In graduate school, every woman dreams of her first job on the outside. A workplace full of smart, funny, good-looking, well-dressed coworkers patting each other on the back, pitching in to get projects done. High paying and fast paced. Happy hour every day at the corner pub. An office with a view of a park, and a boss who stops by once in a while to thank you for putting in twelve-hour days. Kind of like a mix between Thirtysomething and Friends.So nothing could have prepared me for the sheer agony of my first year out of grad school. Not only did it turn me into a fountain of sadness, but it forced me to analyze the relationship between career and happiness. It took some time (and therapy), but I finally realized I could have both.
I was working in the advertising industry, meaning status-oriented and extremely cutthroat. The pressure to get the “right” job at the “right” agency was high. If for one second I were to accept a job at a second-tier agency or—gasp—client side, I would have been exiled from my colleagues’ social circles and gossiped about in instant-message sessions. So of course I took a job at a large advertising agency for near-poverty-level pay and worked like a slave for a year. And when I say “slave,” I do mean someone whois treated as if she is indebted to her “owner.” I worked every holiday, my birthday, most every weekend, and nights until nine or ten o’clock, with no overtime. At first, I sucked it up and thought to myself, “Don’t be a baby. This is just the proving time. I’m paying my dues and then I’ll get a raise and have to work a few less holidays.” It was sort of fun when everyone was around late at night working, eating takeout, and bitching and moaning together, like a support group. We’d always bring in beers and cocktails on the weekend while we were working, and play music loud to keep each other pumped up. So it wasn’t happy hour at the corner pub, and because of the continuous takeout diet, my coworkers weren’t exactly good-looking, but it was all right.
However, looks and waistlines weren’t the only things that were suffering. Working tirelessly on producing hundreds of thirty-second commercial scripts that would just end up in the trash can was wearing away at my creativity and inspiration, and rapidly eroding my normally cheery personality. Constantly defending good work with the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it would move into production was getting old. On top of ulcers and premature gray hair, I had creative constipation—working every day on projects and assignments and never producing anything.
I became a victim. Every time they hit me with another assignment that meant another late night and another missed weekend, I told myself it was because the powers that be thought I was talented: “They must really like my work, or they wouldn’t always keep me around like this.” But the sacrifices became more numerous, and the good times didn’t follow. I wasn’t once thanked for any of the holidays I sacrificed or the hours I gave or the intense amount of work I produced. I started dreading new assignments, hiding in my office so my bosses wouldn’t find me.
