We are young…or we were

So many things have happened in the past few weeks, I just don’t think I can blog about them all. It’s safe to say, however, that all of them have been interesting indeed:

I experienced the movie cliche’ of slowed down time when I walked across the stage at my university graduation. It really felt like I was not moving at all, and that the president was just waiting somewhere in eternity with my folder…

I had several internship options open at once, after a dry spell where no one appeared to be interested in hiring me…

And I just realized last week, I may be getting old at last.

Oh, but not yet, I cry! I’m gonna hold onto my, erm, youth as long as I can. You see, I’ve heard about ageism in the workplace. And it scares me. I’m not alone. Even Joan Rivers does not look  her age (80?) thanks to plastic surgery.

I’m lucky though: my family has the genes for young looks. I still get carded sometimes, and let’s be honest, even Walmart is quite vigilant about selling cough syrup. Where’s your ID?! But it’s not young looks alone that will save you from being discriminated against as someone past 40 and therefore teetering on the edge of the grave.

No, I found that in the broadcasting field, you can look 5, 10, 15 years younger than your real age, and your media tastes and what you know about history will still give you away. Remember Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan? Hey, remember pay phones?

And who were the Beatles and was Billy Idol (William Michael Albert Broad) even young once? (Ok, Billy was well into his thirties by the time I became aware of his awesome existence, but STILL..)

What caused me to start thinking about age? Well, I am currently learning production from a guy who is close to 30, and I was talking with him and another radio station employee in her 20′s, when I realized the awful truth. I can talk about snapchatting and tweeting and Facebook. I’m so very adaptable when it comes to social media. I can like new music as well as old. I can quickly learn any computer program I want. In short, I’m in good standing when it comes to competition for a media-based job regardless of age or ageism. But I’m still not 30 any more!

Just like that.

 

a whimsical sketch

Thanks for following the blog, even though I haven’t been posting in a regular fashion lately. (This is a card I made using my Bamboo tablet, I plan to get better at using it This poor bird reminds me of a Dr. Seuss reject, but he’s still a bit whimsical.) Anyway, I’ve graduated from college, and I still have 5 hours to go to complete my degree in Professional Communication: I’m interning at a radio station, and generally about ready to enter a new set of adventures, I hope! Be back shortly.

“You don’t use …

“You don’t use a serif with a sans serif, I’m just sayin’.”
“YOU’RE a serif.”
“I can’t believe you just said that, what a geek insult.”
“This conversation just went all Times New Roman.”
“Well, we’re not in Georgia anymore.”
“How Jokerman.”

—conversation in class last night

thanks to Amanada, Kerri, and others. I’m totally putting this into one of my stories. This conversation just went all copyright.

I have a new Flickr account!

Troutt11′s photostream on Flickr.

And I love it….I sense there will be a lot of hours spent loading photos onto it. Absolutely love the slideshow feature–what a great way to show off your work.

Mentoring and The Devil Wears Prada: Devil’s Advocate

In  the film version of The Devil Wears Prada, Andy Sachs is a freshly-minted college graduate who gets an assistant’s job at Runway, a popular fashion magazine. She finds a dragon boss (the title character of the film), snooty co-workers, and some unexpected friends at her new office. And she learns to play the game of fashion–in the end Andy earns her boss’ steely smile of approval, but not without criticism.

I can’t help thinking that in some ways it wasn’t exactly Andy’s friends in the organization who were her mentors. It was actually the horrible boss, Miranda Priestly, who helped her the most. Miranda, tough as nails, helped Andy to take her cute little dream of working at a fashion magazine and turn it into something strong and sharp that could be used in another industry.

The definition of mentor is “A wise and trusted counselor or teacher/an influential senior sponsor or supporter.” Miranda was both of these things to Andy. Although “trusted” is not an adjective I would have used to describe her, she fulfilled the other mentorship duties quite well.

I think that there are “dragon” mentors in our lives who we’d rather not talk about. Miranda was one of those in the film. But I remember a certain boss I hated sometimes. He gave me some wise advice. He’d been a business owner for years, and I was quite “green” going into the fashion business. He shook up my ideas of what the job should be. And some of the perceived criticism he doled out then has come in handy as I prepare to graduate from college and start a new career path.

So should mentors flourish a whip and a megaphone while yelling at their clueless assistants to work harder? Not really. But those mentors we never speak of…if we heed the good advice they give us, and ignore the bitterness of its method of delivery, we can profit. You can learn a lot from a dragon.