Informal Education

Through my Marketing Interhsip I have found many a nugget of truth. Some of these treasures I’ve, for years, heard my parents and previous educators warn me about, but because I am young and idealistic, ready to take on the world for the sake of art and constant learning, I didn’t listen too closely. I’ve found I learn best through the methods of swift stomach punches and mind-blowing realities. Hopefully, my admitting this will bring the violence to am immediate halt.
Anyway.
This is what I have learned in the past two months.
1. Some people are hired for jobs they are not qualified for, for no other reason than there is no other option.
2. This will not make them grateful and/or a quick learner.
3. The title of ‘Director”, sometimes, means very little as far as job definition goes (this is not to say it is over-used, because sometimes, it is quite the opposite).
4. Believe it or not, some professionals do not know the impression given off when “AIM-speak” is used in e-mails to clients (i.e. “LOL”).
5. Sometimes, no one notices if you’re doing your job or not. Sometimes, everyone does.
6. Being welcomed into the job force and given managment over a few people, in no way means that you know how to use them/treat them/speak to them/delegate to them.
7. It takes a lot of get fired.
8. People who get paid a lot – are not exempt from falling into the catagory of “lazy”.
This is what I want to do. I want to add a section to my resume entitled “Things You Do Not Have to Worry About Me Doing”.
It will be at least one paragraph long.
References available.

a “real” job

As luck would have it, I landed a paid internship at a theater downtown. Originally, the Marketing internship lasts the entire season, being 10 months. However, as I have recently graduated and would like to go back on real insurance and real salary, I couldn’t accept the full 10 month intership. Surprisingly, the company didn’t mind and hired me for 4 months. That is a blessing. So, somehow I have managed to get a short-term job in the arts, which pleases me because I’m staying on track with my goals. I told myself I would take a month off and stop looking for jobs for a little bit but, I’ve been in job-hunting-mode since April so it’s a hard habit to kick. Thankfully, this isn’t such a bad thing. In the end, the opportunity to have two high-quality non-profit arts organization on my resume is amazing and hopefully, it will help me in the long run. Now. In January, should I stay in the area or pick up and move away? The questions continue….

Search Engines

I am forever amazed with the job search engine. How is it possible for me to spend an hour highlighting, uploading, checking, and filling out information about myself and my job-wants only to receive daily e-mails full of job suggestions I want no part of? It’s incredible. So, I just spent another hour revamping the 4 or 5 job searches I’m a part of. Hopefully, by narrowing my field down I’ll receive more helpful e-mails. I was under the impression that craming all of this information into the site was the right thing to do, now I know that it just makes things more complicated. I’m begining to realize why so many people complain about the job search.

The Difference

My “real” job, for lack of a better term, is working Hospitality at a medium sized concert venue. I usually find a few writing gigs on the side, babysit, and temp. at my Dad’s downtown apt. managment firm when they need extra help. Let me rephrase that, I temp. at my Dad’s downtown apt. managment firm when the accounting side of the company is so backlogged with filing that they have no more space to stack things. They call me. I fix all organizational problems. This week, I noticed the vast difference between the two jobs. As an employee I run around taking care of everyone who needs anything, run back and forth from various stores and work random, long hours. As a temp. I dress up and sit around all day (ahem- 9-5, which I now know is NOT “all day” as compared to my recent 16-hour and 12-hour stints at the venue) filing and collating and finding space where it previously did not exist.
Still, I am more worn out filing than I am running around crazy. The elementariness hurts my brain. This is my lesson. I cannot have a full time filing job.

Contacts

Yesterday I took the subway downtown and had a meeting with the Communication director of an art gallery in the city. It was helpful because the woman I had breakfast with was very informative and knows everyone and everything about the art industry in my area. I’m not sure I want to work in it, but it’s good to know about, and no I have a contact int hat area. I never realized how connected everything is. There are a bunch of small art museums on one or two streets downtown and they’re like a little commuity. They help each other with possible ideas and call each other when jobs open up. I like that. I like the idea of an industry that’s not so cut-throat. The director told me that their competition is not each other, it is movie theaters and bookstores, etc, which makes sense. If you come to see art, you’ll probably eventually get to all of the museums. I think this is a very mature way of looking at business.
Anyway, I highly recommend meetings that are not specifically for a job. They’re very informative and helpful. I walked away with names, websites and other local galleries that are hiring (this one is not right now). Besides myself, I have friends specifically looking into working in the museum industry, and I have the opportunity to help them out a little bit.

References?

Today I applied for the editorial internship with a magazine in the city. I am terribly excited about it and if all goes well I’ll be doing that for the fall season. Of course, I needed to give references, and I did, but I heard that few companies write actual recommendations anymore. The reason for this is that a lot of them have been looked down upon because a person is hired on their recommendation and then that person turns out to be a flop. Ouch. That’s hideous. So, I suppose the references are more of a legality. An employer calls a past employer and asks if they would hire the person in question again and if they did a sufficient job.
I feel like some people deserve good, honest recommendations. As is true in other sections of life, one screws things up for the whole.
Maybe I’m lucky and I’m completely wrong. However, there’s no reason this realization should hurt my chances of getting hired, it’s just a frustrating observation.

Continue Reading

Whoa.

I recently stumbled across a magazine that offers *paid* editorial interships for recent grads. This is amazing. Most of the interships that I find offer no compensation, or only college credit. On to a cover letter and writing camples and, hopefully, a response.
I have also come to the conclusion that it is nearly impossible to find responsible people. My mother calls this the “80/20 rule”. 80% of people show up to work and drag through the day, usually dragging their home-life and problems with them, 20% of people show up to work and focus on work. So many people just show up and fart around, I hope to high heaven that I am never one of these people. Half of me is grateful that my parents instilled a good work ethic in me, and half scared that I will work for someone with a lower ethic than me. This realization should put me ahead right? Sometimes I’m not so sure.

Young Professional = Double Entendre

It’s hard to determine when you actually enter into the adult working world. Is it now? Now that I’ve been out of school for a month? Or is it in three months when I finish up this summer job and find a “real” one. I bet it’s when my current boss stops talking down to me like I’m 10 and not 22. Is this a common experience? I know my job. You know my job. You know that I know my job, still, you must tell me my job, despite the fact that I am doing this. I think that the worst part is that she spends time treating me like an equal, until she gets stressed or busy and then it’s my head, like it’s my job to obey her, like it’s appropriate for her to patronize me for no reason.
Does this stop? or does it go on until I start doing it myself?
God I hope not.
On another note. I spent an hour looking through the classified ads today. I circled three ads that sounded interesting. Still, I feel as though so many things out there are… well… Lame (boring? tedious?). My major was Communication/English. So, why so many Accounting, paralegal, labor jobs? This is a ridiculous questions. The bottom line is, I could take a number of the jobs I read over, but I refuse to do so. If I take a job I have no passion for, a job that stiffles my creatvity, I’ll fizzle out. Is this the right attitude or am I just being young and idealistic because I have the (current) right to be? Maybe I do need a good talking down to.

Temp. Agencies and Tents

I was just in my roommates wedding. The day after the ceremony the new couple moved six hours away from my friend’s family to be rafting guides in another state. They will live in a tent and eat in a cafeteria because they are recovering from a misunderstanding with an outdoor center that was only willing to hire one of the two of them. Because they were hired late, they essentially have no home. The thing is they HAD jobs, and housing, through friends. My roommates already used her employee discount at the origonal job.
This is nervracking. They say that the best way to find a job is through connections, and I agree with this. So, when connections fail, what happens? You take a lesser job and move into a tent? Oi vey.
Another friend of mine wants me to move 5 hours away from my current home, leave the state, and move into an apt. with her. She pretty much offered me a job with her company and also refered me to the temp. agency she used to get that job. This realization that if I wanted to, I could up and leave the state and nobody could say anything to stop me is amazing. In college, nobody ever rejoices in the fact that we can do whatever we want when we graduate (forgetting student loans, etc.). So, do I stay put and look for a job here, or flee and start over completely?

Profession

As I have just graduated college, I am eerily used to the question, “what are you gonna do now?” I form dissuading answers in my head about having a summer job and seeing what comes long when the fall rolls around. I am a writer, however, because this vocation is not currently self-sustaining I am falling into the group of young professionals who introduce themselves as “a writer, but I’m currently working in marketing” or “a writer, but I have a job in PR right now.”
So, right now my job is at a concert venue in the metropolitan area. I’ve worked her for two summers for the same reason every other recent college graduate on staff comes back for one more summer of hard, insurance-free work. We love live music, we breath it in. The cluster of us working as drivers and/or hospitality oversee dressing rooms and dietary needs (water, beer, chips, etc.) all summer. There are so many stories to tell. There’s the fading hairy-chested 80’s artist who attends dinner with his shirt off, infuriating our Australian caterer, the Russian dancers who call for hot tea all day long (last year I spent $300 of the venues money on tea and lemons), and my personal favorite, the stuck-up, curly-haired folk singer who attends Meet-and-Greet’s with a sign around her neck reading “RESTING VOICE”.
I am trying to find the medium between live music and writing. How do you break into the mating of the two? I hope to never say, “I’m a writer, but right now I’m working at this concert venue downtown.” I can do both right? How do I even go about that? Can I freelance and hold down a “real job?” God I hope so. I need to.