Archive: Working Girl

As part of my search for freelance work, I’ve posted my resume on a handful of job sites, and one site offered me a free resume critique. It couldn’t hurt, I figured, so I clicked to accept the offer and went on with my work.

The next day, I received an e-mail with a link to my resume critique report, which was much more in-depth than I expected. I thought I might see a check list or some other clearly-automated output assembled by a bot that had crawled over the key words in my uploaded file, but that was not the case. The report used complete sentences, was several paragraphs long, and much to my dismay, had very few positive things to say.

According to the report, my resume is visually unappealing. It comes off as though I had tried to print a marketing brochure on my home printer. I need a summary section. There are grammatical inconsistencies. I don’t have the right key words in the document to make myself appear in employers’ searches. On the other hand, my resume has a lot of words in it, but they’re not making the right impact. I haven’t done a good job communicating my accomplishments. Worst of all, the report said that I “come across as a ‘doer’ not an ‘achiever.’”

How does this site come up with this report, anyhow? They don’t know me! Maybe all of those complete sentences are pre-written, stock statements that get dropped into a template when someone clicks through a rubric of resume characteristics. Yes, I’m sure that’s it. This critique is not a true reflection of my struggle to find professional fulfillment. It’s all just a ploy to make me plunk down forty bucks to have one of their “experts” retool my resume. This report doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself.

Well, hmm. I concede that I haven’t really rehauled my resume since my last job search two years ago, and standards of changed. I do need a summary section. I can see how I’m listing my job duties as opposed to how well I’ve done them. I have to work on this document, clearly.

But am I really a doer and not an achiever? That stings.

There’s a part of me that’s immediately defensive because I don’t see editing as a field with a high degree of traditional achievement. I view my role as supportive and invisible, so if my authors achieve and publish, I have done my job well. My name isn’t going to appear on a byline — maybe in an acknowledgments section — and that’s okay with me. For me, editing achievement is more about being a reliable, credible, accurate resource, so to a certain extent, editing is about doing. I have to make sure references are correct, submit pieces on time, check off requirement lists, and ensure that authors have received permission to use others’ materials. What’s wrong with being a very capable doer? More to the point, how do I spin that into some sort of accomplishment?

The other part of me almost agrees that, yes, I am not really an achiever. The fired-up, conquer-the-world student I was in college has been replaced by something much more staid and, as much as I hate to admit it, complacent. I thought I’d get a PhD; I thought I’d get a master’s; now, no degree is in sight. I thought I’d change pharmaceutical economics; I thought I’d be a pharmaceutical regulatory writer; now, I know I have slim to no chance of writing for the pharmaceutical industry. Maybe five years in the working world has rubbed away the shiny gleam of ambition, and now I’m dull and commonplace. I used to be more like Chilton Rory Gilmore, but now I’m closer to Yale Dropout Rory Gilmore.

I’m not sure what to do with the balance between defensiveness and acceptance. It irks me that this possibly-automatically-generated report is causing such a tizzy in my professional self-esteem, but that’s a risk when I consider my job, my vocation, and What I Want To Do With My Life. It’s all a little existential when all I really wanted was a part-time editing job on the side. Until I get a better hold on the degree to which I achieve and how okay I am with that, I am changing what I can. That is, my resume.

When I told people that my job was sending me to Dallas for a conference, they would ask excitedly, “Ooh, for what?”

“It’s a medical writing conference.”

“Oh.”

I know, it doesn’t sound thrilling, but it was such a good experience for me. In the beginning, I was really overwhelmed, and I had a few spurts of panic that made me wonder if I could hold my own. Everyone seemed so much more put-together, experienced, and savvy, and I was keenly aware of my novice. I found myself describing my job as “just editing manuscripts” because I was so intimidated by all of the PhDs, regulatory writers, and veteran freelancers. During the opening reception, I drifted between clumps of already-established conversations, too afraid to break in.

The second day, a freelancer from my area swept me up and bolstered me with pep talks. I wasn’t “just” an editor! I could make my own way! Everyone has something to learn! She introduced me to people and encouraged me to talk to others. By the end of the weekend, I had become much more comfortable with starting a cold conversation and asking, “Do you mind exchanging business cards?” If I can attend the conference next year, I hope I don’t take nearly as long to find my groove.

While I waited for my flight back to Philadelphia, I had the best of intentions to synthesize the pages of notes I had taken and create a list of action items in three categories: work-related (like filling out my expense report), networking (contacting everyone who had given me a card), and research (looking up publishing standards). In the hour I spent with my laptop and surrounded by paper, I hardly made a dent in my notes, which only confirmed how much information I took away from three days of talking with other medical writers.

My work is cut out for me this week and for the rest of the calendar year. I want to become more informed about the industry, secure freelance jobs, and pursue certification. That list of to-dos is long and imposing, but I can do everything on it, and I will.

When I was hired for my current job, my boss told me that once I had a year of tenure, I’d qualify to get equipped to work from home once a week. Woo hoo! At my old job, I had a laptop in case of sick days or inclement weather, and I looked forward to having the convenience back. I couldn’t wait until that anniversary start to the process.

The day came and went. I nervously asked about the telecommuting arrangement, and my boss assured me that we could get started on the equipment order. Shortly thereafter, we got the news that every department had to cut 25% out of its operating budget, and our raises went down to 1.5% for January. In April, lay-offs began. I kept my mouth shut.

In late May, I checked in again. Was the money available? Would it be okay to ask?

Response: Yes, the money was there. I should be set up by the summer, for sure.

During the summer months, I filled out paperwork, measured my office at home, picked my day, and waited. And waited. I was outside the process at every step, and I dreaded asking and re-asking every few weeks. “Is there anything left I can do?” There wasn’t.

I felt like I had no legitimate reasons to press the issue because I didn’t need the computer at home. I knew it was a privilege for me to even have the chance to telecommute, so I didn’t want to make it seem like I felt entitled to it. At the same time, I didn’t know how to create an appropriate sense of urgency, to convey that I had been waiting for months with neither progress nor the means of correcting it. My second work anniversary loomed ever closer, a reminder that I still wasn’t set up.

Then, magically, a printer arrived, and several weeks later, a monitor and CPU joined the club. I could hardly believe it. After all that time, I had sort of assumed that I would never get the equipment, that whatever was holding up the process would extend indefinitely until I eventually left this position, and telecommuting would remain a mythical object just out of my grasp.

I made a trip down to the technology support department to get my accounts set up, and that afternoon, I went home with a trunk full of computer equipment. JG set up everything in our office, and we tested all of the connections with much whooping and hollering. Afterward, I putzed around, setting up a cup of writing implements (blue pens, red pens, and highlighters), positioning a box of paper clips, and bringing down a coaster for my water bottle. The next day, almost a week after my second work anniversary, I worked from home for the first time, and it was divine.

Wednesday is my work-from-home day, which is great because I get to split the week in half. However, Thursday has morphed into a kind of quasi-Monday, ready to hit me over the head in the morning in case I have become too comfortable. Oh, well. I think the trade-off is worth it. So far, my at-home routine consists of:

• Sleeping in almost a whole hour (what time-wasters showering and commuting are!)
• Walking Ted without the distractions of school buses and children
• Starting my workday at least a half hour before usual
• Checking my voicemail at work every hour
• Watching TLC, Food Network, or HGTV while eating lunch

Today is our first cold day of the fall, but I am being stubborn about not turning on the heat. I e-mailed JG this morning, “You will be happy to note that I am working in my Slanket, and it is as awesome as one might hope.”

Oh, telecommuting, at last we find each other! Let’s not let anything get between us, ever.

I spent my entire day manipulating a very important grant proposal into its final form with superscripted citations and a reference list numbered in order of appearance. My boss and I split up the work so that neither of us had to handle the whole job on such a short timeline, but since my half was the back end, I had to wait until her section was completed before finishing mine. That is, I had from 1pm until the end of the day to correct previous superscripted citation numbers according to a complicated spreadsheet I concocted that told me the original number, a revised number, and whether any of my citations were duplicates of previous entries. Because the grant hailed from a team of authors, the references were in various stages of completion and coherence, and I had to sift through their revisions and decipher which references stayed and went, which ones substituted for others, and whether their changes resulted in repeated citations and redundant numbering. My eyes were bleary from staring at a screen of single-spaced, 11-point Times New Roman type with green-highlighted citations and toggling back to my cheater spreadsheet riddled with comments. Ten minutes before 5pm, I sent an e-mail to the lead author with the final grant proposal, replete with its 378 references. Oh, yes. Three hundred. Seventy-eight. All accounted for, formatted, cited in order, and superscripted.

Then I went home immediately. If there are any revisions to this so-called final version, I won’t know about it until I get into work tomorrow, which, coincidentally, is also the deadline to apply for this grant. Somehow, it always ends up this way.

Even amidst the filtering, record-keeping, nit-picking, item-checking madness of the last two weeks, I was never fully at odds with the assignment. Sure, the authors gave us the document with the assumption that it just needed “some polishing,” failed to meet all of their deadlines, gave us three conflicting versions to reconcile, and continued to submit revisions after the final cut. Despite all of that, I had strange satisfaction in simply knowing that I am good at this.

I’m good at wrestling a mangled document into some form of cohesion. I can keep track of a host of data points and make sure they make it onto the page in a readable fashion. I know how to track my work for future conversations, and my filing system keeps all the versions in their rightful places. I am wired to make sense out of the best-intentioned nonsense.

What’s behind this unexpected boost of confidence?

Over the weekend, I made my foray into the freelancing world, thanks in part to you! Since Thursday, I have followed up on a few good leads, reached out to friends to keep me on their radars, e-mailed contacts from a freelance workshop, set up a couple of meet-ups at my upcoming conference, and scheduled a call with a headhunter. Writing cover letters and rereading my resume helped me realize that maybe I could pull off being a freelancing. I can do it. I’m going to do it.

Taking steps toward building my professional network means I am not working toward a master’s degree, and that makes me a little bit sad. I always assumed that I’d earn one in something, but five years later, I have no prospects that pique my interest and stay within my budget. So, I’m trying another path to the profession I always wanted, and it’s simultaneously thrilling and sobering because I can’t help but wonder if I am okay with bypassing that academic goal. Maybe the route I assumed I would take is not the only way to the destination, and maybe I’m just on a scenic detour that will take me through academia one day.

I told JG last night that I feel so much better about what I’m doing now than when I was slogging through a graduate course, and if nothing else, it’s forward motion.  I’m taking teeny, tiny baby steps, but I’m moving in the right direction.