lately around the city i've been noticing young, harried looking people dressed to the nines in the godawful humidity, lugging bags and portfolios, changing into or out of comfy shoes on street corners, all with a certain look on their faces—a mix of sheer terror, disbelief and anticipation. and oh, it takes me right back.
ten years ago this very month i was doing the First Job Shuffle. once a week, or sometimes two or three times a week, i'd make my trek into the city for interviews. back then, believe it or not, Amtrak was still somewhat affordable, so i'd take the local train to Philly, hop on a cushy Amtrak train, and disembark at Penn Station with a stomach tied in knots.
it's so ridiculously scary, figuring out how the hell to start your career. especially at age twenty-two, when you've just spent the previous two decades being told where to go and what to do and how to do it and when to get it done. the sudden freedom of post-college life was, at least for me, a little debilitating.
it was so long ago i can barely remember all the places i interviewed. my first was at a publication called Glass Digest—yes, it was a real magazine and yes, it was all about glass—and i was offered an EA job pretty much on the spot. thank god i turned it down. i also interviewed at Cat Fancy or Dog Fancy—i really can't remember—and Weekly Reader (that required Amtrak-ing it up to Stamford, CT, what an adventure) and US before it went weekly and a magazine for lovers of the Mercedes-Benz.
that probably sounds awesome to recent grads—every place i sent my resume seemed to call to set up an interview. but let me tell you, it was exhausting. and i was utterly and completely lost.
one specific, vivid memory popped into my head earlier today. i was in the city for one interview or another—actually, possibly two interviews that day—and i was wearing a mint green suit. you read that correctly: mint green. think of the barfiest shade of green you can imagine and then kick it up a notch. that was my suit. purchased specifically for my job-hunting bonanza at a Kohl's-like store in Pennsylvania. (god, do kids even wear suits to interviews anymore? did they ever? was i that much a freak of nature?)
anyway, of course i was wearing pantyhose—it was July in the city, why wouldn't i?—and sensible pumps. probably from Naturalizer or Hush Puppy. probably a shade bone or taupe—sassy. i didn't know my way around the subways so well at that point and god knows i couldn't afford cabs. so i did a lot of walking from Penn Station to wherever my interviews were, usually on Fifth or Madison or Lexington, somewhere in the 50s.
that particular day, the mint-green-suit day, i remember walking up Fifth Avenue and feeling a wetness at my heels. i was just leaving a big fancy building, the location of some publishing company, and i glanced down to see what was up.
my heels—both of them—were a bloody mess. i'm talking a four or five inch radius of bright red, staining my nude pantyhose. i'd never seen anything so ridiculous. or disgusting. i had sort of felt the blisters building earlier but had no idea they'd exploded in such a gory fashion.
i stared down, horrified, and remember feeling—so very acutely—that i was so new. i was a clueless, overgrown, totally naive child and the whole world could see it, courtesy of my bloody heels.
no idea what i did after that. probably ran into a Duane Reade for band-aids and a new pair of hose. actually—and i'm not sure if it was that day or another one—i remember spending a good amount of time, either in between interviews or waiting for my Amtrak train, huddled in one of the lobby areas of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. i sat by a bank of pay phones (i wouldn't have a cell for another two of three years—imagine that, kids) and called my best friend and college cohort, Kerri. we gabbed and laughed and commiserated for as long as my calling card would allow, and it was the most at ease i'd felt since graduating.
it all worked out OK in the end, of course. in August of 1999, just as i was about to accept an unpaid internship at Boston Magazine, i was offered a job as the reader mail assistant at Seventeen, and the rest is history.
i know the kids have it harder today. they're not only battling each other for a precious few jobs, they're battling all the tons and tons of people who've been laid off in the last year. must be a jungle out there.
for those reasons (and reasons directly related to the mint-green-suit fiasco) i am extremely glad that rite of passage is behind me.
mb
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