What is a “real” job anyway?
Posted by Cassandra | Filed under Career
Since I started my internship at the National Post last week, family from all over the country has been congratulating me and asking me about the future of my career. (Mostly on Facebook, but that’s because I’ve been posting the links to my articles on my profile almost daily.)
Although I tend to be a little too modest in person, I’m more than happy to receive praise from them online. What I hate, however, are the questions about my post-graduation job.
In less than a month, I will be finished my four years as an undergrad. As I mentioned last week, I’ve already lined up a post-grad job at TalentEgg.ca as the editor of its new online career magazine, the TalentEgg Career Incubator.
I’ve been working part-time from on that project for a few weeks now and I absolutely love it and I can’t wait to devote to it the time and energy it deserves and needs to really get off the ground.
Being an intern takes up most of my day right now and although I love many aspects of journalism, there are times when I truly hate being a reporter. I hate it the most when I have to be aggressive and part of The Pack.
The Pack is a group of three or more reporters crowded around an interview source in a public place, like a political office, a court house or an event. We have to chase people down who often don’t want to say anything to the media and who are probably intimidated by all of us shoving microphones and voice recorders in their face.
I had to do it on Thursday while covering a court appearance by two local businessmen accused of murdering one of the men’s uncles, and again on Monday when I was shipped up to Vaughan to cover a closed-door meeting at city hall. Both stories were short and neither contained much news, but they were the two most stressful stories of any I’ve written since I started at the National Post.
Now, I’ve known I didn’t like this type of reporting since Day One, but I’ve had to suck it up to get through journalism school in one piece.
Meanwhile, I can’t wait to work on the Incubator when I get home each night and I really enjoy doing it. But sitting at my computer doesn’t make for very good stories to tell family and friends.
So, inevitably, I get asked the big question by well-meaning friends and relatives: Do you think the National Post will hire you when your internship is finished?
Well, no, I say. The newspaper industry is, for the most part, cutting jobs, not creating them. And the company which owns the National Post (and most of the large media outlets in Canada), Canwest, is in financial trouble.
As much as I love having my work published for purely narcissistic reasons, I’m graduating at possibly the worst time ever for journalists. Almost every seasoned journalist I’ve talked to since I started at the Post is watching their back, and for good reason.
Besides, I already have a job. I don’t know if I could turn TalentEgg away if something like a reporting job at the Post came knocking. And, if I did, it wouldn’t be for the right reason.
That reason would be that I feel pressure to have what the middle-aged (or older) people who are extremely interested in my life consider a “real” job. Many of them don’t even understand what email is. When I try to explain what TalentEgg is and what I do at the Incubator, they just don’t get it.
And I think some of them would rather see me choose a job in a dying, somewhat backward industry which they can identify with than a role at an online company. They don’t say it, but I can see it in their eyes and body language as we go through the conversation.
I have no plans to ignore my own feelings and desires, but it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about since last week. And it’s something I’ll have to come to terms with.
Have any of you chosen something your family or friends don’t consider to be a “real” job? Would you?
Tags: "real" jobs, internship, National Post, newspaper industry, reporting, story, TalentEgg
I'm a writer and editor just starting my career at 
March 12th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Hells ya!
I’m a PhD student – in history, of all things. So apparently I don’t even *live* in the real world, let alone work there. I once had a relative say to me, very dismissively, "Well, it must be nice to sleep in every morning. In the real world we can’t get away with that." Hmm. Well, in the *real* world, you also get weekends off. And evenings. So yeah, I sleep in. Setting my own schedule is one of the few perks of my job. And yeah, it’s a job: I get paid a decent salary (thank you SSHRC!!**), I have a boss to report to, I’m concerned about career advancement, and I do work. A lot of work. Hard work. That’s what most people don’t get. I tell them I’m a student of history, and they get all weird. Why? I’ll tell you: there’s no *practical* application. "Do you want to become a teacher?" is a question I’ve answered six hundred million times, and every time I hear it I get just a little bit closer to strangling someone.
I’m not in this for practical, hard, material reasons. I’m not building a better bomb or streamlining a corporate portfolio. I’m in this for the advancement of human knowledge and understanding. And as difficult and esoteric as that may sound, it’s an extremely important pursuit. One that I will defend to the death to all comers, and to all the non-beleivers who accuse me of avoiding the *real* world. I see the reality of the world in all kinds of historical dimensions that your average cubical drone can’t even conceive of. I know how all the little laptop coffee jockey jobs fit into wider historical processes. I can trace your cup of coffee to 18th century imperialism and slavery. I know how your affinity for exotic foods and media gadgets is tied to a world-system of globalized capitalism. The nation you call home is a historical falsity, an ongoing project of cultural construction based on Western liberal values born of the Enlightenment. The cars you drive and the nice corporate suburban life you live: these are all products of a mere 80 year process of late-capitalist, post-fordist modernization. They are not God given lifestyles that will exist in perpetuity. They are illusions born of historical amnesia.
What I’m trying to say here is that historians (and academics more generally), in grappling with these issues on a day to day basis, have to live with in a world of constant challenge and change. These are things I grapple with and think about on a daily basis. Seriously, deeply, and with great concern for the future. So if living in an oblivious corporate bubble, blind to the workings of the market economy and cultural commonsense that structure all our lives – if this is the REAL world, I want none of it.
Antonio Gramsci, an Italian socialist imprisoned in the 1920s for his critique of Italy’s fascist dictatorship, wrote in his famous Prison Notebooks: "Many people have to be pursuaded that studying too is a job, and a very tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship – involving muscles and nerves as well as intellect. It is a process of adaptation, a habit acquired with effort, tedium and even suffering." He was right. But as Eleanor Roosevelt, that great First Lady of America, once said: "What is to give light must endure the burning."
I burn for you. And do so without thanks, understanding, or (if Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have their way**) a regular paycheque. But I don’t mind. Someone’s gotta do it.
[** The Harper government is proposing re-tooling the SSHRC funding for post-secondary research so that money is diverted away from the humanities towards programs that offer Business degrees. Because apparently the humanities aren't underfunded enough, and apparently business degrees don't fund themselves. What's wrong with this picture? If this concerns you, see the NDP petition against these changes, here: http://nikiashton.ndp.ca/sshrc ]
March 13th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’m doing an internship at a small daily Nova Scotia newspaper starting next Monday. I’m somewhat terrified of working in a newsroom, actually. This particular paper just tossed a reporter and an editor because of cutbacks. It’s a terrible time to be getting into this line of work.
I plan on taking a Multimedia course after my second year in Journalism. I’m much more interested in writing for online outlets anyway. I want to eventually run my own music website, focusing on bands from the Atlantic Provinces.
I really like your blog. Very well-written. It reflects more than a few things I’m going through right now, Journalism-wise. I’ll be reading regularly.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:35 am
Before I took my high-paying, tech industry cube job, I was a flight attendant. I made $1000/mo. and had fun, so according to everyone else it wasn’t a "real" job. I’m not really sure what makes "boring and miserable" a "real" job and something fun a "fake" job, but… I hope I get back to one of those not real jobs again, sometime soon, although hopefully this time in the tech industry somewhere. For all that my older relatives don’t get them, I find those kinds of jobs a lot more satisfying.