So, I didn’t get the job. My boss kind of non chalantly threw out the fact that they hired someone else while giving me my agenda for the day. I’m not upset about it. I just kind of expected more than, “Oh, did you heard we hired someone else?” I mean, it’s not like I’ve worked there for two years, or anything…oh, wait…

But, as I said, I’m not upset. In fact, today was excellent, as I got invited to have a phone interview for Teach for America! (Quick side note: I decided to apply for the first deadline, instead of the third, as I will now know if I am accepted in November as opposed to March, thus allowing me to bypass those pesky grad school applications if I accept a TFA position. Smart, right?) At this point, I’m feeling like I’d much rather move forward with the TFA thing, rather than working the same job I’ve been working for the past two years, just with slightly more responsibilities. Plus, now, I most likely get to chill in LA for a week when I get back from Australia, because HEY! I’ll have nothing else to do. Hello, future unemployment!

(Cut to January when upon arrival home from said week in LA, I’m crying about unemployment and boredom. I’ll be sure to link back to this post.)

Whatevs. Today, I’m feeling positive. I’m heading home tomorrow with my friend Lauren (ROAD TRIP!) to then head to NYC with my parents on Saturday to visit my sister and celebrate her birthday slash my parents’ anniversary, which just so happen to be one day apart. (Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad slash Happy [early] Birthday, Stephanie!)

Right now, I’m off to enjoy the second half of my wonderful TV night. (Yet another side note: The Office is officially back! That episode was comedic [and a little romantic] gold! Ryan coming back! Kelly fainting!A talking head from within a computer! “I don’t think I ever really processed 9/11.” Phyllis and Dwight! Poor Andy The rotting fruit! JIM AND PAM!!! Ok…I’m breathing again. Sadly, I doubt Grey’s will get me this excited, but you never know…)

In my ongoing quest to take on every possible application process and look into every possible career choice for my future (that starts ever so soon), I’ve started looking into applying to Teach for America. If you don’t know, TFA is a non-profit organization that recruits and trains recent college grads to commit to teaching for two years in urban and rural schools in low socio-economic areas in an attempt to close the achievement gap in America. I’ve heard about it a lot, obivously as I took Politics of Education this summer, and it’s always sounded intriguing, but it’s been sounding even more intriguing after my (disenchanting) stint in the LA entertainment biz. 

My other plans also include applying to grad school for theater education, so this would obviously be an interesting step in the right direction. I mean, how hard could getting high schoolers to love drama be after teaching inner city kids to love 9th grade English? That’s what I thought.

The upsides of doing this include having a guaranteed, decently paying job for two years. I would have an instant network of friends and collegues wherever they sent me. I’d have an amazing, life-changing experience (if everything touted on the TFA website and in the informational meeting I just attended is true), and would gain valuble experience that would be more than a little useful to WHATEVER I choose to do afterwards. They have an amazing alumni network and various partnerships with businesses and grad schools to take advantage of, as well. 

The various downsides include, IT’S SO HARD (this sounds stupid, but really…it’s a freakin’ hard job.) I can only imagine how draining and difficult this job can be. I mean, I got stressed teaching drama at camp to middle-class Jewish kids. This would be a thousand times harder. Plus, there is the whole moving wherever they tell you to move thing (although, they tell you before you have to make a decision AND you get to rank where you’d want to be placed and they have a 98% rate of sending people to an area they requested.) I know I would be a good teacher under normal teacher circumstances, but I honestly fear I would buckle under this stress. I mean, this semester already gave me a cold. But I know, I KNOW, that at the end of this experience, I would feel amazing. I truly want a job where I am doing something and accomplishing something (see my rant about why I disliked one of my internships in LA). To be able to make even the tiniest impact on these kids lives would be unbelievably fulfilling. 

Lastly, isn’t this the time to do something big? Something crazy? Something you can’t do during any other time in your life? As much as I want to go to grad school for Theater Ed, I don’t know if I can jump right back into school, and there is no job that seems appealing to me right now. I’ve looked. I can’t stick myself in an office again, I just can’t. This would be an amazing experience. A hard experience, but an experience none the less. 

My basic plan for all of these things is to apply for many things and see what sticks. TFA has a deadline in January, which is also when the deadlines for grad school are, so January will be the “I’m unemplyed and applying to EVERYTHING” month. Fun times are clearly in my future. 

So have any of you ever thought of applying to TFA? Know anyone who has?

It’s extremely hard to come up with blog ideas when all I do is work and sit around eating and watching the Olympics. Especially since I actively avoid talking about work, because, you know, the horror stories abound. I will make a small exception now, as something vaguely important could possibly be happening soon, and as I have nothing else to blog about, it seems like a good idea. 

Basically, I’ve been a work-study student at the same place for two years. From what I can tell, I do a pretty good job. In fact, my boss’s last day was today, and when I said good-bye to her (prepare from some self-congratulatory posting…) she said they were so lucky to have found me to work there and offered any help she could give me in the future, as she is moving to New York, somewhere I could possibly end up. Basically, I’ve been working as her assistant when I’m there, so we’ve gotten pretty close. And I’ve loved working there, hence my unhappiness at the possibility of my work-study being taken away (an issue which is not entirely resolved yet, but which my boss has told me not to worry about. She says they definitely want me around for the fall and will figure out a way to keep me there.)

Moving on, my boss’s biggest suggestion leaving the job was to create a full time assistant position for her position, as she shared an assistant with the rest of management, while using me when she could. The company took her advice and created a full-time assistant position. The job description is basically a slightly more in-depth description of MY job,  just full time. My boss encouraged me to apply. She even read my cover letter for me. So I applied. And I got an interview. For a full-time job…that would start next month. Um…ridiculous much? 

This is so good and so bad in a number of ways. First for the so good: if I got it, I would have a full time job! Paying a lot more money than I’m making now! And I could stay in Boston! At a job I already know how to do and actually enjoy! Hooray!

The so bad? I would have a full time job. And class (sure, I am only taking three classes, and they include acting and photography, but still, they are classes…with grades…) And Bay State, the campus TV show I work on. And my sorority, which to be honest, I would probably completely blow off if I got this job. What I’m saying is, I would be exhausted. All. The. Time. It would be a lot to handle, and I really don’t want to have a complete breakdown my last semester of college. 

The double bad countering the so bad, however, would be if they hired someone else, because, honestly? They say I would still work there, but there would be almost nothing for me to do. I’ve been filling this assistant type position all summer, and there are days when I’ve had one project and then done homework for three hours. To add a full time assistant to the mix would make the lowly work-study student obsolete. I guess it wouldn’t be so bad to have a job where I had little to do and still got paid, but with the added responsibility I’ve gained this summer, it would suck to give it up to someone completely new, while I’ve been there for two years. 

I’m trying not to think about any of this too much, as I have no control over what will ultimately happen, and really, if I got offered the job, I wouldn’t even think about not taking it, so why dwell on the negative now like I’m weighing the options? It’s pointless. I’ll take the job if I get it, and I’ll deal with it if I don’t. I really just wanted something to blog about…

I’m not sure if I’ve had enough time to gain the proper perspective on this past semester. I’ve been home less than 24 hours, but it has been almost two weeks since I finished working (at least at one of my internships), so I figured now is as good a time as any to start debriefing on that particular aspect of my time in LA. Here goes on what I’m sure will turn into a thesis: 

When I started thinking about going to LA, I thought of it as more of a chance to gain experience that would help me get to where I knew I wanted to go. I thought of it as a test run, but not really in a work-related way. I knew I wanted to work in television. I just wanted to make sure I liked LA. I had no doubt I would like my jobs. Sure, I knew there would be a lot of getting coffee, covering scripts, and basic grunt work, but I had absolutely not doubt in my mind that working in development or casting was exactly where I wanted to go.

In the beginning, it all seemed to be going fantastically. I had four offers for internships (2 production companies, one soap opera, and one casting office), leaving me with the ability to pick exactly what I wanted to do. I ended up choosing the production company that worked in both film and television (where my interests were) and the casting company, because they focused on theater (which I also love). It seemed to be a perfect balance.

In the beginning, the internships were exactly what I thought they would be in terms of getting coffee and answering phones, but perhaps with a little more grocery shopping and imdb-ing than I thought. I loved everyone was I working with. I felt very inside the entertainment industry. I was reading production binders from well-known pilots. Lunch consisted of sitting in the conference watching TV with all the assistants.  I was doing exactly what I thought I wanted to do. 

Soon, however, I started to question things. I sat at my desk for hours reading terrible TERRIBLE scripts. I went to pick up a blackberry for a junior executive who had “broken his in Mexico,” then found out a month later he had sent another intern to get him another blackberry because he had spilled soy sauce on the one I got him. I spent 6 (!!!) hours on the phone calling out auditions for understudies in a two week run of an experimental play. I found myself counting down the hours until I could get the hell out of the office and into the sunshine. I sat shaking at assistants’ desks while I covered for them for the afternoon, fearing the ringing of the phone because it would mean trying to figure out how to conference in the executive on location in New Orleans without losing the original caller. I found myself realizing I in no way wanted to ever have to do what the assistant’s did or maybe even what the executives did. They had meetings. They talked on the phone a lot. They wheeled and dealed. It was all very business like. I never wanted to work in a business or in an office. That is why I didn’t go to business school. I always thought that working in development, I would feel like I was helping to make and shape what was on television. What I ended up feeling like was that the executives were like middlemen. They found projects and brought them to someone else to make. I wanted to make the TV. I wanted to be in the excitement. The office was definitely not where the excitement was. The casting office felt the same. I wanted to be more a part of the process, but the casting director is so much more a facilitator than an actual decision maker. It was all sorting through submissions and scheduling auditions so that someone else could make the decisions. These jobs weren’t what I wanted for myself. 

Every day became a constant debate in my mind. Today wasn’t too bad, but could I do this for a year? For two years? Is this what every job is like or is it just this office? I started to wonder whether there was a better job for me. Maybe I should reconsider writing. I always liked that in class. Perhaps I would be happier working in production, outside or on set, running around, actually seeing things getting made. Maybe I should just find a job in theater. Or maybe I just didn’t like the realities of working, and the jobs I didn’t have just seem great because I wasn’t off doing them. Maybe once I got there, I would hate them too. 

I think that was the hardest part of this whole experience for me: realizing that I can never realy know what something will be like or if I’ll actually like doing something until I’m actually doing it. I feel like I can’t trust myself anymore to make any kind of decision based on what I think I might like, because, well, I’ve been wrong before. Why couldn’t I be wrong again?

So here I am, entering my last few months of school with absolutely NO idea where I should go or what I should do once I’m done. My classes in the fall kind of revisit things I thought I didn’t want to do (writing, production), but am now reconsidering. Hopefully, I’ll get an even better idea of my strengths in them to see if I could pursue them once I graduate. I’m also going back to work at the Huntington Theatre, where I’m hopefully going to try to work in some different departments to see if I like that as well. I’m hoping that as the summer and fall semester go by, I can add to my experiences this past semester to have some semblance of an idea of where I am going. My mom keeps assuring me I don’t need to have a plan, and I’m not delusional enough to think I need a five or ten year plan to be able to do anything after graduation. I’ve just always had a very clear goal in my head for where I was going. Ever since I was in 7th grade, I’ve known exactly what I wanted to do. It’s changed many MANY times, but I’ve never been where I am now. I’ve never not had any idea. I feel so aimless and lost. It sucks. I thrive on direction, on having a goal and reaching it. If I have no goal, how can I figure out my next move. I just don’t want to suffer through some crappy entry level position not knowing what I am working towards. 

I guess the point of this post is that I learned this semester that I don’t know anything. I didn’t absolutely  hate where I worked, but I would think twice before accepting an entry level position in similar organizations after I graduate. Thank god I have 7 months until the end of college. Hopefully, I’ll have some sort of breakthrough from now until then that will at least give me some insight as to what to do next. If not, at least I have 7 months before I have to decide anything definitive. 

Up next: A wrap-up of  my life experience in LA outside of work – think bars, cars, and movies! Horay!

Every day that I go to work, I feel I am getting closer and closer to making a decision about my future that leans a lot more towards grad school than towards moving back out to LA. The last two days, I didn’t leave my desk all day (oh, except to go grocery shopping for the whole office. Fun.). All I did was read and write converge. All day. For two days. Now, I love reading as much as if not more than the next person, but reading terrible spec scripts and rambling manuscripts for 10 hours is not my idea of fun.

One assignment given to me as a short story that had been pitched to the company as one story, but turned out to be a novel that was about something entirely different. This led me to think that everyone at the company that sent the novel in hadn’t even read said novel. Nice. Also nice was the fact that executives were playing guitar hero in the next office, so as I tried to concentrate on a poorly written manuscript about Alaska, all I could hear was “Monkey Wrench” blasting 10 feet away.

Even reading the trades is making me want to get out of here. I mean, I keep reading scripts thinking I’ll know a good one when I see it, but I read some pilot scripts that were going around that are now being picked up by the networks, and not one of them was anything I would have recommended to my boss. Not only does that make me question the taste of those in the industry, it makes me question my ability to thrive in the industry if I can’t identify these successful scripts.

While all that was going on, I requested more information about the Emerson Theater Ed program, and the admissions ambassador I’ve talked to has given me every answer I was hoping for. I could work while getting my degree. The program is extremely personalized and social. It doesn’t hurt me that I didn’t major in theater in college.

Blerg. I hate how excited I am getting about this, because I used to be this excited about television. I feel like I’ve lost all credibility with myself and my family. No one (including myself) really gets how I turned against working in television so quickly. It just kind of happened one day, and now I get can’t myself motivated anymore. My parents keep telling me to take advantage of everything in LA, in case I change my mind again, but I just can’t picture myself working out here anymore. I mean, if I am this doubtful being here, how am I going to get myself to pick up and move back? My mom says once I get some distance from LA, things should make sense. God, I hope so.

In happier television related news, Top Chef tonight! That’s all I’ve got.