace and rhythm of life to reflect on that. Also to celebrate some of that change. That’s what I would say because I think that I’ve been grappling with. Pieces of my personality and my lifestyle that has altered because of the pandemic. And there have been times when I’ve been just sitting on that ask “Do I like this? Do I want to take this back into a normal pace of life?” Sometimes that exercise is really good for you. You just need to have time to think about that. Celebrate the change. Don’t feel tied to anything that necessarily happened during the pandemic that you don’t want to take back. But if you have changes that you didn’t expect it’s great to celebrate them. And that’s what I would end with.
[00:34:27] Ellen Chan: Great! Thanks for sharing that.
[00:34:29] Ellen Chan: I guess let’s end with our fire round of questions. I guess the first one is a seasonal one. What are you doing to keep yourself sane during this time?
[00:34:38] Soo Song: I am challenging myself with Caroline Gervin workouts on YouTube, which if you haven’t searched or heard of those, I highly recommend they’re killer. But it’s been a great way to get myself back into. Shape as we prepare to go back into normalcy.
[00:34:59] Ellen Chan: Awesome, man. Um, what content are you consuming right now?
[00:35:03] Soo Song: I’ve been consuming actually. I feel like a lot of YouTube. I recently watched a show on HBO max called. Made for Love, which is a whole parody about tech and dystopian and kind of weird and funky. So anyway, if anyone listening has watched that or enjoys watching it, please connect with me. I have got a lot to think and say.
[00:35:28] Ellen Chan: What is your productivity hack?
[00:35:31] Soo Song: Productivity high is too at the end for me. My productivity hack has been to figure out what I really, really enjoy doing. I make sure that I round out either I start my mornings with that. Or round out my days of that. And at the very least you have one thing that you’ve accomplished during your day, that makes you happy. I really love to eat and sleep so. For me, sometimes my productivity stems from a good night’s rest and really good food. But I think from what I meant around having a favorite thing to do at the beginning of your day, or the end of the day is just identify a particular workstream or particular project, or maybe a person that you really like working with that. You can start off the day with a meeting. I know that some people don’t like that, but for me, it’s worked, it’s really nice to get my brain jogging with something that I enjoy working on.
[00:36:27] Ellen Chan: and the last one, what is your favorite thing about Haas or Berkeley?
[00:36:31] Soo Song: My favorite thing about Berkeley is it sounds corny, but it’s how. Different parts of it are. And by that, I mean, everything from its campus, which doesn’t look anything like Stanford or UCLA, right. Where all the buildings look the same, every part of Berkeley’s campus is so different to its people and its cultures. I find that there are so many groups on campus and so many places or types of subcultures that are very different from each other. To all the experiences that you can have on campus, that’s my favorite part of Berkeley. That it’s so different depending on where you are, who you’re with and what you’re doing.
[00:37:16] Ellen Chan: Thank you, Soo. It’s been a pleasure and I’m so glad to have you on. Thanks for sharing your story.
[00:37:22] Soo Song: Thanks, Ellen.
[00:37:25] Ellen Chan: Thank you for listening to this episode of the one Haas podcast, the undergrad series. If you’d like our content, please like, and subscribe to our channel and give us a review. You can also check out more episodes and hear from past and current Haas students on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and onehaas.org. Until next time, go bears!