Tag Archives: Publishing

What Taylor Swift and Anne Hathaway Didn’t Tell Me: Interning in NYC Edition

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In her “Welcome to New York” ballad, Taylor Swift speaks of bright lights and bustling streets. In The Devils Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway’s character enters magazine publishing with wide eyes, a vulnerable heart, and a lumpy khaki blazer. What, you may ask, connects the two? Well first off, the city that Swift glamorizes and the city that Hathaway tries to navigate is the same place: New York City. Their second connection? I listened to and watched both on my way to NYC this summer. I was equally as sparkly as Swift’s lyrics and equally as optimistic as Hathaway. I was envisioning all possible scenarios, dreaming big, but also completely naïve. I had no idea what to expect. But luckily, everything worked out for the best. I didn’t turn into Hathaway (thankfully), I didn’t transform into the glamorous Swift-ian city-goer (darn), but I did learn more about magazines and myself than I ever imagined possible. If you’re interested in knowing what Taylor Swift and Anne Hathaway didn’t prepare me for this summer, but what I actually managed to learn on my own, read on:

  1. People are great
    Specifically, networking with people is great. One of the most fulfilling experiences I had this summer was meeting with alumnae, going to lunch with the people I worked with, and making genuine connections with professionals. Not only does networking get SO MUCH EASIER with practice, you will also find yourself wanting to network at any given chance. The key, I learned, to networking is to never doubt yourself. It’s hard to say “be yourself” because chances are a lot of us don’t really know who we are just yet. But what I did, and what you can do too, is silence that voice in your head that is making you apprehensive. You are worthy of anyone’s time, now go for it.
  2. Asking questions is a learned skill
    Start with what you know, then follow with a question. The best thing I improved upon this summer was how I asked questions. For example, I would say “I know that we receive RFPs from advertisers first, but my question now is – what work then needs to be done on our end?” You’ll let the person know how brilliant you are, but that you also want to learn more. But don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know anything. For instance, I asked on multiple occasions: “What’s an RFP?”
  3. Business casual is cool, even when the weather is not
    Yes, I wear business casual on a daily basis. I love a good ballet flat, ask any of my friends. But Claremont weather is much, much different than NYC weather. The key to living in hot, humid weather while also being on a budget? Creativity. I brought a grand total of three pencil skirts, two button-down blouses, and a variety of other professional-ish clothes with me. And I still managed to dress myself for 10 weeks. I realized that I didn’t need a huge salary to keep my outfits interesting and different. I even snuck in a crop top to work (shh, don’t tell my supervisors).
  4. A Scripps degree (or any liberal arts degree) is actually pragmatic
    I felt smart this summer. Like genuinely intelligent. Although I was primarily assisting in client relations from the advertising sales side of ELLE DECOR Magazine, many of the things I’ve learned at Scripps came into play. As an English major, it’s my job to write goodly. But from the interdisciplinary and analytic thinking skills I’ve acquired over the years, I was able to easily adapt, learn, and process information this summer. I was assigned a final project that had me connect interior design to banking. Say whaaat? But due to Scripps’ challenging courses and encouragement to actually think, I had no problem doing my job. And I am so thankful for that.
  5. Bagels are better in NYC
    This has absolutely no connection to anything career related, but it’s true. And you know Ms. Swift doesn’t eat bagels, so take it from me.

 

 

Playing in the Sandbox

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Recently, my high school celebrated its annual Writer’s Week, and I was more than a little jealous I couldn’t be there. As an aspiring writer, I savor the opportunities I had to engage in conversations with inspirations such as Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and novelist Gail Tsukiyama. And except for one strange experience with an author who buried her cat beneath her study so that its bones would be under her while she was writing, each writer I’ve met has reaffirmed my passion for writing.

Fortunately, Scripps is far from lacking in opportunities to explore my passions, and this week was no exception. Earlier this month, three Scripps alumnae (Fantasy author Melanie Rawn ’75, Web Content writer Julia Cook ’05 and Children’s Book author Stacia Deutsch ’91) volunteered their time to speak to eager Scrippsies about their careers in writing.

Like every other time I’d met with an author, I left inspired, but this experience did what none before had: It reaffirmed not just my passion, but also my conviction that I could achieve my dreams. Beyond practical advice for navigating the publishing world and finding an agent, the writers also encouraged us to never limit ourselves. Rawn encouraged us to be like children in a sandbox, building up castles and gleefully ravaging them until we learn what types of shovels we need to create a world that works best for us.

These writers all used a variety of metaphorical shovels to reach their current state. Their degrees (English, yes, but also History and Religious Studies) and previous jobs helped them to build a satisfying writing career from them. Melanie Rawn, for example, used her historical expertise as a foundation to create intricate, believable alternative worlds. Each of those women had sat in my place between seven and thirty-seven years ago, and if they could achieve their dreams, my own certainly couldn’t be out of reach.

Furthermore, each writer wrote in drastically different forms. While Melanie Rawn wrote fantasy, Julia Cook wrote for the web. Stacia Deutsch had ghost written Nancy Drew and transformed movie scripts like The Black Night into novels, and even wrote the Simon & Schuster young adult romance novel below, part of the collection that had been my guilty pleasure throughout middle school.

With so many available avenues to explore writing, I left confident that I would find at least one that would lead me to my personalized version of success.

Admittedly, as Melanie Rawn reminded us, “there is no type of writing that is easy.” Luckily for me, there’s also no type of writing that’s off limits, and there’s no type of writing that I’m not willing to try.

Besides, I’m willing to work hard so that when I’m done playing in my sandbox, my sand castle will be the best in town.

“Oh, you’re an English major?”

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There are two common responses when I say I’m an English major: “Do you want to be a teacher?” or “Ah, so you want to work at Starbucks.”

While I can respond definitively that no, I don’t want to work as a professional barista forever, teaching is a less black and white career choice for me. I’d love to teach, but I feel like I’ll need quite a few more years learning before I can take on that responsibility.

To that, there’s only one response: “So, what do you want to do?”

I’ve never understood why “What don’t I want to do?” isn’t an acceptable answer.

I want to be a writer. That much is clear. In terms of my day job, I’ve considered journalism, publishing, editing, really anything that will allow me to get my opinions out there in the medium I love – the written word.

A little less than a year ago, I was deciding between starting my new life at Scripps or at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. One of the (many) reasons I ultimately chose Scripps is that the field of journalism is changing rapidly. With new technology constantly shaking up the industries I’m interested in, how could I possibly be certain a position I want would still exist by the time I graduate?

For the most part, I’ve accepted that I can’t be sure about my future until the future of the fields I’m looking at starts to settle down a bit. And then I stumble across an article like “Not All College Majors are Created Equal” from the Washington Post. (An article that, by the way, I read after Facebook informed me a friend had read– further testimony to the adjustments newspapers are making to stay relevant.)

“I have this game I play when I meet college students,” columnist Michelle Singletary declares. Her game is, based on a student’s major, guessing if they will get a job upon graduating. “An English major with no internships or any plan of what she might do with the major to earn a living? No job.”

I would like to point out that any major “with no internships or any plan” will likely fail to get a job, but the fact remains that English majors are most doubted. And such public declarations of doubt, especially when made by someone working in a field I’m considering, don’t do much for my confidence in my dreams. Or, should I say, my confidence that I should give myself time to choose my dreams.

Nonetheless, for now I’m sticking to the appetizers in the metaphorical meal of my career. I did an internship at my local newspaper last summer; maybe a publishing house will be next. This way, when it comes time to order my main course, I’ll know what’s on the menu, and I’ll be ready to feast.

Declared!

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For awhile now, one item has stayed a constant on my to-do list: “declare major.”

Ever since I can remember (so apparently since I first learned what college was, how majors worked, and what options there were for majors), I have wanted to major in English. For awhile in high school, I’d go through my “double major phases.” For instance, after I got back from studying abroad in France, I was definitely going to double major in English and French. And then I went through an American history phase, and I wanted to double major in English and History. And then English and American Studies. And then English and Religious Studies. ..You can probably continue the pattern yourself.

When I actually got to Scripps last year and started fulfilling my general requirements, I realized that the one constant in my academic life has been my desire to be an English major and that I’m not really equally passionate about one other subject enough to double major in anything. Once I had this realization, I have been quite content with my decision to have one major, and to have it be English. (I’m apparently the exception to the general rule that you will change your intended major before you graduate.)

Since this decision was firmly made, in my head at least, I decided that I might as well declare now rather than later and just get that paperwork out of the way.

Last week, I finally filled in my forms, talking to my British Literature professor Matz to request him to be my advisor, and turned all into the Registrar’s Office, which as far as I can tell means I’m officially an English major.

One decision I made while looking over the requirements for the major again is to pursue the Honors program. I do like challenging myself, but I mainly want to try for Honors because it is recommended for those students interested in going to graduate school, which I think is a definite possibility for me. I kind of see it as a “why not?” option; I’m only majoring in one subject, with no minor, so I do have the time to devote to my English studies. I talked it over with my advisor, and he does think it is a strong possibility for me.

Although one’s major often has nothing to do with their future career, whether intentionally or accidentally, for me it is very much the first step towards my life after school.

My love for English has a direct correlation to the careers I’m interested in, because those careers are basically defined as anything that has to do with literature (book criticism, publishing, anything that involved writing, etc.). I see my major as a way of building a solid foundation for my future internships and jobs, while also having the option of electives so that I can concentrate a bit more in the specific areas I’m interested in. This major can supplement that “self-education” I spoke about in one my earlier posts (or vice versa, I suppose: my self-education supplementing my major)—for instance, how could one successfully judge a book through a review without a basic knowledge of literary history, “classics,” and other writers?

No Longer Wanting to be a Journalist?

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I have always wanted to be a writer, and ideally within the realm of creative writing. However, being realistic, I have also recognized for a long time that one cannot simply graduate from college and become a full-time novelist—at least not if one wants to actually be able to pay rent and eat. This in mind, being a novelist has always been my “slightly unrealistic” career choice that I am determined to pursue, but is also secondary to something slightly more… likely to have a salary.

But what was this “real” career going to be? As much as I want to be a writer, with my busy life I find it hard to sit down and write consistently without solid motivation. Asking myself what best motivates me, and figuring that out to be a looming deadline and the idea of being accountable to others, I put two and two together and settled on magazine or newspaper journalism. For the past two or three years, when asked what I wanted to do after school, I would answer, “Well, I want to be a writer but I’ll probably go into journalism.” It sounded perfect to me, since I would still get writing published frequently, would write because I would have deadlines and topics assigned to me, and could explore other interests such as popular culture and current events.

The past couple of months, however, I’ve started to question this “perfect” career path more and more. Being a journalist still appeals to me; it’s easy to imagine the places I could possibly go and the people I could meet. It sounds like a job that would lead me to be much more engaged with the world more than, say… being a writer, sitting alone in a room with a laptop. And being engaged, through having a variety of experiences, meeting new people, and making a difference, is very important to me.

At the same time, I’ve started to realize that image of the Journalist is less that of a supreme writer—though this is important—and more that of a Researcher, researching the latest scoop and following a story through to its end. The journalist is out there to relay the “truth” or, at least, their opinion, to the public—not just to write. As my passion for literature continues to develop, I’m starting to wonder which I would like more—being a journalist and involved with the world? Or concentrating on something literary, my true passion? (Of course, the ideal job for me is a combination of these two: book critic.)

It is because of this re-thinking that I have recently turned to publishing as another plausible career path. Although it is a business that does not necessarily involve writing, I would be constantly emerged in the world of literature and books. This is not to say I would never try journalism; I’m still very young and am open to a variety of possible careers and internships. I have also started to consider continuing studies and eventually becoming an English professor, which is a profession I used to always believe I would not like. I’m not sure if I would be a good teacher or not, but the idea of being so knowledgeable about a field and then sharing my passion with others appeals to me. It’s too early to truly decide what I want to do, especially since it is now apparent that my ideas are changing constantly.

Of course, no matter what I ended up doing, I will always work on my creative writing on the side.