Tessa Heron

I would attribute my success to my resilience and never giving up. I've lived a pretty difficult life, and I think I've had to pick myself up quite a bit, but every time I have had to overcome a pretty significant obstacle, it's always been worth it to feel like I have ultimately achieved and been able to keep going. A huge part of that comes from my background as a competitive gymnast for the first 16 years of my life, being trained by Russians. That strong discipline really defined how I am as a person today - I've never had to be yelled at or disciplined because I've always been my own hardest critic, literally from childhood. I spent more time in the gym than I really did at home, so I developed a really strong work ethic from the very beginning and a really strong commitment to something that I didn't necessarily have to do. When it starts to get scary and you start to learn the really hard skills, you don't want to be the one that quits or gives up first. My upbringing and being raised primarily in a gym was definitely the foundation and still is the foundation of my work ethic. I'm also very detail-oriented and organized, and I always write everything down because I know that's a proven fact - you have to write things down in order to memorize them. Being open-minded is also crucial - everybody is so different, and you have to understand that people are from such different backgrounds and cultures, so you can't just classify everybody into the same group. If they're not understanding what you're saying or the way you're saying it, you have to approach it from a different direction and re-evaluate how to best communicate with whoever in particular you're dealing with.

The best career advice I've received is that it's easier to get a job once you have a job. My mom also told me that if I ever wanted to go to grad school, I was going to have to keep my grades up in undergrad, and that was definitely true because my brother applied for grad school at the same time as I did, and I know the only difference between me getting in and him not was our grades. That advice really motivated me to work hard academically - I graduated from Fullerton with a 3.8 GPA. Now I'm applying that job advice practically - I think at this point I'm going to try and go for really anything so I can have something, and then on the back burner I can really look for what I want to do.

I would say you have to be open-minded when it comes to the way you communicate, and know that there's not just one particular style of communications. If one approach doesn't work, then there's a million others that you can try. A lot of people think that maybe there's one way to talk to people, and if you're not getting through to them that way, then they're just not understanding you and you're not going to get along or you're going to butt heads. But you just have to think of it as, maybe if I approach it differently, then I'll get better results. The program I went to was founded on theory, so there's not really one answer - every paper we wrote, we had to pick a theory and then justify why that was the best theory to use for whatever research project we were working on, but you could take it with any angle. If you really dive into it the way that we did at Fullerton and even at Cal Poly, it's a very learn-by-doing kind of mentality, and you have to really try before you come to any final results in terms of how you're going to approach whatever type of communication situation you're facing. It's such a wide field, but the key is being flexible and understanding that everybody is so different - people are from such different backgrounds and cultures, and you can't just classify everybody into the same group. You have to understand how to best communicate with whoever in particular you're dealing with.

The biggest challenge in communications right now is AI and how it's changing the field. I finished my master's in 2022, and AI was just starting to become a thing, so I never wrote one paper that I used AI for - back then, all we had was plagiarism software that teachers would run our papers through. I feel kind of fortunate that AI just really wasn't a thing from 2020 through 2022, because I wasn't able to be tempted to use it, and Fullerton's program was so great that it almost would have been impossible to use AI anyway. But nowadays, the challenge is how to decipher whose voice is really whose and whose is AI - everybody's got a voice when it comes to their writing, and it seems like it would be hard for educators to kind of decipher now, especially as AI just gets bigger and bigger. AI is so helpful, but at the same time it scares me, because how can you really know how much of somebody's work is really their own and how much of their own knowledge they've been able to use versus how much they've just been able to copy and paste from whatever AI spit out? It's like that eye in the sky - how big is this going to get? Is it going to become self-aware at some point where it realizes it doesn't need us anymore? You have to try to use it for the purposes it's meant for, but also be wary and remember that you do have your own voice and you need to use it. You can't just put in whatever AI tells you to just because you don't know the answer - you have to search for it yourself and think about how to put it in your own words. As for opportunities, I would definitely look into freelancing if you're in between jobs - there are a lot of different companies now where you can put your skills out there, like copywriting, editing, or proofreading, and hiring managers can look for certain things on your profile and you can do small projects for them.

My top values are being organized and detail-oriented - I know that's kind of more of a skill, but without writing everything down and committing it to memory, I know that's a proven fact that you have to write things down in order to memorize them, and I know that about myself. I would also say being open-minded is crucial - everybody is so different, and you just have to understand that people are from such different backgrounds and cultures. You can't just classify everybody into the same group, and if they're not understanding what you're saying or the way you're saying it, you have to approach it from a different direction and re-evaluate how to best communicate with whoever in particular you're dealing with. Resilience is also incredibly important - I mean, that goes for anything really, but just never giving up. I've lived a pretty difficult life, and I think I've had to pick myself up quite a bit, but every time I have had to overcome a pretty significant obstacle, it's always been worth it to feel like I have ultimately achieved and been able to keep going. In my next career, I really want to feel like I'm valued and I'm actually making a difference in the world, like if I don't show up it will actually impact people. At my previous job as a compliance associate for Yardi Systems, I had a really important job vetting people and making sure no one was stealing information or doing money laundering, but I just didn't feel like I was making a huge difference in the world, like my job really mattered too much - like if I didn't come to work, it wouldn't be the biggest deal in the world. I want to feel like the next job I have is one where I'm really valued and making a difference.