I get up every morning to enjoy the people I love. Yes I want to contribute to society, change something in the world, understand my place in the world -- but these are abstractions that shape the undercurrents in my life. But that feeling of I must support, be with, learn from, and give and receive joy to those who are important to me is very tangible. It's what I breathe.

I don’t know that I can tell my story in 400 words. I was born in Chennai, India. I lived in Tennessee, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Missouri and, now, Philadelphia. I studied English and journalism and I’m working for the University of Pennsylvania as a writer. I’ve been with my boyfriend for three years and still miss him when I go to work. These are about .1% of the details that have gone into making me who I am. But who is that? That’s the real story, and that’s the one I’m making up as I go along. When I was 21, I could tell you what my life meant. As I’ve gotten smarter, I can’t anymore. This brings me back to the tangibles, the people whom I love. That’s something I don’t have to make up – proof that my life is real.

The obstacles I’ve faced have primarily been of my own construction. The biggest obstacle one is my tendency to deconstruct my accomplishments so that I can no longer see how they add to my story.

This may have begun during my childhood, which was happy, but gave me many opportunities to ask too many questions. When you’re an immigrant, when you move around a lot, when you read a lot of books, when your parents encourage you to think for yourself and won’t buy you expensive sneakers, you learn very early in life to not accept the stories people tell you. This is good, because the only people who make society go forward are those who question and voice their questions loudly. But sometimes it’s bad because you even learn to be critical of the stories you tell to convince yourself that the things you do mean anything.

This brings me to my experience in the field, which, you may not be surprised to learn, involves writing stories. I interview people and then cobble their answers together to present a meaningful package to readers. My job is to write, but really it’s to listen to other people. It’s great because pretty much every day I learn how someone else makes meaning of their lives and those perspectives help me figure out how I want to lead my own. And I have to listen really carefully, because if I don’t I basically end up writing a lie, and a misrepresentation of life, even a perfectly grammatical one, does great damage to everyone.

My advice, even though I don’t like giving advice, is to women in business, but also to everyone in everything – listen and question. That’s the only way to do the difficult job of figuring out what things really mean, and it’s the only way to begin making your life mean something real.

Finally, the best advice I’ve ever gotten is from Michael Scott, lead protagonist of the American version of The Office. He says, “Sometimes you have to take a break from being the kind of boss that’s always trying to teach people things. Sometimes you have to just be the boss of dancing.”

Priya Ratneshwar (MHC '98)