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Mentorship August 16, 2017
Trust me, it's a lot more than just "believing in yourself."
In the blazing summer of 2017, I had the coolest 10 weeks of my life (pun definitely intended).
I came into the ENTITY Academy as a Theatre Major, and I was a total newbie to online journalism. However, I came out of the program totally prepared to apply to any media company in the city. Why?
Because you don’t leave the ENTITY Academy without feeling prepared for any vocational venture.
Three months ago, I couldn’t even imagine writing five articles in one day. The ENTITY Academy expands what you originally thought you could reasonably do in one work day.
With the Academy hours going from 9 to 5, you get an accurate idea of how much you can complete in the average work day. You begin to know how much you can push yourself until the quality of your work starts to slip, and you can perfect that balance over time.
How many of you have told someone about your vocational pursuits, and no matter what you’re pursuing, you’ve heard the following words:
“You know, it’s really all about who you know. You know?”
If you’re like me, you’re probably tired of hearing that age-old phrase. It seems to negate skill and hard work as any indicator or hirability. However, this is not true. Because networking is a valuable talent in itself.
On each day of the ENTITY Mentorship program, we have amazing women come in to talk about their careers. We’ve had Hollywood directors, CEOs, actresses, talent agents, entrepreneurs… essentially, really intimidating people. For many of these women, Jennifer passed around a sign-up sheet so we could have one-on-ones with the speaker after their presentations.
So basically, you can literally walk up to these successful women and ask, “How on earth did you get where you are?” And all of them give you real, specific answers, rather than vague statements about courage and persistence.
ENTITY helps you realize that networking is really just making the effort to talk to someone about their career. It took time for me to learn this, but after I did, it became 1,000 percent easier to talk to literally any professional.
I thought I was competent with Adobe Photoshop before this program, but I was terribly mistaken. I had no idea that making a professional meme (also, professional memes exist) could take upwards of half an hour. I had no idea you could photoshop J.K. Rowling’s head on Robin Wright’s body without it looking campy or amateur.
At the ENTITY Academy, you have access to sites like Shutterstock.com and programs like Adobe Photoshop that allow you to use the same tools as the professionals. You even feel like a professional while doing it.
During the search engine optimization (or SEO) section of our curriculum, I learned something of critical importance: having a good voice isn’t enough. As depressing as this seems, it is actually one of the most valuable pieces of information I learned this summer.
Our weeks focusing on SEO taught us exactly how to rank on the first page of Google, which is mainly how your article will get seen. We learned how keywords, bounce rates and article length can affect how relevant Google finds your article (compared to 1,000 other articles written on the same subject).
This section of the ENTITY Academy curriculum not only taught me how to optimize my article for high Google rankings, but how to ensure my article would be seen by the most people possible.
During the speaker series we have at ENTITY Academy, you meet women who have an almost unbelievable work ethic. They have risen the ranks in their respective industries at incredible rates, persevered through unimaginable obstacles and been altogether incredible. With every speaker, I basically thought to myself:
Wow. They’ve made it.
And the best part? Most of them were doing exactly what I was doing at my age. They were taking opportunities as they came, getting involved in summer programs and most importantly, they were getting as much education as they possibly could.
These women, and the ENTITY Academy in general, constantly inundate you with this idea: There is no reason you can’t be a C.E.O., media journalist, or entrepreneur. Each speaker becomes a mentor for the mentees, a contact that each fellow has the option to invest in. I haven’t found this kind of opportunity anywhere else, and it is completely unique.
So should you apply to the ENTITY Academy? Yes. Yes, you should.
