Reader Kevin B. wrote:
I have had a few internships, but no long term employment other than waiting tables. I’m currently looking for my first job as an assistant, but everywhere I look (entertainmentcareers, UTA, etc.) is asking for at least a year of experience if not more. How do I get experience if even the most entry level positions require it?
You’ve fine-tuned your resume and honed your cover letter.
You’re blasting out to every posting on EntertainmentCareers and the UTA Job list.
But after you land your first internship, are you making the most of it?
My first internship was at Maxim Magazine.
I line edited Heineken advertorial copy, pitched Keystone “insert” ideas, and sorted the magazine’s archive. The entire semester I thought I did a terrific job.
In 2009, my mother and I were watching some procedural alphabet soup show, CSI or NCIS or one of those lot. A Korean spy wanted to blow up the Pentagon made of duct tape and Kleenex.
“This is awful. I could write something better than this.”
My mother looked at me. “If you think you can do it better, do it better.”
I think my friend Bevin introduced the idea of sympathy vs. feedback idea to me:
When someone complains to her about something, first she lets them get it all out
Then she asks (I’m paraphrasing), “Okay. What are you looking: sympathy or feedback?”
I worked on my first online business — a site called FightingBroke.com — for 4 years. In its first iteration, it was a personal finance site for young people working in Hollywood.
This article is about social media addiction.
We will get there…
But to find our way, we have to first talk about Joanna Jędrzejczyk (pronounced Yon-Jay-Check).
Joanna Jędrzejczyk is one of the most decorated women MMA fighters in the history of the sport. Before she dominated the women’s strawweight division, she won over 60 Thai boxing matches. She’s landed the most significant strikes in UFC championship history (225), plus the highest significant strike differential in UFC championship history (142).
The assistant next to me, Katie, worked for the hardest working executive in the office. By extension, that made her the hardest working assistant. She was smart, excellent with clients, and beautiful (she was an ex-Ford model).
She was also the worst paid.
“Are you fucking joking?” she whispered.
In my favorite half-hour comedy, How I Met Your Mother, the characters Lily and Marshall had a series of long-term bets about the future.
“Barney will watch the sex tape.”
“Marshall will go bald.”
“Ted and Robin will end up together.”
This inspired me to keep track of my own bets for certain decisions in my life. I’d record the decision, write down a few sentences about my reasoning, and revisit it a year (or more) later.
The first musical I remember listening to was Miss Saigon. My mother played the cassette on weekends, and we listened to it dozens of times. As a boy, I tried assembling the story by the songs alone: Why did Chris leave Kim so suddenly? Why did he marry Ellen? For years, for some reason, I thought she was stuck in a Vietnamese jail with her son Tam, not hiding in a village.
A couple weeks ago, I saw the musical for the first time, and songs like Why God Why? and I Still Believe transported me back to those weekends, that cassette, those moments wondering what transpired between Chris and Kim.