When I was at my family dinner last night, I found out that my cousin’s husband works for WVIZ, the public broadcasting channel. He does web development and technology work I guess. I can’t believe I never knew this! I talked to him about how I’m going to volunteer at WOSU next year and about my interest in the broad scope of public television. He said that probably when I come home for winter break he could find me some work to do around WVIZ!
Then I remembered I would have to fit in this and the work I was going to do with my sister’s fiancé. He has a friend who’s producing a student film for a senior thesis project and they said I could come down and help. That means I would learn a bunch of new skills.
About a month ago, I was at the beach with some family, and my mom’s cousin, who was a Communications major in college and has openly disapproved about me making the same mistake, but still thinks I can do something with it, has had a lot of interesting jobs and is now the VP of a company involved with communications or PR or something. (No, I’m not quite sure what they do, but it still sounds interesting!) She said that next summer she could get me a job/internship thing working with her and she thinks that would really help me. I figure, any foot in the door I can get can’t hurt!
And speaking of that cousin, her twin sister and twin sister’s husband are well-known newspaper reporters. They have definitely given me some good job advice in the past, and they’re always encouraging me to ask them questions and are more than happy to do what they can to get me job experience.
And my aunt and uncle, who live in New York City, both used to work in theater and pretty much know everyone it seems like. My uncle has a job now where he has a lot of connections to a lot of people, and is always offering suggestions and trying to set me up to meet important people in the business. (I’m actually counting on them to let me crash there if I ever get an internship in NYC, but I haven’t quite told them yet!)
In the world of media and communications, it’s always said, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.� Sure, you have to know what you’re doing, but it definitely helps to know some people in the business. I always cursed the fact that I didn’t have any famous family members doing my dream job that could take me every step of the way. But now I see that I have family in related jobs all across the border! And they genuinely want to help me figure out what I’m doing here. The more I think about it, the more I realize I do have the resources...it’s just a matter of stepping up and taking advantage of them! I really need to stop putting off taking these big risks...because now I know that if it doesn’t work out or I fall, I have many people here to help me land on my feet.