“I wish I could be anorexic, just for a month or so.”
This was the first of many enlightening things I overheard my work experience ‘mentor’ telling another staff member. She had just heard the news that Mary-Kate Olsen was seriously ill. She’s obviously joking, I fervently hoped.
My seventeen year-old self was designated the job of answering very personal, medical questions in the monthly column of this popular, national young women’s magazine.
“I don’t know whether I know how to answer these questions,” I tried to sound assertive and failed miserably. “Just look in the archives,” I was told.
Young readers from all over the country had posted in their problems. I opened the first reader’s envelope. It started with, “It’s been about a year since my last period…” I gulped. Someone came over to my desk, “would you be right to whip up some horoscopes when you’re done?” I was disillusioned by the request but supposed I could.
This month Virgos will travel to Sydney to do work experience at a national youth magazine and learn that this is in fact not their dream job. Too specific? I wondered.
Later in the week I was asked to do some fact-checking and came across some possible ‘inconsistencies’. On questioning the possible defaming nature of some unaccredited quotes, I was met with laughter. “Oh honey, that’s too cute. We’re a big magazine, sweetie, so we don’t need to worry about these things.” Why I was fact-checking then, I’m still not sure. It was possibly to change-up the coffee-fetching routine.
A shiny head popped over the neighbouring cubical on my final day. “Sweetie, what kinds of things do you think high school girls worry about?” I felt the concerns of young women everywhere resting on my head. I was a bit excited. “Well, um, I guess, like, our futures? I mean, things like uni and getting jobs?” my self-conscious teen-identity answered.
“I was thinking more along the lines of cellulite darling, but thanks anyway sweetie!”
This work-experience certainly had its high points, including freebies, Home-and-Away-star- spotting, and life lessons, for example. But it did put a bend in my previously straight and dreamy path to Ita Buttrose-style magazine-running glory.
related posts:
decipher me by charlotte guest.
leaving the windows open. by blaze edwards.
