What is a “real” job anyway?

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?

Feeling naked and apprehensive

Most of the time when we transition between one part of life and into another, it’s not so obvious until it’s already passed. We don’t realize everything is different until the change has already occurred and we certainly don’t pause to think about it or be nervous about it.

My six weeks as news editor and production manager of The Ryersonian finished Wednesday. We went out to the pub as a group after deadline on Tuesday night and our professor paid for the food and drinks.

It’s incredible what you don’t know about people, especially authority figures, until you share a pitcher of beer with them.

And after we delivered the last newspapers around campus on Wednesday morning as a group, the five of us went for breakfast at a greasy spoon nearby.

I’ve hated working in groups my entire academic career. At least one person (usually me) is taken advantage of and gets stuck with most, if not all, of the work once the others realize he or she will work hard enough to get a good mark whether they help or not. I’ve had dozens of terrible group experiences.

But this group was incredible and we knew it would be before we even started working together.

Sure, it was stressful sometimes and we were short with each other once in a while as the 5 p.m. deadline crept up every Tuesday, but we tried not to take ourselves too seriously while at the same time giving one another the mutual respect we all deserved.

After spending at least five or six days a week with these people, I now feel naked without them. Three of the others are staying in Toronto for their internships, like me, but my closest friend left for Vancouver on Saturday morning.

We became even closer while on the masthead and it feels strange that I can’t call her up right now to chat about something, or nothing. We lived a few blocks away from each other and we saw or spoke to each other almost every day.

I did her highlights in the bathroom of her boyfriend’s apartment (she moved out of hers during Reading Week) and we tried to chat like normal. We acted like it wasn’t a big deal that we wouldn’t see each other for the next two months.

The goodbye was sad and I rushed it so I wouldn’t cry. I sent her a text message later to tell her how much I would miss her, but that I hoped she had a great experience. (How Gen Y am I?)

I’ve spent the days since then working on the new project I mentioned in my last post. We officially launched it today.

The TalentEgg Career Incubator is an online career magazine for Canadian post-secondary students and recent graduates, and an extension of the main TalentEgg.ca website. I’m the editor.

I’m still working on putting together a larger writing team (if anyone is interested in writing for us, please let me know) and it’s a bit of a work in progress, but we’re so excited about it and so looking forward to turning it into an invaluable resource for Canadian students and recent graduates, especially considering the current economic climate.

I’m having so much fun being part of the TalentEgg team again and working with the really bright, ambitious students and recent grads who have volunteered to contribute content. Lauren and I are also working on putting together some fun (but also purposeful) group activities for the team once it grows a bit.

And, of course, my personal life is extremely tumultuous at the moment as well. I won’t go into details, but my life will be probably changing a lot very soon. It’s sad, but it’s something which needs to be done if I’m going to start my life on the right foot.

I’m also starting my internship at the National Post tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. The editor I’m working with told me to show up with “ideas and enthusiasm,” and to be honest, I’m a little short on both at the moment. I’m so nervous and I’m still not sure if it was the right choice for me, but it’s too late to go back now. I just hope I can do an amazing job there and leave feeling good about my work.

I suppose I’m just a worry wart. I love change when it comes, but until it actually arrives and I’m certain about what’s happening, all I can do is worry, worry and worry some more.

If you put in the effort, someone will notice

If you put in the effort, someone will notice. Sometimes. If you’re lucky.

The older members of Generation Y, like me, have grandparents and parents who are self-made men and women as inspiration for their own success. As many Gen Y denouncers suggest as a flaw, when Gen Y was growing up we were told if we work hard enough there’s nothing we can’t achieve or obtain.

What they didn’t tell us, however, was that this depends on someone else noticing and appreciating our hard work.

My dad is the best example of a self-made man I can think of, and a big believer in this philosophy.

For years, he worked as a cable guy, and in mines and oil fields in northern Alberta and the territories. He went to trade school in the early 1990s to become an electrician and, although my parents had to file for bankruptcy shortly after, it was probably the best thing he ever did.

He worked as an electrician for years, hauling around a heavy tool belt, crawling into small spaces, handling tiny wires and spending weeks in the cold while working on projects in the winter. His work at the airport caught the attention of one of the largest car rental companies in North America and they created a position just for him: he became the facilities manager for all of Toronto.

After almost a decade there, he was offered the opportunity to defect to a competitor (another large car rental company) to oversee locations across the country.

Although there are stressful days when he wishes he was back doing manual labour for a living, he has a comfortable mostly-office job with an impressive salary, especially for someone who didn’t go to university or college. He also has lots of perks like a company car, free gas, plenty of vacation time, an assistant and the ear of the president of the company.

As an unmarried, childless twenty-something working hundreds of kilometres below the earth’s surface in a mine in the early 1980s, he probably had no idea what his career would look like at age 52. He could have followed almost any path.

Today, most young people attend college or university to obtain some kind of speciality and, honestly, some kind of direction or certainty as to which direction our careers will take.

But in today’s economy, many of us are facing the same uncertainty our parents faced at our age.

If there’s one thing I learned from my dad’s career path, it’s that I should work hard at any and every opportunity which comes my way in order to succeed, whether it’s the ideal project or position or not.

For example, when I was hired as a sales and marketing intern at TalentEgg last summer, I was happy to have a paying job at a great company after months of searching. But I was also disappointed I wasn’t able to land my dream journalism internship.

After all, isn’t that what I’m going to university for, what I’m paying tens of thousands of dollars for? Journalism, not sales and marketing.

But I sucked it up and hid my disappointment as best as possible.

I probably wasn’t the ideal salesperson and I had no formal marketing training, but I wanted to learn. And I discovered I was more interested in it and more capable than I thought. Besides, I really believed in the company and the people I worked with were great.

I’m not a one-trick dog and neither is anyone else.

I suppose I wasn’t such a terrible sales and marketing intern after all because Lauren, my boss and the president of TalentEgg, kept talking to me, and became a mentor and friend once I stopped formally working for the company and went back to school in September.

But I never stopped working. I offered to spend some of my time blogging and agreed to represent the company on related blogs and message boards. I made myself available as someone to bounce ideas off of and tried to communicate my genuine interest in the ongoing success of the company.

This week, Lauren offered me the opportunity to head up a new project at TalentEgg. I’ll provide more details once it officially launches. For now I’ll just say I’m extremely excited about it.

It’s creative. It’s online. It involves writing, editing and managing people. And it’s paid.

Although it’s earlier in the year, I find myself in the same position I did last spring. I’ve been applying for journalism jobs for months and haven’t been able to land anything.

The difference between this year and last year is I’m not disappointed to take this position. I’m fired up about it. It’s all I think about. I’m not just grateful for a job, any job, I’m starting one I love at a company I believe in and feel connected to.

I’ve worked hard at many things over the last year and TalentEgg was one of them. I didn’t expect anything out of it – I really wanted to do it. But Lauren noticed and now she’s placing value on my work.

More details about the project to come in the next week or two.

What has paid off for you once someone noticed how hard you were working?