When doors open
“When the door cracks open, kick it in.” Whether you’re just starting out or pursuing your fifth, tenth, or fifteenth job, that’s a good rule of thumb. I heard that comment at a conference put on by the Association of Health Care Journalists this spring. At the session, which was on freelancing, writer David Dobbs...
Financial giants’ humble beginnings
A recent Financial Post article about the early jobs of big enchiladas on Wall Street reminded me of something. Most powerful people do not start out that way. In fact, early on, many held humble positions that bore little relation to what they do now. Charles Schwab, founder and chairman of the Charles Schwab Corporation,...
Who wants to be a gladiator in a suit?
I recently discovered Scandal, the TV show featuring Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a fixer for the elite. Pope specializes in damage control, mending public images and keeping secrets from leaking out. In the first episode, one of her employees asks a young lawyer whether she wants to be a gladiator in a suit. She...
Early signs of LBJ’s future in politics
Long before years of wheeling and dealing etched deep lines into his face, Lyndon Baines Johnson displayed a preternatural ability to cozy up to those in power. In college, his first job involved picking up trash, chopping weeds, and raking small rocks and lugging larger ones off campus, according to biographer Robert Caro. Whenever he...
How Le Carré works
We don’t often hear about the work habits of those who are good at what they do. Or when we do, they are misleading. In recent years, the press has focussed perhaps too much on people who made names for themselves while still quite young with seemingly little effort. Mark Zuckerberg comes to mind. Perhaps...
Advice for a college student
Today an opinion piece in The Washington Post bothered me. A lot. A freshman at Columbia University described the summer job she had last year as the best experience of her life. Teaching middle-school students full-time was “exhausting, yet also rewarding and meaningful,” inspiring her to consider becoming a K-12 teacher. Great. But after her...
Annie Lennox on beginnings and endings
Annie Lennox’s musical journey began at age 3, when she began to pick out tunes on a small plastic toy piano. She loved to sing all the time. Luckily her parents realized she had a musical ear. By the time she was 6 or 7, she sang in a local choir every Saturday morning. She...
A lie helped William Shatner snag his first job
After graduating from McGill University, William Shatner landed his first professional job in a small acting company in Montreal. “The bothersome thing was that I got the job as an assistant manager by telling them I got my bachelor’s degree from McGill, and that I was adept at accounting and banking,” he said in a...
Sotomayor and the mind of a detective
When it comes to choosing a career, some people begin to narrow down their options early. As a girl, Sonia Sotomayor wanted to be a detective, like her favorite fictional heroine, Nancy Drew. In her memoir, she reveals that she was convinced she would make a great detective, because her mind worked like Nancy’s. She...