I got a job!

The most exciting and surprising thing that happened this week was that I got a job! I am now an editorial assistant (fancy term for editing intern) with BYU Studies, an organization on campus that publishes scholarly articles relating to LDS history and doctrine. I was quite surprised that I got it.

On the night of Friday, April 27, I didn't want to do anything productive. I just wanted to get on the computer and listen to music and look at old Peanuts strips. I figured that if I was going to waste time like that, I would have to do something to feel at least a little productive. So I looked at jobs.byu.edu to see if there were any good job openings. (It amazes me how much the economy has changed--two years ago, there were at most four pages of jobs, but usually there were only two or three; now five pages would be quite low; when I looked, I think there were seven pages.) I found a listing for an editing intern with BYU Studies. Now that I've taken ELang 350, Basic Editing Skills, I am qualified to apply for a lot of internships, but there's always someone more qualified than I am. I figured I might as well apply, but I kind of hoped I wouldn't get it so that I could have more free time. I sent a half-hearted email and attached my resume to it.

The next day, I got a response that said, "We have several qualified applicants, so I 'd like you to take a writing test." I had to write an abstract for an article. I wanted to get it done that day, but the links she gave me for the article didn't work, so I told her I couldn't access the article pages. She gave me directions to find them, so on Monday I wrote my abstract and sent it off. The instructions said the writing test should take 30 to 45 minutes. I finished at just over 45 minutes; in a different situation I would have spent more time fine tuning the abstract, but I wanted to get it over with. I thought that was that.

I went to class in the basement of the JFSB, where there is no phone reception at all. I came out of class at 5:20 and turned my phone on and found that I got a message from Jennie, the BYU Studies lady. She wanted to see if I could have an interview before 6:00 that day. I called her back and she told me I could come in right then. So I went in totally unprepared for an interview. It was a pretty awkward interview; I felt like I gave a lot of "wrong answers" and generally exhibited my awkwardness and incompetence. They (Jennie and a man) told me they liked my abstract and asked some questions about my resume. Jennie said to the man, "Well, what do you think?" He said it was her decision. They asked me to step outside and they would let me know their decision momentarily. The interview had gone so poorly that I was sure they were going to tell me they were hiring someone else. I would be OK with that; I just knew it would be awkward for them to tell me that in person, mainly because I knew it would be uncomfortable for them. Then they came out and told me they decided to hire me! I didn't know how to respond because I was so surprised and because I'm generally an unenthusiastic person.

It appears I'm going to work ten hours a week, which will be nice. So far I've worked on an article about baptism symbolism in the Book of Mormon. Jennie has told me my edits have been good; I hope I can keep that up. I still feel a little intimidated--I'm just a lowly new intern.

I honestly think that there must not have been very many applicants if I got the job! I'm sure there are lots of other people who got A's in ELang 350, and there are lots of people who have had more editing experience than I have, since I only did one semester on a student journal. Also, I am a male. I would estimate that roughly 75% of editing minors are girls. I feel like I have a fighting chance against other guys, but I lose my edge when compared with girls. And the test was a writing test--I'm more of an editor than I am a writer, so I figured that there would be lots of applicants who are English majors and who prefer to write, so their abstracts would be better than mine.

But they told me they really liked my abstract, so I guess I must be a decent enough writer. One thing they said impressed them about my abstract (I guess I somewhat threw this in there on purpose) was with regards to the former RLDS Church. They seemed impressed I knew it is now called the Community of Christ, but I think that is pretty common knowledge. They were also impressed I noted some differences between the LDS and RLDS church names: In our church, we use Latter-day, with a hyphen and a lowercase d. The RLDS Church used Latter Day, with no hyphen and an uppercase D. I only became aware of this subtlety because of my editing class. (Jennie told me that our church deliberately chose the hyphenation and capitalization in order to distinguish ourselves from the RLDS Church. Now that the RLDS Church is called the Community of Christ, I think we should capitalize our d now. I have often written Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer with a lowercase n because I knew Latter-day used a lowercase d; now I know that the n should in fact be capitalized.)

It's kind of amazed me to be sitting at a computer editing the article and thinking, "I'm actually getting paid to do this!" I've edited stuff before, primarily for my student journal, but I've never been paid. This is actually the lowest paying job I've ever had, even lower than Walmart and my BYU custodial job. But I still feel pretty lucky. Paid internships are very hard to find--and I happened to snatch one up! I recently applied for a non-paid internship and did not get it. And now I have a paid one! I'm excited about getting an internship because it hopefully gets my foot in the door and because it makes me feel like I am hireable. I feel like it will help me get past the ol' Catch 22--You need a job to get experience, but you need experience to get a job.

Editing can be annoying when you find something you need to fix but you don't know how to fix it or else you don't know how to fix it without introducing another problem. But once you find a suitable solution, it's a great feeling.

Especially when you're getting paid for it.