Self, how did I get here? Part I

When I first moved to this large metropolitan city a little over 25 years ago, I was ready for anything. I had gotten a liberal arts degree ("with honors") from a Big 10 university and I thought there would be people standing on the corners begging to
hire me. I had no clue what I wanted to do or what I was fit to do. This is before the time of high schools having counselors dedicated only to helping juniors conquer SATs and fill out college applications. I sent one application to the state school that my brothers had attended, and it never occurred to me that they wouldn't take me. No hanging around the mailbox and agonizing with my friends over the phone.

I paid my own way to school with summers spent dipping ice cream and hoisting trays through sticky aisles of screaming babies and irate
diners just off the busy highway. Of course, the cost of college then, with a couple of small scholarships thrown in, was possible to deal with by working summers and holidays (I had started working and saving the summer before my senior year in high school).

Anyway, once college came to an end, there was no career counselling available (at least not that I or my friends were made aware of). The only inkling I got was the ads in the school paper when the Big Companies would have recruitment events. They always asked for "Any liberal arts degree".

I thought I had it made.

So I moved to the Big City and slept on a relative's couch, circled some interesting want ads in the newspaper, and found myself at an employment agency. The first question: "Can you type?" My wide-eyed answer: "But I have a college degree!" The look that brought taught me more than a semester of Romance Languages 101 ever did. Thank God I had managed to squeeze in some typing classes in high school, very much against the wishes of the nuns, and that's how I found myself in the glamorous world of Advertising.

My first job in the ad biz was as a secretary at one of the largest agencies in the world, working on one of the biggest accounts. I wasn't in the creative department, or helping actually produce the TV commercials; our department crunched numbers and got the commercials on the air. But it was Big Time for a little kid, or for anyone, really. I had my picture taken with Lassie, had lunch with Helen Gurley Brown, saw network TV shows months before they were on the fall schedules. Played with the Big Guys at the Big Companies. And boy, was it play time then. There was so much money flying around that, in my job of "keeping track of the budget", if I was off by $10,000 it was shrugged off due to "rounding".

I left that job after a few years to Spread My Wings and hone in on a specific career for myself in advertising. The secretary thing hadn't actually lasted long; the job had morphed into coordinator of this and assistant of that. But I decided to become a Media Buyer - a person who negotiates with television and radio stations to actually run commercials on the air. That's all the explanation I'm going to give. Suffice it to say, it's numbers and trying to get something for the least money possible, so it's not all that glamorous. But it's TV and it's radio, and if you find those things fascinating, the job is, too. Also, each station wants a buyer to spend more of the budget on that station than the others, so there is a lot of entertaining and making nice in the media business.

However, as the world has changed and become harder and less fun, so has the world of advertising. It's the same in many if not all industries, I imagine, but I can only speak for this one, and how it effected my life.

I can also see that this is way too much to deal with in one post, so I'll sign off now and continue later to try to explain how the Media Girl Who's Seen It All, Done It All (Or At Least A Lot), And Worked Like A Dog But Loved It turned into The Angry 50 Year Old Woman Working Retail For $8/hour And No Benefits.

I hope you'll stay with me.