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Sunday, September 7, 2008

Part II: Local Intern Ode Goes Back to the Future

After my recent post about my intern days at KCTS Television back in the early 90’s, details came flooding back to me. Not necessarily about the internship itself, but the socioeconomic climate of living in Seattle at that time. I couldn’t find work after college. I worked diligently on finding work like it was job itself; a perfect resume, job seeking guidance counseling, job guidebooks, and career interest questionnaires. I applied for jobs in industries that interested me: newspapers, television stations, advertising and marketing firms, and other writer/editor style jobs. Nothing. It got so bad that whenever I received a “thin” envelope in the mail from a place where I applied, I didn’t even bother to open it.

So, as my internship at KCTS was nearly at a close, I really got into the groove of the job and liked it. But I liked money. I liked sleep. I liked to eat. I had no insurance coverage—I wanted medical and dental. I was tired of working my crud job AND doing this internship. I needed the station to give me a paying job. And with the economy then, the depletion of public television funding, it was looking grim.

Then, the beautiful day came right before spring where I was offered a jr. production job with one of the producers. I was thrilled! I felt like Mary Tyler Moore, making it the world! I could turn on the world with my smile I was so happy.

Ah, but like all young ones, especially those who were extra eager and thirsting to grow like me, fall and tend to fall hard. Grant money fell through. No project. No job. No hope. Internship up. Game over.

Back to the crud job, making photocopies and fixing copier jams. I spent a good deal of my spare time sending resumes and figuring out how to pay bills.

I applied at King 5 Television for an associate producer slot at the local show. I applied for it, fully prepared to recycle my thin letter. I actually got an interview. I thought it was a courtesy one, so I didn’t feel nervous. After standard interview stuff, I left and figured I wouldn’t be back.

I did.

The next interview was grueling and I quickly realized that I didn’t have the skills for this and that I didn’t want to learn the skills for this kind of production. So, again, I relaxed, was honest when I didn’t know something, and counted down the time when I would be done. Then I was told I was in the top three. Huh? They asked me to come up with 25 ideas/pitches for the show and come back tomorrow.

I was young and dumb. I wanted insurance. So, I did the assignment. It was very hard. But I worked hard because I felt like I had too. My boyfriend at the time mentioned that they are probably NOT going to hire me and that they’ll just rip off my ideas. I didn’t believe that at first, but when you are tired, worn thin, and it’s 1:00 AM and you need five more ideas, you believe anything. So, I made a note to self: need different boyfriend, need different plan, need to be honest, need sleep.

I went to the third interview, exhausted, lackluster, and got hammered. In the end I got rejected for the job. I suspect young job seekers these days, in this economy, have the same battle. I would hope they wouldn’t beat themselves up, but I know they do.

Readers/Bloggers: Job tales you want to share? Lessons learned?

11 comments:

JosephMcG said...

I was thirty, trying to figure out how to be an assertive Black man in a predominantly White church and I had a chance to go to Pittsburgh and work for an African American priest for a summer... I felt so relieved... there was a place for me... I got there, not only was there no job for me but I quickly discoved that a number of parishoners were very frustrated about one of the folks who had been there for years and knew what people needed without asking them...
I brought the info to the priest; he refused to take any steps to change things; and recognizing I was in the wrong place, I spent the next painful month trying to make some sort of contribution to the parish...
Then I finally decided it was time to go back home; I left disillusioned..
Three years later, the staff person was gone; a year later the priest... I was so sorry about the priest's leaving because he was very gifted;
At the same time I had mixed feelings about it all... he and I had a chance to talk six years later and we made amends...
Unfortunately for all the wonderful people he touched, he died early--- brain cancer...
I learned a lot about fear and frustration and failure... I also met some of the most beautiful people in Pittsburgh...
Lots of confusion...
Lots of pain...
Lots of love...

(tremendous post, Kim... did you party hard--- Tuesday is my birthday)

Joseph

Kim Thompson said...

I know your b-day is 9/9! Watch this forum (hee, hee).

Thanks for sharing your work experience. It is such an epiphany when you realize you are not in the right place.

In the end, there is always some sort of a gift, isn't there?

JosephMcG said...

Hee, hee back at you...
First, it is just great to be able to think and feel again after my first run in with gout (I realize that this disease has been causing me troubles over the year, but I never put a name to it until three weeks ago) and one of the great gifts is one friend, Sally, taking time to talk to me about staying hydrated, eating a lot of fruit (sweet... got that advice from Jaynie Jones) and vegetables;
Sally also encouraged me to take my time and not push to hard...
Then tomorrow another friend is joining me for lunch at one and she will be bringing me over a tofu-vegetable meal;
But you know what is just making me flip and flop with happiness... tonight I go for my first time to a charistmatic prayer group (three women are participating in it) and I have been hungering to join a group for four years!!!
I am smiling about so much...
Take care...

Stephanie Frieze said...

Wonderfully written post, Kim!

When I needed to leave CA and come home to WA with four children and a mother in tow, I arrived with no job and nowhere to live. A U-Haul and a 1976 Buick station held us and our worldly possessions. Literally the day before I was going to move us into a tent at the state park we found a place to live. I applied for a job with the Ocean Beach School district in the library of one of the elementary schools, but someone with less experience (I had worked for the main branch of the Alameda County Library system in CA)but who already worked for the district got the job without my even getting an interview per the clerical contract. I took my own crud job in a bakery scraping floors and washing baking equipment and bathrooms to put food on the table for my family. I was on the substitute list with the school district as an aide and subbed whenever it meshed with my work schedule. Then right before Christmas the owner of the bakery, henceforth known as McScrooge, laid me off. The story has a reasonably happy ending. My unemployment from CA paid better than the bakery job and got me through until a position opened up with the school district.

KR said...

My first job, age 17, underqualified daycare worker in a federally funded daycare for the children of migrant workers (and it was the Reagan era - isn't that wierd?):

One morning I stopped to admire the very new baby of one of the moms dropping her toddler off in our room...the mom had just given birth 5 days earlier and was headed back out to the fields to pick cherries. She'd worked till she was in labor, high up in the trees. Cherry season is short, after all.

Kim Thompson said...

Stephanie and KR:

What poignant stories. Thanks for sharing. Stephanie, it's amazing what we are capable when we have to be and how fate intertwines when we need it the most.

KR, you know how that story grabs me. That experience and teaching will stay forever, huh?

Kim

Lorraine Hart said...

You don't know how much it does my heart good, to hear all the stories of strong, intelligent women...not just surviving but quietly learning and leading by example.

Lorraine Hart said...

I remember one particular audition that I was determined to fit-in...in a day that was crammed with rehearsals, nearly until time to go onstage at the Lonestar Roadhouse in Manhattan. I was having a lot of pain...but the show must go on...and I wanted that audition. I made it uptown and downtown...and back to the middle...did the show in a cold sweat...drove people home...then drove to the ER to find out a kidney-stone had ruptured the tube from right kidney to bladder! I didn't get the tour-slot...but I made that audition and a gazillion others.

Hat's off...and a tip o' the teacup to hard work and dreams.

Kim Thompson said...

A kidney stone? Oh my!

Now that's hard work, determination, and GUTS, Lorraine!

As I read this, I am drinking tea! Tipped back at you friend!

Stephanie Frieze said...

You know, Lorraine, that you're lucky (we're lucky) that you're here to tell the tale?

Patty Cake said...

Job hunting IS difficult, I surely do know! I lost the most rewarding position I EVER had 11 months ago and still do not have a full time job to replace what I lost. I have been on numerous interviews. It IS a tough job market and one can easily get down after being rejected so many times.

For me there is no lesson in pain.