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Mentorship May 11, 2017
When I threw my cap into the air on my graduation day last May, I was all beams and dreams. I felt capable to take on the world with countless courses, three part-time jobs, and two internships under my belt. Sure, I didn’t have a post-grad plan but after four years of putting in the hours, I was damn well fine with that.
Come the day after the champagne glasses clinked and my diploma was framed, the panic started to take over. Every morning I would pour myself a big cup of coffee and pour over job listings. Sure, the links worked, but nothing really clicked. Recommended job after recommended job would pop up and burst my bubble. Adulthood started to settle in and it felt like I would have to settle my dreams. In the depressing words of Winona Ryder, reality bites.
But then, I stumbled upon an ad for Editorial Interns at a start-up magazine. At first, I thought the listing was too good to be true. San Diego may be America’s finest city but it wasn’t the brightest for aspiring writers. Hubs like Los Angeles and New York City are home to the country’s most famous publications so my hometown didn’t have much to offer.
But two applications and one interview later, my skepticism faded when an email from Entity popped up in my inbox. That week I walked in an office full of faces as bright as their MacBook screens. I was instantly surrounded by a wonderful group of women in my boat that found refuge in a corner downtown office. Although every woman was at different phases of her college or career journey, we were all there that summer because we knew that opportunity knocked.
Because of college, I have grown confident in my writing abilities. But because of Entity, I now have confidence in my future. I have hope that the millennial start-up mentality will take over my hometown and revive the industry I want to immerse myself in. I have hope that new companies will pop up to fill in the holes of the industries we have been trained for, from journalism to molecular biology to gender studies. I have hope that the job market will adapt to our interests and I have hope that we will change the landscape if it refuses to budge.
Eventually I probably will move to one of those big bad cities to further my career. I don’t plan on staying in San Diego forever but it’s where I’m at now. While circumstance may shift my plan, I refuse to let it change my passion.
If another woman is in my shoes, I never want her to choose between her coordinates and her dreams. I want her to strap on her platforms and be greeted with endless opportunities when she walks through the post-grad door – whether she’s in San Diego or Birmingham, Alabama. I want her to break that glass ceiling without succumbing to the societal pressures in a limited market for her aspirations; I want her to envision a five-year plan without worrying about her zipcode; I want her to succeed in the post-grad world without giving up her goals.
Jennifer, Gabrielle, and the women of Entity have given me hope in her future. We are women who want to lift other women up with us. We want women to excel at work, thrive at home, and propel forward in life. We want women to keep their dreams close to their heart and use their heads to turn the unlikely into reality. Because of Entity, I now have confidence in all of our futures – as women, as writers, and as warriors of the work world. We are the #WomenThatDo, and we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way.
