Edit tests

Yesterday, I met with an editor about an edit test that I'd taken months ago. The meeting was definitely a little harsh - but I'd been expecting that. After all, if my edit test had been great I would have gotten the job!

She gave me lots of helpful advice. But the main thing I took away from the meeting was that I need to be more willing to take risks.

This is weird to me. In life, I'm a big risk taker. In fact, my birthday's coming up next month, and the item at the top of my wishlist is skydiving lessons.

But looking back on my edit tests, I realize that I've been a weenie.

In my job hunt so far, I've taken three edit tests. One for a teen magazine, one for a celebrity tabloid, and one for a health magazine. Obviously, I got none of those jobs. And in every case, I'm guessing my edit test would have been better if I was more willing to take risks.

For the teen magazine, there was a picture we were supposed to caption. I came up with a huge list of ideas that cracked my friends up. But when it came time to choose the final caption, I second guessed myself. I worried that my captions were too weird, too out-there, that the editor wasn't looking for zaniness. And so I went with something safer. And yesterday, when I was meeting with the editor, she told me that the caption was boring. Nothing special. She had been looking for something to make her laugh outloud.

Strike one for playing it safe.

So I went back and looked at my celebrity tabloid edit test. They'd asked us to write a 200 word piece on what our favorite celebrity had been doing that week. So I wrote up a cute, quirky, cutting piece on Lindsay Lohan's post-rehab activities, a piece that would be more at home on Go Fug Yourself than in this particular magazine. And then, once again, I overanalyzed and fretted. I decided it was too mean, that there were too many pop culture references. And so I edited it down until it was a straightforward news item, something you'd see coming off the AP wire. Last night I asked a friend what she thought of it. "Well, it's fine," she said, obviously wondering why I was going crazy over a test I took back in March. "I mean, it's well-written. But it doesn't have any heart, you know?"

Strike two.

With trepidation, I pulled out my health magazine edit test. We'd been asked to come up with some ideas for articles. I'd flipped through old articles of the magazine, asked my doctor dad to get me some health journals to look in for ideas, and noticed an amazing trend that could probably be a huge, really interesting article. And then I thought to myself, well, they probably don't want their editorial assistant to be overly ambitious. So I left my great idea off the edit test! Crazy, right? Now, looking back at the ideas I ended up putting down, I can see that they're standard stuff - perfectly fine for the magazine, but nothing that would make me stand out from the crowd of EA hopefuls.

So from now on, I'm going to take more risks. If I think an idea is good, I'm going to use it. If something makes my friends laugh, I'm not going to worry about whether or not it's too quirky.

It was a tough lesson to learn - it's almost worse to be told that your edit test is mediocre than to be told it's bad, in my opinion. But I'm incredibly glad that I've learned it.

Outwit, Outplay, Outlast!

Someone on my last entry asked if I had any survival tips for living in New York and making connections. Do I ever! This time last year, I was miserable. I spent the summer of 2006 in my apartment, watching "So You Think You Can Dance" (which, unfortunately, I'm still addicted to, despite the fact that I have a life now) and "To Catch a Predator." I went home almost every weekend so that I could sit around watching TV with my mom, just so I wouldn't be lonely. This city is huge, and moving up here is hard! But for those of you who are about to do it, don't worry. If you can make it through those first few awful months, I promise you'll survive.

So, tips.

1) Get a job. I know, this one seems kind of obvious, for financial reasons. But what I mean is, if you can, while you're looking for that perfect magazine job, get the type of job where you're going to meet lots of other educated people in their twenties. I made one friend at work. And then I met all of her friends. And then I met all of their friends. Half of my social network here is because of that one work friend. And getting an office job, you're probably going to meet a lot of people for work networking that you wouldn't by working in retail or waitressing. For example, a lot of the writers I work with are freelancers for some of my favorite magazines. I have a friend in PR who's forged some great relationships with various editors.

I do realize that this tip is easier said than done. Waitressing is a lot easier to drop on a moment's notice, it gives you a flexible schedule for interviews, and, to be honest, waitresses probably make more money than I do. But unless you happen to slip Anna Wintour your portfolio when she comes in for a salad, it's not going to help you networking-wise.

2) Contact EVERYONE you know. Did your mom happen to mention that your best friend from middle school is up in New York? Does that random guy from your creative writing class live two blocks down from you? Does your uncle's best friend from college happen to work in Manhattan? Get in touch with them. Meet with them. New York is a giant city that functions as if it's an incredibly small town - somehow, everyone knows everyone else. And you never know who will happen to know the EOC of your favorite mag. Or turn out to be a great friend!

3) Be a joiner. Join a volunteer organization. Seriously, this is the best way to meet people. It doesn't cost a lot of money, it gets you out of your apartment for a worthy cause, and you will meet other people in the city who probably joined for exactly the same reason you did - to make friends. If you're athletic, ZogSports is a great organization. You can join a football, kickball, softball or soccer league, play on the weekends, and then go out to sponsored happy hours afterwards, where you play flip cup and feel like you're back in college. (It's especially great for meeting members of the opposite sex!)

4) Apply for a lot of jobs. Apply for jobs you don't really want that much. Apply for jobs you're not totally qualified for. It's a great way to make contacts - about half of my contacts are editors who I've interviewd with and really gotten along well with, but haven't gotten a job with. Like I said before, it's a small world - a lot of their friends are probably editors at other magazines. And when their friends go looking for an assistant, those editors will remember you.

5) Go to events. I am a naturally shy person - I'm not one of those girls who just walks into a party and instantly owns it. And so when I first got here, I didn't want to go to Ed2010 events because (and this makes a lot of sense) I wouldn't know anyone there. And I didn't have anyone to go with! Once I finally forced myself to stop being a recluse, I had a great time, and met a lot of people. The same logic applies to any event you're invited to. In fact, after my first three miserable months I made a rule for myself that I would go ANYWHERE I was invited, no matter how much I wanted to just sit on the couch and veg out. And it really paid off.


So those are my words of wisdom. Kind of standard advice, I guess, but it's what's worked for me. I've slowly built up a network of friends and contacts for myself here that's really amazing, and now that I've been here for a year I finally feel like it's home. I know coming up here is daunting, but it really is worth it!

Connections Obsessions

When I graduated from college last year, I was living down South in my amazing, huge, cheap apartment with my cat and my friends and my great college life, and I couldn't decide what to do. Take the job I'd just been offered, in book publishing, up in New York? Or stick it out in my comfortable Southern city, hoping that eventually a job would open up at one of the few magazines headquartered there? The choice was ridiculously hard. I had made a pact with a friend of mine to have a "Summer of Fun," doing nothing but hanging out with each other, going to amusment parks and the beach, taking road trips, etc. I had the best apartment in the world - not only could I afford it, but it looked like something a set designer would pick out for a movie, with all of its quirky architectural details. And I was in love with my easygoing, liveable Southern city.

New York, on the other hand, seemed like it had nothing to offer me. A quick look at Craigslist showed me that I would likely be living somewhere the size of my Southern walk-in closet. I would have no friends. And the job, while interesting, was not really in the field I wanted to be in.

The choice seemed easy - stay in the South, hang out with my friend, and hope to get a fun editorial job at one of the regional mags eventually. Until one of my former bosses at one of those mags e-mailed me. "Take the job," she told me, "get yourself established in New York. That's where it all happens. You're not going to make any connections down here."

And so I moved, and the rest is history. Do I miss my Southern city, once in a while? Definitely. Was my former boss right? Absolutely. I have been slowly but surely building up a network of contacts with whom I would never have been able to meet if I was in the South. Just having the opportunity to go to Ed2010 events and classes seems like it's made a huge difference. I may not have a job in magazines, but I know that I'm closer to having one than I would have been if I'd stayed below the Mason Dixon line.

Which brings me to my point - I can't get over the feeling that using connections is kind of sleazy. Back when I was unemployed, I was in the "I might get this one" stage at a mag I really loved. And it turned out that my father worked with someone who knew the head of editorial hiring at that magazine's parent company. Before I went in for the interview, my dad asked if I wanted to have the guy contacted. I said no, I wanted to get the job on my own. After the interview, when I was doing my edit test, he asked me again. And then, when I was anxiously awaiting the results of my edit test, my mother stepped in and told my father to just call him. We set up a meeting, so that he could meet me, look over my clips, etc.

By that time the meeting had no influence on the job, which, obviously, I didn't get. But I wonder if my pride (I wanted to get my job on my own, not because someone pulled strings) is going to cost me one day.

In my mind, there are different kinds of connections. If an editor who's met me before and likes me puts me up for a job that she hears about, then that's fine. But what about asking my uncle's best friend, who happens to work at one of my favorite magazines, to recommend me? That feels like cheating.

I realize that this is really crazy - everyone says that you should look out for yourself, get your foot in the door any way you can. But I can't shake this weird moral code that I've set up for myself.

If I get a job through connections, will I feel like an imposter my whole life?