Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House

by Alyssa Mastromonaco

You should always be prepared to defend your choices, whether just to yourself (sometimes this is the hardest) or to your coworkers, your friends, or your family. The quickest way for people to lose confidence in your ability to ever make a decision is for you to pass the buck, shrug your shoulders, or otherwise wuss out. Learning how to become a decision maker, and how you ultimately justify your choices, can define who you are.

Jobs like this—the kind of job of which there are many, the kind that are definitely good but that no one teaches you to want—are found only with an open mind and a willingness to do your own thing.

Young people are not known for their acute sense of self-awareness, and I was no exception. Unfortunately, that’s by design; you haven’t had a lot of time to get to know yourself yet. The only way to get through periods of confusion like the one I’m about to describe is to ask yourself a bunch of questions and slowly find the answers to them. Who am I? What do I want in life? What am I good at? What am I bad at? Does my hair actually look good with so many layers? Do I care?

Being self-aware means knowing when you’re about to act bad—and then not acting bad.

Kindness often exists on a smaller scale than the grand gestures popular on social media would have you believe. Though anonymously paying off someone’s student loans or giving a waitress a $5,000 tip are amazing acts of goodwill, things like being willing to cut someone some slack, or making a thoughtful phone call, can help another person so much.