I am not a social creature. I blush and sweat when I speak up in class, and whenever I need to call a stranger, it takes me about as long to punch the numbers in as it takes most people to write a midterm. I can talk with appropriate poise, but the first step—opening my mouth—is the most difficult. Needless to say, this makes my summer work and career search much more painful than it needs to be.

In late February, I took a major step in my summer work search by reaching out to two local organizations—one involving history and another working in sports close to my  hometown of Springfield, Illinois. I sent them short e-mails, introducing myself, establishing a connection to their organization, and asking if they had any volunteer opportunities in my area of interest. My inbox remained empty, and I became preoccupied with family issues and homework. As I prepared for an interview a week later, it hit me—I hadn’t received any replies. I wouldn’t be home permanently until May, but I wanted to make plans sooner or later.

I knew what I had to do: I had to make some phone calls.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, may I have your attention please? It’ll just be a moment.

I HAVE A JOB. Can I say it again? I HAVE A JOB.

Why is this so exciting? Just a few entries ago, I wrote that I’d never had a steady paying job. At the school I attended, students were not allowed to work during the school year, and with few summer jobs available, I did volunteer work. It was rewarding, but not in the monetary sense.

I came to Scripps unqualified to take Work Study positions, and so the job search seemed impossible. Every flyer I saw advertising employment had an asterisk and “Work Study Students Only” in the corner. I decided to focus on school and delayed looking for work until Spring 2010, when I faced repeated rejections. In the fall, I went back to the drawing board. I spent a day distributing applications, and had the same conversation over and over:

Me: Hello! I’m turning in an application for this job.
Lady Behind Desk: That’s great! Unfortunately, we stopped accepting applications a week ago.
Me: What? The Gateway says they’re due several weeks from now…

A word of caution: Gateway dates aren’t always correct. Many potential employers don’t give CP&R, who runs the database, application deadlines, and so they often end up putting a sort of “ending date” into the system. If you see a listing on the Gateway that interests you, contact the employer immediately, just in case. I had no idea about any of this when I applied, and so my job search ended fruitlessly.

Until now.

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As I prepare to contact people for possible summer volunteer opportunities and internships, it’s become necessary to dig up my old, ugly resume and give it a makeover. Although I’d looked at examples of a resume in the CP&R Handbook prior to this semester, I’d never met with someone personally to look it over. Note to self: always consult a living, breathing person before sending a document off to a potential employer. Let’s have a look at some pictures of my old resume, which I used for most of last semester:

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Allow me to disclose a very, very shocking secret: I, Katie Evans, have never held a paying job. Have I babysat? Yes. Have I received clothing in exchange for sailing regattas with my father? You bet. But thanks to the horrible summer job market and the strict rules of my boarding school, I’ve never had a conventional part-time position.

Want to hear something I have done? Since the beginning of this semester, I’ve assisted in two on-campus job searches, and I intend on assisting with a third. It feels like every department on campus is looking for new blood this year, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to help. The person who fills these positions impacts my Scripps experience greatly, but once I reached the site of the first interview I realized how helpful it would be for my own future experiences to watch the interviews of others.

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Over the weekend, I checked out a book from CP&R (Yes, you can do that!) to read up on job opportunities. The book I picked was, naturally, Career Opportunities in the Sports Industry, published in 2004. When waiting for appointments, it was one of the books I tended to skim over, and I decided it would be worthwhile to read it in its entirety.

Certain parts of the book were unintentionally funny. Along with conventional career paths such as sportswriting, marketing, and accounting, the book includes sections on becoming professional athletes. For all of these jobs, particularly professional baseball, football, and basketball players, employment prospects are listed as “poor”. The range of salaries for women’s boxers is “difficult to determine due to nature of job” (Field 17), and the duties of a professional baseball player are “playing baseball, training, and keeping in shape” (2). I had to wonder while reading these pages—is anyone aspiring to be a professional athlete going to pick up this book? Considering some athletes enter professional leagues as early as age sixteen, I don’t think they spend much time consulting career counselors.

But I digress. The rest of the book was quite informative, including detailed descriptions of well-known sports jobs and a hierarchy showing you how to get there. The back of the book included a list of universities with helpful academic programs such as sports administration, a list of teams, and a list of relevant publications. Although I am sticking to my foreign language major, the list of publications was especially helpful—the Journal of Sport Management has an office in Champaign, Illinois, about eighty miles from my house. Since I’ll be spending most of next year abroad, this jumped out at me—if I could somehow land a summer internship or even volunteer work at the journal, I could stay home and spend time with my family and friends.

What I found when looking through jobs was to be expected—many of the jobs I covet are often given to former athletes. A non-athlete has more of a chance seeking business-oriented jobs such as a marketing director, promotion director, general manager, or public relations director. I’d thought a few times about marketing, which seems incredibly fun and impacting, but I haven’t found any classes at the 5Cs to gauge my interest. The description of the public relations director’s duties also caught my eye:

“For example, the PR director may be contacted by the family of a 100-year-old fan to inquire if it would be possible to have a birthday card signed by the team. He or she may be called by a family member or physician to have a terminally ill child visited by a team member who may be the child’s idol.” (49)

I think scenes like these create much of the magic of sports, and I’d love to be involved in them. Yet the power of marketing also appeals to me—this is the business that invented Santa Claus and the concept of the teenager.

I think I have a start.