Five Tips for Cracking the Career Surface

This past weekend I was fortunate to attend the Book Publishers Association of Alberta (BPAA) conference in beautiful Banff, Alberta. When I say fortunate, I mean I was given the opportunity of a budding publisher’s lifetime. I am not affiliated with a publisher; I’m a grad student. In Banff I met some of the biggest, brightest publishers in the province, attended presentations on new technologies, visions of the future, and hiring concerns and strategies. These presentations were not only inspiring, but I firmly believe they will give me an edge when considering what I have to offer an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into. Without a doubt, I just took a giant leap towards my future.

I have to admit that, while I may be overly humble when it comes to my writing, I am confident in my networking and, let’s face it, schmoozing skills. So I thought I’d take a stab at a real blog post and give you my five tips for networking your way into the places you’d like to be. But before I begin, I have to offer a serious disclaimer. Everything I know I learned from Alexis Beaubier at the Career Centre at Vancouver Island University. Those who work for passion are infinitely better at what they do than those who work for the money. Alexis could teach a sloth how to get a job on a crab-fishing boat. So thank you Alexis for all your brilliance and expertise. Now, on with the tips.

1) Make Contact

First step is to write an email—simple as that. Find the name of a contact, not too low on the chain, but obviously not so high that you’ll never get a response, and send an introductory email. Keep it short and simple. Explain who you are, what you’re interested in, and you’d like the opportunity to ask a few questions. Remember, you’re not asking for a job; you’re asking for information. Request half an hour of the contact’s time to meet in person.

2) Have ten easy questions prepared

I’m not going to insult my brilliant audience by telling you that you should research. Of course you’re going to research the company or industry you’d like to work for. So get an idea of who you’re going to speak to and generally what they do. But easy questions lead to conversation. If you’re going to quote something from a company’s press release and ask for more on that detail, you’re going to get information about that detail. Your meeting companion is going to slip into company mode and answer as though you’re media or competition. They will be guarded and professional, and that’s no way to make friends. Ask simple questions. What does a day in the life of you look like? How’s business? How did you get started? Here are the skills I’m proud of; do you think they will apply to this type of industry? Don’t talk about yourself too much; this is important. People love to talk about themselves, so let them. Make them feel good and they will remember you for it.

3) Take the plunge

The hardest part of my weekend at the conference was entering that room. Honestly, I walked in to the first night reception, took one look at the professionals whose hands were grasping glasses of wine and my potential career, turned on my heel and escaped to the bathroom. It’s scary! It doesn’t matter how much of a people person you are, it feels like you’re leaping into the shark tank, and you are. So take a deep breath, put on your game face, and get in there champ! It sounds like advice that goes without saying, but believe me, it can be the hardest part of the whole process.

4) Be interested

Pay attention to the answers you’re given. Take notes if you feel you have to, but listen more. Easy questions make for easy conversation so be as natural as you can. Follow up on comments that feel important, ask more about topics you think your new acquaintance favours, and for goodness sake smile. If you feel a lull in the conversation try and summarize the important points thus far. It will most likely jog your companion’s memory and he or she will provide more information that might have been forgotten. Finally, when it feels like the conversation is at a close ask what you should do next. Ask if there are other people you might benefit from speaking to. By this point your interviewee will hopefully feel he or she has a stake in your success and will want to help.

5) Say thank you

with a card. Remember those things? Chances are your mom still gets you one from Hallmark for your birthday. Write out a simple thank-you card before your meeting and present it at the end. Don’t be too gushy, just a simple “it was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, and I hope to speak to you again in the future.” Be sure to include your contact information as well. This, I find, really leaves an impression on people. No one gives thank-you cards anymore, and this simple gesture will be sure to leave a lasting impression. Not to mention, people feel guilty for just throwing away a card immediately so it will guarantee this new contact will have your email address for at least a week longer. Chances are you will have more than one of these meetings, so buy thank you cards in packs.

These days it seems like anyone you talk to will tell you the economy is horrible, the job market is dismal, and hope is almost lost. Sure it’s difficult to break into a good career. If it wasn’t there’d be no Walmart greeters. However, looking for a career is exciting. It’s when you prove to yourself that, while you may not know everything, you can fire the big guns with the best of them. Every industry professional was new at some point, and there’s a good chance they didn’t have the gumption to rub elbows with the key players when they were starting out. Sure there’s a chance that an eventual job won’t come from these networking tips. There’s a chance you will choke, spit coffee out your nose all over your new contact’s tie. You might discover after you leave the meeting that you had spinach in your teeth. But no matter what, you will leave knowing more than when you arrived. It’s called experience, and apparently it’s very important in the career world.

I'll write the title later

My alarm goes off at 7am every weekday. I get out of bed around 8:30. There's a Second Cup that opened a block away from my house and it has become my new "office space" for writing my thesis. I plan on heading there around 10:00 every morning and putting in a solid 6 hours. I get there around 2 and work until about 6. Intended 6 hours always translates to realistic 4 hours, doesn't it? Right? Or is it just me? I have been distracting myself lately by reading more blogs and it's prompted me to revisit mine. I haven't touched this dusty whatever-this-is in over a year. I admit it; I have a procrastination problem.

So in true Jessica form, I figured I'd click on that scary "new post" button and fire off an inspirational rambling that will put the Nike slogan to shame! Then I realized that the simple act of interacting with this blog has essentially brought my procrastination to a pause. Maybe not a screeching halt, but at least a slight hesitation.

I don't know why I'm terrified of writing. I seem to work very hard at finding other things to do that don't involve the one thing I claim to want to do more than anything else in the world. Why don't I write more? Who knows. Perfectionism? Fear of failure? Finger cramps? I'm confident that at least one of my problems is fear of bad sentences--and I write a lot of them! But writing an encyclopedia of bad sentences in September leaves room for chiseling out the bad in February.

Let me take a moment to redeem myself slightly. I did accomplish a lot last year. I attended a conference in Spain in April, I spent the summer in Quebec City étudier le français. I joined some committees, did some fundraising, met lots of people in academia, and got all my coursework done. All things considered, I can network and cross off to-do lists with the best of them. I just can't bring myself to write.

So here's a bit of advice for me. Stop being so hard on myself, write bad sentences, write them often, and have a long talk with that alarm clock.

"Whan that August"

This summer I packed up my books and bags and made my way back to the province I love – Alberta! I start my Masters at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in September so August has been about visiting family and prospecting the prairies. It’s been great to come back home and rediscover the places where I grew up. I really wanted to make sure that I was here in time to not only set up in an apartment and settle down before the school crunch began, but also so I could go to the annual pilgrimage in Skaro.

In 1914 around 100 000 Ukrainians and Poles immigrated to Canada, many settling in the prairies. I don’t claim to know all about the history of these people, and instead of plagiarizing my pilgrimage program I will sum up by saying that the Polish and Ukrainian community in Skaro, Alberta began building a Grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes in June of 1919. That August 14th and 15th the first annual pilgrimage was attended by 4000-5000 people. This year was the 92nd annual pilgrimage to the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in the sleepy little district of Skaro. This pilgrimage is important to me for three reasons. First, August 15th is my birthday, so when I go to the pilgrimage it feels like a giant birthday party for me. Second, my grandfather helped build the Grotto when he was a boy, and finally, both he and my grandmother are buried in the cemetery there.

Now, say what you will about religion. Actually, don’t. I’m not interested in starting that debate. Believe what you want or don’t. It’s none of my business. But pilgrimages, that I have an opinion on! You all know by now that Chaucer is my main squeeze. (Ok, I guess my secondary squeeze since I do have a husband and he squeezes better than a 600 year old dead guy.) So the word “pilgrimage” perks my ears and peaks my interest. The idea of a group of like-minded people, whatever their differences, convening in one place they consider sacred to find peace is, to me, the epitome of community. Whether it’s to Jerusalem or Graceland, the journey with strangers of a place of commonality is wonderful.

And it could be because I’m about to start yet another year of school, but it makes me think about other journeys of convergence. Concerts, festivals, protests, gallery openings, school orientations, cooking classes, poetry readings, lectures, Sunday dinners, parades, and so much more – all the places and purposes for getting together. On one hand we do these things because, personally, we want to see them through. We can’t wait to see that band or speaker because it will make us better, more thoughtful and experienced people. But isn’t the act of doing these things with likeminded people just as exciting? Don’t we relish in the idea of joining a group of strangers and becoming, just for one night, for one moment, something bigger? Sure, the spiritual or at least prominent end of the journey is meaningful to us, but the act of moving with a deliberate group whose names you don’t know and whom you’ll never see again takes these moments from simply going to going on a pilgrimage.

Just Some Reading

Have you ever considered the post colonial complexities of Othello, or The Tempest? Or pondered the Marxist message in Heart of Darkness? Have you ever stopped to explore the neoclassical nuances in Lolita? What about the post-structural possibilities of the Chronicles of Narnia? Do you think that the role of literature is to both represent and influence the reading collective? Death of the author, birth of the reader; is there a text, is the text more than words printed on the page; will any of us ever truly read the same book twice? Or are you, like me, totally engaged by the scene in Beowulf where the hero rips off Grendel’s arm and bludgeons the monster to death with it?

At what point did literature become more about political and social commentary and less about beautiful words? Think of your favourite book. Do you enjoy it because it illuminates the struggles of working-class society, or do you read it every summer because it makes you laugh, cry, and in the back of your mind you have a steamy crush on that main character? A book resonates with us because it speaks to our soul, not because it is a response to the socio-economic changes in the twentieth century. And, sure, you can argue that maybe a book is your favourite because it accomplishes both, but beautiful language is what makes us truly enjoy a piece of literature. If that wasn’t the case, then we’d all be reviewing dissertations and carrying essays in our beach bags.

I hate that there’s dichotomy in literature. Why can’t you read Dean Koontz one week and Dante the next? I think it is a real shame that authors like Clive Barker – the master of grotesque beauty and the modern sublime, aren't yet found on course lists. Why does credible literature need to do more than disgust and intrigue? Why does it need to be something else? Hemmingway said, sometimes a fish is just a fish. Of course he was probably just messing with the critics, but if it’s a beautifully described fish, does it really need to represent the oppression weighed down on us by “the man”? I don’t know if I’m a New Critic theorist who thinks only the words on the page matter, or a Russian Formalist who considers authorial intent. I hope I’m not a theorist at all. What I know in my heart is that I am a fan of literature. I love to read books. I let my imagination carry me into the Victorian meadows of nineteenth century England. I love to create the faces of villains and the boudoirs of lusty couplings. I eat beautiful words until they sweat from my pores and belch from my lungs onto the pages of my own cheaply bought and often abandoned notebooks. Criticize ideas, sure, but don’t be jaded against words.

So I have a challenge to all you intellectual readers out there. Read some smut! Find a trade paperback and let yourself dog-ear the pages. You can’t quote Kant all the time. Read a thriller, a whodunit, a sweet little read. I promise you, if you refrain from dissecting everything you read you won’t suddenly find yourself dimmer, duller, or a downright dolt. Introduce yourself to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Lee Child, Kate Mosse, Jeffery Deaver, and James Rollins. Rediscover Douglas Adams, Evelyn Waugh, Joseph Boyden, Beatrice Culleton Mosionier and J.K. Rowling. Step out of academe and enjoy José Saramago, and Clive Barker. In short, stop taking your canon from course lists and suggested readings. Don’t hide your “easy summer read” behind a leather book jacket.

Tom Robbins wrote in Villa Incognito, “It has been reported that Tanuki fell from the sky using his scrotum as a parachute.” What’s your favourite hilarious or beautiful literary line or scene? Let’s talk about books for a while and leave the theory out of it. Let out your dirty little secrets, readers! I promise you that we’ll have great conversations free from theoretical jargon, and beauty will find its way back to brilliance.

Remember This Moment

Hi all,

So it's been...what...WHAT? Five months?!? Oops.
I can't deny that I haven't thought about this blog. There have been moments where I've put down the books and thought, "that would be a good idea for a blog entry. Too bad I have seventeen hours of homework to get through before class starts." So I've put it off, promising myself that when I did finally get reaquainted with this global, digitized community I'd have something amazing to say.

I don't know if this is amazing or not, but I think it's worth saying. The last couple of weeks I have been watching the olympics. I consider myself to be both sentimental and patriotic, so the olympics in Vancouver have rendered me a pile of red and white gushing dribble. I've literally been glued to my television, or when I haven't been at home I've had the live feed running on my laptop.

So I've seen all of it, from tradgedy to triumph. The horrible accident involving the Georgian luger before the olympics were officially opened; the beautiful opening ceremonies, complete with cauldron malfunction; the first gold medal on Canadian soil; the spills and disappointments; the incredible gold medal winning ice dance by that cute young Canadian pair, Virtue and Moir; the disappointing loss in the Canadian vs. US men's hockey game; and the heartbreaking death of Joannie Rochette's mother days before she took to the ice for her big olympic chance.

I just finished watching Joannie skate her short program. She was flawless. I'm thinking now about the determination of these participants. I include more than just the athletes. Right from the beginning of the opening ceremonies. Representatives from all the First Nations peoples across Canada took part in a pow wow that lasted the entire duration of all the athletes' introductions. It had to have lasted more than an hour. Then there was the Georgian team, who entered somberly, but purposely to stake their place in this global event, and to honour their teammate. There was Kristi Richards who, on the medal race in freestyle moguls, fell. She got up, collected herself, faced down the mountain and went all out in her final jump. Even though she was out of the running after her fall, she wanted to do her best just because she could.

After Joannie skated her perfect short program she, understandably, burst into tears. I cried right along with her. I admire her emotional strength. You could tell she was skating for not only her mom, but for her own healing. I think that her commitment brought her mom onto the ice tonight.

And on top of the athletes there have been the coaches, the volunteers, the coordinators, the announcers, the viewers, the people in charge of collecting lost skis, fixing gouges in the ice, timing races, giving directions, serving food, and who knows what else is going on in Vancouver. They're all a part of something bigger, and they are all working tirelessly at it. If there is one thing that I can take as inspiration from the olympics, I want it to be that. Sure, the athletes make me wish that I could run marathons and have washboard abs, but more importantly, I want that never-say-quit attitude. I want to look at my endless to-do list and stop letting it overwhelm me. Afterall, I do all this school and extra stuff because I want to. No one is forcing me. So hopefully after the olympics is all over I will remember that the lack of sleep, the headaches from too much reading, the temporary breakdowns in confidence, they are my falls on moguls, my bad luck with weather, my missed goal, and my step closer to that moment when, medal or not, I did my best.

Afterall, in the end that's what we work hard for, isn't it?

You want to do WHAT in school?

Enrolment in my university is up. I feel this most when I’m looking for a parking spot, when I join the line of a dozen other cars nudging around the lot looking for a space like little silver balls in plastic travel maze. But with enough persistence I can still find a spot. How’s that for a metaphor for life? Yet with the increased enrolment of all these non-carpooling, non-public transporting students (which I am neither, so I suppose I’m now just a hypocrite) I can’t find any of these new students in my department! Enrolment in the Humanities is down, and if I have to be honest it doesn’t really surprise me.

When I tell people that I’m doing an English degree I have the same conversation almost every time.
“What are you doing in school?”
“I’m doing an English degree.”
“Oh, you want to be a teacher.”
“No, not really.”
“Oh, so what do you want to do?”
“I want to do an English degree.”
“Yes, but for a job.”
“Oh, well ideally I’d like to write, and hopefully be a professor. But mostly I want to do an English degree.”
“Ahh...hmm...oh.”

At which point I inwardly roll my eyes and tell them I have no problem being a well-read waitress. Then, they usually change the subject or think of an excuse to walk away. Evidently people don’t understand the point of an English degree.

I can sympathize with these questioners, especially parents. There is no how-to manual for getting a job with an English degree. It’s not like going into tourism or hospitality or business. You go to school and take accounting to become an accountant. You go to school to take dental hygiene then chances are you’re going to be working with a dentist (and wearing those comfy scrubs!) But with an English degree you’re not going into career training, you’re going into mind training. So why do an English degree?

First I think that over the last fifty years we have seen a drastic change in the way people find and secure their careers. You can see from the change in media, technology and priorities in our everyday lives, that in order to succeed you need to be able to adapt. What is important throughout all these changes and choices is the ability to communicate. With an English degree you study rhetoric and persuasion. The ability to develop and defend an argument sets any English student up to sell themselves.

Secondly, writers are needed everywhere. Public relations, government, publishing, fundraising and charity organizations, global conferencing, advertising, the list goes on. Restaurants need menus written, hotels need brochures and website content, museums and theatres need to communicate with the community, minorities and special interest groups need to be heard, again the list goes on. Anyone who does anything needs to tell someone else they’re doing it – and an English degree prepares the student to convey this message intelligently, clearly, and with persuasion.

Finally, my medieval professor said it best, I think. She asked my second year Chaucer class why we thought this 600 year old literature should still be studied. Half the class sat in silent contemplation, or maybe on their laptops checking Facebook, as these things go. The rest of us discussed how medieval literature plays an important role in the evolution of the literature we see today. Literature of the past can also serve as a bridge between the literature that came even before it, and the contemporary literature of today. You’d be amazed how much literature is a reinterpretation or recreation of a classic myth. But my professor said simply, if we don’t study it, it will be lost, and don’t you think that is a shame?

Authors, like other artists, record a contemplative history of the world around them. Books have changed the world. Books are not elitist. The same book can be read by those who make the rules and those who break them. When Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women she breathed into the growing breeze that started to move the marble that etched out the path of feminism. As a literary student, you can join into the debate on how much influence she really had. Victorian authors such as Thomas Hardy and Elizabeth Gaskell painted a picture of the exhausting and suffocating conditions of the working class in nineteenth century England. Is it fair to the people who lived through those conditions that they are forgotten, even though there is a permanent record in print of their lives? Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in a response to his colonizers who believed that they were the masters of literature and the most powerful voice. With an English degree one can contribute to the ongoing debate of humanity, the speculation of truth, and what in the world is important. To me, there will always be people to crunch numbers and clean teeth. But someone will always want to say something, and someone else should listen.

What's over there?

I went whale watching yesterday, and on the drive home I thought about poetry. I thought about the Romantic poets and their sublime vision of nature. I thought about grown men and women who discovered the magestic cliffs and mountains, fields of flowers and brilliant moonlight for the first time, over and over, with pen and ink. They were like children, fascinated and thrilled by the petal of a flower or the flutter of a bird's wings.

I watched two massive humpback whales let out their breath in spontaneous gysers and peek their gracefully arched backs out of the surface of the ocean, then disappear again into their private world. I have lived on this island for three years, and it felt like I was spying on an eccentric neighbour peeking out her curtains. Undoubtedly she knew I was there. I was nature's paparazzi.

So I was like a child too yesterday. My cell phone was out of service, I couldn't smoke, I'd brought a giant bag of junk food to keep me happy during the 3 hour boat ride. I innocently let a grown-up drive me around and show me the sights. And yet, though I experienced new sights over and over that afternoon, I missed those butterflies ever-present in my young belly. Why? When I saw tremendous sea lions sunning themselves on a tiny rocky island, covering its entire surface with their bulky mass I was thrilled, but not fluttery. When I took pictures of a bald eagle taking flight off a barren tree next to three seals who sat casually as though they'd just had a visitor for afternoon tea, I was smiling, but I didn't want to jump and shreak like I did when I was small and saw a puppy. Why?

On the drive back I watched the thick treeline whiz by like I did on trips from long ago. Suddenly a thought came to me. I was missing imagination. I used to stare through those trees and imagine all the bears and deer and secret forest tribes too smart to be discovered. When I was on that boat, I didn't imagine where that whale went or what she saw once she dipped under the surface. I didn't imagine where that eagle took flight to, or what conversation he had with those seals before he left. I didn't imagine the family structures of those sea lions so lazy on the surface, but most likely so exciting beneath their flabby disposition. Imagination is the food of belly butterflies.

So in order to get those feelings mastered by the Romantic poets, driving their creativity to create sublime poetry, I need to reclaim my imagination. I need to break through the thick green line of that fantastical forest whizzing by and rediscover what is lurking within. Where does the whale go? Wherever the writer's belly butterflies lead it.