From One Bay to Another

Name: Bryan Kaminski

Class: Class of 2006 Graduate

Hometown: Waukesha, WI

Current Residence: San Francisco, CA

Majors: International Studies and German

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Life’s quite the ride, and it’s what happens while you’re moving that matters in the end.

As you’ve probably figured out from above my name is Bryan Kaminski. I’m a 2006 graduate with a B.A. in International Studies and German. I grew up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and I spent four years as a Hopkins Undergrad – three years in Baltimore and one in Berlin, Germany. After college, I took a job with my college Fraternity working with college students at 25 different schools throughout North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In April 2007, I joined Google and moved to San Francisco.

Currently, I work on Google’s University Programs team. We focus on hiring the top college students to start their careers as Software Engineers at Google. It’s great to be part of the team that recruits young, talented people to join a company that cares about its mission and the people who work there.

Now we’re at the part where I look back, and try to distill into a few simple points – six to be exact – everything that I’ve learned along the way. So here it goes.

Number 1: Ask for help when you need it.

I was a terrible college applicant. I don’t mean I was unqualified, but rather I had no clue what I was doing. I knew I wanted a small school in the city, outside of the Midwest. After that, everything was up in the air.

I got lucky. Hopkins had a great viewbook, so I decided to apply, got in and decided to attend.

For some reason, I was afraid to ask questions during the process. I was afraid to admit that I didn’t even know the questions to ask. I’d been successful in high school, yet I didn’t know where to start when it came to college, and I didn’t want anyone to think I didn’t know what I was doing. I struggled. I made mistakes, I stressed myself out, and I left a lot of knowledge on the table.

Only after serving as an Admissions Representative did I realize how important it is to ask questions when you find yourself outside of your comfort zone. Making a decision about college is an important choice. There are people that can help – find them. As I found at Hopkins and have found in my professional life, people not only appreciate being asked questions, but are impressed by the curiosity and want to help out.

Number 2: Stretch yourself – get involved and take risks.

College is a change. One significant challenge is figuring out what to do when you’re bored. For some reason, it’s simple to blaze a new path of do-nothingness. Throughout my four years I watched as many went from over-involved high school students to uninvolved college students. Interestingly, the uninvolved looked back on their college experience as disappointing.

It’s easier than you might think to slide into mediocrity. There’s no manual to success in college. Sometimes, instead of jumping in, people seem to say, “I’m going to focus on my academics the first semester, and I’ll get involved the second semester.”

Yeah, right.

While they “focus” on academics, college passes by. What if the first semester is rough? Think anyone gets involved then? What if it’s great? Think they’ll want to jeopardize that initial success by adding commitments? It’s a self-perpetuating doom-loop.

Take it for what it’s worth, but academic success and collegiate success is neither one in the same, nor mutually exclusive. I look back at my time at Hopkins and feel like my co-curricular activities made a major impact on where I am today. The pressure of deadlines and commitments taught me how to prioritize and forced me to buckle down so I could maximize my time. The different experiences allowed me to take what I had learned in one activity or class and apply it in another. The diverse ideas and knowledge one picks up allows for the development of innovative ideas. These are all important skills that I find myself using repeatedly now that I’ve graduated.

By taking myself out of my comfort zone and taking risks, I discovered interests I didn’t know existed. I made lifelong friends with people I never would have met. I created opportunities, opened doors, and grew my social network just by being busy and involved. Sure, I cut back over time; you have to figure out what’s best for you. Most importantly though, I had a long list of options, and I had an incredibly diverse college experience for which I can always be grateful and look back on with no regrets.

Number 3: Give back or pay it forward

We all have high aspirations and along the way, we’ll likely face challenges, difficulty and frustration. Sure, we want to chart our own course, but we’re probably following some footsteps of those who have come before us. Growing up, my parents taught me to work hard at everything I did. My teachers taught me to challenge myself, and hold myself accountable. My friends pushed me to keep up with them in the classroom, on the athletic fields, and in other activities.

Somehow, I developed a pay it forward mentality. For me, that was taking on leadership roles in co-curricular activities in high school. In college that was serving as an admissions representative and student council, working for the Orientation program and being a member of Spring Fair and SigEp. Now, it’s volunteering and giving to the organizations that made a difference in my life.

At times this involvement was and is frustrating, but I always saw it as part of my responsibility to work through the frustration. Asking only, “What’s in it for me?” would have caused me to miss out on the reward gained by hard work and perseverance. By sticking through the rough patches and making it better for those who followed, I feel like I learned a lot, and helped out some people in the process.

Number 4: Don’t forget to say thanks.

A lot of people through the years will make a difference in your life. Often these people don’t even realize what they’ve done, and we don’t say thanks for that help often enough either. It’s not intentional; we just don’t think to do it.

I’d always been told the importance of saying thanks, of writing thank you notes, and such, but I’d never really believed it made a difference until I tried it out.

While working for my college fraternity, I came to realize that undergraduates and volunteers do all the work; they don’t get paid, and all too often they get no gratitude or appreciation from those they impact. One thing I learned during that job was the most significant thing we could do to encourage our members was to remember to say thanks and recognize those who did outstanding work. A quick note or thoughtful gift made all the difference in the world and led to better communication, increased performance, and better friendships.

You’re going to have a lot of great achievements in college, take some time to celebrate those achievements, and reflect back on the people who made it possible. If you can spare a few minutes and maybe a few dollars, pick up a card or something else meaningful let people know how much they’ve helped - it will make their day.

Number 5: Make time for your friends.

College will fly by. You may not believe me on your first day of Orientation, but when you’re crossing the stage to shake the president’s hand and collect your diploma, you’ll be wondering where that time went. The next thing you know, you’ll be moving out of your place and into some other city, far from your friends, and far from the place you had called home for the last four years.

From time to time, it would snow significantly in Baltimore. For us, that meant snow football. We’d round up three or four people, and start working the phones. Pretty soon we’d have 15-20 sliding across the field, while much of the school spent the time inside thinking about their next Chemistry midterm.

You only get four years to make the most of the experience. Too often people get caught up in the future and lose sight of the moment. In my experience, we do about the same amount of work whether it takes us two hours or twelve. We just expand the amount of time we spend “working” to fit the window. Meanwhile, we pass up an opportunity to deepen our friendships and share some experiences that may stay with us forever.

Make time for your friends. Take a break and recharge; it’ll allow you to dive back in with more focus and dedication than you might think. You’re a college student, but college is about more than grades and what comes after graduation.

Number 6: Do what you love.

The best question a college interviewer ever asked me was, “What are you passionate about?” I bombed the question and it has stuck with me through school and into my career. I’ve learned that if I’m not passionate about something, it’s difficult for me to put 100% into that particular project, class, or group.

The decision of what to do after college challenged me. I wanted to do something I was passionate about, since I learned that it was hard for me to fake interest and enthusiasm. I sought out a lot of advice from family, friends, and professors. In the end, I got some great suggestions, but one of them stuck out until a former professor said the best job you can have is one where you figure out a way to get paid doing something you would do for free.

That made my job search that much easier. I had taken a class called Leadership Dynamics, which helped put a lot of what I already thought into focus. It helped me realize I enjoyed working with people, and I enjoyed the challenges of working with organizations to make them successful. I’d also been spending a week every summer volunteering for an American Legion government program, and was able to watch first-hand as rising seniors built an understanding of government through an experiential learning program.

In college I spent my time on activities and groups that involved working with others. Most of these things didn’t pay, but I loved the time I spent working of projects for these organizations. I spent my first year after college working for SigEp traveling to different schools in the region and working with undergraduates throughout the country. This experience provided me with a way to get paid to work with people, serving as an important resource and challenging them to get the most of their experience in college.

Working for SigEp taught me a lot about leadership, organizational development and recruitment strategy – a couple of things I really enjoy. As my year came to an end, I discovered Google offered positions that matched my background. I thought it would be exciting to be a part of building that culture and seeing first hand how breaking all the “rules” could be successful. I also felt that my experience at Hopkins and my experience at SigEp put me in a position to lend a unique and valuable perspective to Google’s college recruiting efforts, as well as its growing career development organization. I guess I was convincing.

I’m lucky that I found a job and a company where I can look forward to work every day. I attribute a lot of that to looking for my passions while I was in college, and taking the advice to get paid for something I would do for free.

Six years and six ideas later, I’m able to look back and appreciate the experience I had at Hopkins. You’re all at a very exciting time right now. You’re facing a big decision, you have a lot left to accomplish, and you have a few months left of your senior year before it’s time to start again on a new adventure. Make the most of it – these opportunities don’t come around very often.