Working Girl Two: The Marketing Assistant

This working girl has been reading, writing and fascinated with anything that involves literature for as long as she can remember and that’s where my working story begins. Any family dinner that involves heaping helpings of nostalgia, my father loves to bring up how easily entertained I was as a baby – my parents would throw a pile of books in my crib and I would sit, drool and read until noon. My fascination for books and imaginary worlds led me to write my own literature. To this day, my dream is to be an author, write the next great American novel or at the very least some really great chick lit.

I am the daughter of an over-achieving working mother who could make a steak dinner, help with math homework, plan a sit-down charity event, and write and edit her own freelance articles within twenty minutes if you asked her. With Super Mom as a role model, I also veered down the path of an over-achiever. I played two school sports, participated in clubs to lead the school, save the school, clubs that sang about the school, and of course a club to write about the school. Let’s just say I loved working for my school.

I grew up in small suburban town on the North Shore in Illinois - the land of Lincoln and deep dish pizza. Even in high school, I figured Chicago was small apples compared to the Big Apple – that if I wanted to be something big I would need to make the big move. College seemed like my chance so I flew on over to Connecticut - land of Paul Newman and Stepford wives. My college was small and safely tucked in the suburbs just an hour train ride from the City That Never Sleeps, The Capital of the World, Empire City, well, you get the idea.

In college, I took a small break in working my hardest to bask in the newness of my scholastic freedom that included a casual beer on a Wednesday night, eating junk food at one in the morning and watching TV while doing my homework. I looked into joining clubs, did my fair share of school loving (geeky side note: I was a tour guide), but didn’t get overly involved. But when junior year rolled around, I took off my beer-colored glasses and stepped up my game.

The summer before my senior year I got an internship in New York City at a small e-zine known for its dedication to luxury. The stories from my time there, however, could fill a book. In this case, the devil didn’t wear Prada, she wore vintage and sent me on one too many ridiculous missions. My stories about ‘crazy lady’ are to be continued. I had another internship in college, worked as an editor at the school newspaper, and all the while dreamed of being my own boss someday and in between dreams and real life, co-spirited a magazine idea with my good friend Working Girl One and voila “Working Girl” was born.

However, a blog does not rake in the funds and neither do dreams unfortunately. Because of my lack of funds and my desire to stay in New York, I took a job as a Marketing Coordinator at a website/magazine. Job description: assistant to COO with the promise to move up in the world in under a year. Reality: assistant to COO, CEO, President, and Marketing Manager with lunch breaks spent at desk, and promise to move to editorial dwindling each day. Those are my current working girl trials – sticking out the first job blues of doing grunt work: fetching lunch, answering phones, and utilizing my editing skills for e-mails to schedule meetings with other CEO’s and COO’s of the world.