How I Got Here

I had lived in the suburbs of Michigan all my life, so graduating and coming to New York was not a natural progression. I have no relatives here, and really no connections to speak of. I had only visited New York once, for a weekend in 2002.

My junior year I started to think more seriously about what I wanted to do. I declared my majors--English and Spanish. Whenever I would tell people this (mainly relatives and family friends) their response was almost ALWAYS, "Oh. So are you going to be a teacher?" This drove me absolutely nuts. Not that I have anything against teachers--there are four in my family!--it was just frustrating that no one thought there were any other options for English majors. And the worst part was that I was starting to believe them.

I think it was February of that year that I attended a Careers in Publishing workshop*. It was being held at U of M for three days, hosted by an alum who had made a very successful career for herself in the business. There were speakers, group projects, a tour--I learned a lot. I was excited; this was something I could really picture myself doing for living.

After that I applied to no less than 35 internship programs. The jobs were all over the country, but mostly in New York. I checked the job boards at bookjobs.com, on individual publishing websites, and mediabistro.com. I made sure to tweak my resume to include the workshop and anything else I did that was relevant to publishing (e.g. working on a literary journal). In the end, I only got two callbacks and one phone interview. But most importantly, that phone interview turned into a summer internship for a well-respected publisher in New York. I was thrilled--ecstatic!--knowing that I had gotten in on my own merits.

I was so happy, I was able to overlook one small snag: this internship was an unpaid position in one of the most expensive cities in America.

(* I think the workshop will be held again this year. Contact the Michigan Communcation Studies department for information)