March 10, 2010

Gen-Y is going to save the world.

Nice to see you again. Follow me, @SydneyOwen. Thanks for being here!

Apparently we’re in a recession. Apparently we should all be saving money. Apparently ::dramatic pause:: Gen-Y is going to save the world.

Okay, so maybe not save the world in a Superman kind of way – but according to a recent article by MediaPost – “Gen-Y is going to spend us into recovery.”

Talk about pressure.

Among Gen Y consumers, between 18 and 27 for this report, just 25% say the economy has significantly changed their shopping behavior. Among Gen X, it’s 36%, and among Boomers, 37%.

That’s a considerable difference, isn’t it?

So the article goes on to talk about how median household incomes of Boomers have dropped dramatically from 2004 to 2009, how Gen-Y likes to spend, spend, spend and how our more affluent predecessors, Gen-X, are to an extent, in the same boat.

I think this article is right about how Gen-Y is spending. At least, it totally applies to me, if I were representative of our entire generation. Except, I don’t think I (or any single generation’s spending habits) can save the world. So there’s that.

Here’s the thing about Gen-Y (again, let’s pretend that I am the norm for the sake of this post) – financially, most of us don’t have a lot to work with, but we’re really good at working with what we do have. The article mentions that Gen-Y spends very differently. We are still “trading down” but we are definitely seeking out new ways to find bargains.

For example, I have a very strict budget that I stick to and I operate at the bare minimum on a lot of things so I can have my fun money. When I first moved to Chicago, I could get a week’s worth of groceries for under $20. Coincidentally, I was involuntarily vegetarian, because eating fresh produce and tofu was way cheaper than buying chicken or seafood or other types of protein. But yeah, $20 for a week’s worth of groceries. Amazing. Especially in a city like Chicago.

I ::gasp:: don’t have cable or internet at my apartment. I don’t need it because I’m never home. Seriously. I know. Let that register for a second.

But, because I don’t pay $60-$100 or whatever normal people pay for cable/internet – I can go out to eat more. Or go shopping. After all, I can tweet and Facebook and blog from my phone.

So, what do you think? I know diddly squat about economics or what is going to save this country from the recession – so take my two cents with a grain of salt.

Do you think it’s possible for Gen-Y’s spending habits to send the country into recovery? Is this article spot-on or totally off?

If you’re Gen-Y – are you spending? Saving? Do you make sacrifices so you can have fun money? What are your must-have items?

{ 5 comments }

March 8, 2010

Stepping back vs. Stepping forward: Unfiltered

Okay, so the story goes that Gen-Y is all kinds of entitled and we expect the world on a silver platter and all that jazz.

I disagree. Until it comes to PR students looking for PR jobs.

Now, disclaimer – this is a general statement and obviously does not apply to a great deal of PR students, especially the ones I’ve been fortunate enough to mentor this year. But this does apply to people who send me one-off emails looking for a job. It may apply to you. It may not. But in general – there is this stigma about PR internships vs. entry-level positions. So on with it.

NEWSFLASH: If you want to work in Chicago (or NYC, I’d imagine, but I don’t work at an agency in NYC so let’s stick to what I know), in PR, at a big-name agency, chances are, you probably have to intern first. Period.

This is not a step back. This is not anyone undermining your education. This is not in any way insulting your intelligence. Or the institution you come from. Or all of the internships you had before you graduated. Or all of the clubs you were a part of that “got you ready” for real life.

This is how it goes. And it works.

And it’s a great thing! I thank my lucky stars EVERY SINGLE DAY that I went through the internship program at Weber before I was hired full-time. You know why? Because EVERY SINGLE DAY when I was an intern, I was learning something new – something that is expected that AAE’s (the next step beyond intern) already know. I would have drowned if I hadn’t been an intern first.

What’s more is – when you’re an intern – you have a pool of peers to fall back on, to rely on, to bounce ideas off of, and most importantly, to help you answer your questions. There are constantly interns on staff here – we have a rolling program where we have people joining the team all throughout the year. It’s fantastic the way it’s set up. When I sat down at my intern desk – there were two girls who had been there for six weeks already. There were two girls who had been there for four weeks. I was new, but I was surrounded by interns who already had the skills that I would eventually need, who could answer the questions I would eventually have.

And, to be completely honest with you, I thought I knew a lot coming in. I really did. I thought I’d walk in there and rock the house and to an extent, I did. But not as much as I thought I would. I knew the principles of PR, how to do research and I could come up with a hypothetical SWOT analysis like the best of them, but believe me when I tell you – I had no idea how the business works (and I’m still learning about that part ) and I had no idea what agency PR actually entails.

NEWSFLASH #2: Your college education doesn’t teach you ANYTHING about company politics, how an agency is run, or how you’re actually going to do your job.

At least mine didn’t. And I came from USF – one of the few accredited Mass Comm programs in the country. I thought I had a super-solid foundation for what I was about to do. I did, kinda. That being said, if you’ve gone to school, majored in PR, work at an agency now and you can say “yeah, I learned how to do this in INSERT NAME OF PR COURSE HERE,” I want to talk to you. Like, now.

School doesn’t teach you real life. School teaches you the principles about the industry so you can kinda get it and kinda understand what the hell is going on inside those four walls.

Public relations is SO MUCH MORE than what I learned in the classroom at USF. I learned more in my 8 weeks as an intern than I did in two years of PR-sequence-specific courses.

So to anyone who is still in school and looking for a job in PR, I say this: embrace an internship opportunity. More than likely, it’s paid. If I can survive in Chicago on an intern salary with all of the crazy expenses that I had when I moved here, you can too.

Embrace it because though you think agency life may be for you – and then come to find out – you may hate it. Embrace it because you can ask questions, and make mistakes, and learn all kinds of new things and have those “rookie moments” because you’re new to this whole thing. It happens.

Embrace it because if you get the opportunity to be an intern, and you rock the house, and you do really solid work and you have a skill set that sets you apart – you will get a job. Maybe not with the company that you originally intern for – but you will find work. I know dozens of interns who have gone through the program here that now have full-time jobs elsewhere. Getting your first step at a big-name agency will open up tons of doors for you. Seriously.

So stop thinking that applying for or accepting an internship at an agency is a step back or settling. I know we all dream and hope to have a job lined up after graduation because we can wave a degree proudly in the air. The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of degree-waving people. So consider an internship, even if it’s a “step back” from where you had originally pictured yourself after college. It’s not a step back. It’s a step forward. But if you see it as a step back, be it financially, a step back in “title” or what have you, it may be the best “step back” you’ve ever taken.

I know mine sure was.

{ 23 comments }

March 4, 2010

Realizing Your Dreams: Unfiltered.

“How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams?” – Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) in “Up in the Air”.

…is a quote that I think rings true with a lot of people in the workforce. Especially with the job market being as tough as it is – a lot of people are settling for less than their dreams. A lot of people don’t even know what their dreams are.

But this quote doesn’t ring true to me. For me it’s more, “how much did they pay you to REALIZE your dreams?”

There is a lot to be said for job satisfaction, dreams and opportunities. I remember a year ago I had NO CLUE what I wanted to do. I was sitting in my PR Design course – rocking Adobe CS4 and checking out a placement program called the University of Dreams. Through this program – for a mere $8,000, you can pick your industry and a location and get an internship (and there’s a lot more to it than that, but you get it). You have to still be enrolled in school, and you’ll have to figure out how to survive in whatever location you desire – but you’ll have an unpaid internship ready for the taking.

I remember sitting in the classroom with two of my classmates, daydreaming about a PR internship in Barcelona or Chicago or New York. Big cities, far away places, and locations where I didn’t really have any connections yet. I had a few connections in New York that I was talking to, but nothing that was really leading to anything.

I started looking into options to make this opportunity financially possible. I was slated to graduate that summer, so there was no way for me to save up $8,000 in three months. I didn’t need any more school credit – so the opportunity was actually not all that great. OH AND IT WAS EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS.

So I went to the restaurant that night, bartended my face off, and continued to save for my trip down to Austin to SXSW. Which, ultimately, changed my life.

I seriously had no idea what I wanted to do after graduation – I just knew I wanted it to be big, and glamorous, and full of opportunities to learn and grow. The career path for a typical PR grad from USF is to go through the program, have a few internships, graduate, and go work for a non-profit or a local small agency if you’re lucky. The small agencies required internship experience – but to get that internship experience you had to have a flawless GPA. Which I didn’t have. So in the end, neither of those sounded like what I wanted to do. I was totally and completely open to any opportunity, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I was looking for.

Until I got to Austin. The plan was to go to SXSW and come back with some new friends, a boat load of business cards, and some internship/job possibilities lined up for after graduation. In Austin, I had three informal interview-type situations.

Through all three conversations – I realized what my dreams were.

I talked to the president of a boutique agency who had offices in Milwaukee and Chicago. He told me that I didn’t have what it takes to make it in the agency world. But, he helped me with my resume and told me what agencies look for when they are considering candidates. So that was helpful.

I talked to a couple of guys from a creative agency in New York – which lead to big dreams and aspirations of working in a primarily digital and social environment. This company rocked my socks. It was my dream job. Digital work, big clients, challenging and fun atmosphere and OH EM GEE it’s in New York.

And then I talked to the guy who would eventually become my boss. That story is all over this blog, so I’ll spare you, but the point that I want to make is this:

You never know when you will discover your dreams. And you definitely don’t have to pay $8,000 to have the opportunity to do so.

Yes, SXSW was an investment. But it wasn’t $8,000. In fact, the internships that I found and held before I moved to Chicago for an internship with Weber Shandwick were all word of mouth. One of the girls in my classes was an intern at Moffitt and she loved it. So she gave me their contact information, I interviewed there and landed that one. Then there was a speaker who came to talk to our PRSSA chapter and after she was done speaking, I introduced myself, we had a moment that only KU fans can have together, and then we went our separate ways. Two months later, she needed an intern. Guess who she called?

You never know who will advocate for you. You never know who will find you interesting, who will see your promise, and who will invest time in your success. That being said, networking is single-handedly the most important thing you can do to get to where you want to be. And fortunately, networking comes in many shapes and sizes and most of the time is a minimal cost.

The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of amazing, talented, smart students out there. If you’re in college and reading this, you’re probably one of them. But being talented, amazing and eager to learn will only get you so far. You need to have someone behind you that knows this – that really believes in you – to be your champion and to get you in the door.

For more info on how to find an internship: read this. Then this.

Would you pay thousands of dollars for the opportunity to work through an unpaid internship? If you’re in college – how did you find your internships? If you’re out of college – how did you get your first job?

And to everyone – what are your dreams? Do you know what they are? Are you happy where you’re at? If not, what are you waiting for?

{ 4 comments }

March 2, 2010

Love Happens For A Reason

In February, I had the opportunity to participate in the All You Need series over at Ophelia’s Webb. It was a big fat lovey dovey month of daily posts from our community about what love is. And it was one of the hardest posts I have written so far. Not in the aspect that the concept of love is difficult for me to write about. It’s not. Obviously. When it comes to love, I’m all over it. I know what I want and what I need and what I have to offer and it’s all smiles and sparkles and unicorns and rainbows when it happens.

What was hard about this post in particular is that I was in this strange place when I wrote it. Not like dark-alley-strange, but strange like, in limbo. There was so much that could happen from the time it posted (February 15) until the time that I will further reference as “The Weekend”.

My post is below, but the post from the All You Need series that really rings true, especially after The Weekend is this one by Sharalyn Hartwell, a Generation Y columnist for the Examiner.

Here’s some food for thought:

Pretend your capacity for love is a beaker (like the ones you used in science class.) The water you pour into the beaker is the love you feel for a special someone. You may have a 500 mL beaker while he/she has a 250 mL beaker. Both are filled to the brim with water, holding (giving) all they can, but your beaker just happens to contain more water, simply because its capacity is much greater. As such, you have more love to give and you likely need more love to feel fulfilled.

I KNOW RIGHT!?!

Totally amazing, so simple, and definitely true!

So maybe my challenge now is not trying to figure out next steps or how it’s supposed to feel by any normal definition. If you know anything about this story, you know that it’s far from normal. Maybe the challenge now is all coming back to beakers. Which, given the context of my post below, is HILARIOUSLY ironic.

I think maybe now the challenge is for me to not only assess the compatibility of the beakers (not giving too much, not overflowing etc) but also to assess the capacity in which the beakers SHOULD be filled. And with what. Do I put the same kind of love in the beakers for my family as I do for my friends? Do I fill up the beaker for my best friend as high as I would if that best friend were my boyfriend?

So, my friends, in case you didn’t catch it, here is my guest post for the All You Need Series.

Love Happens For a Reason

I’ve known since I was a girl that the ultimate goal for this thing we call life is to be happy like my parents. That much has remained the same. As I grew up, I wanted to be an actress, a comedian, a lawyer, an athletic trainer, a surgeon. But there was always one constant that I have counted on in my equation of life while all of the other variables continue to change and shift and derail my plans.

Love.

I was almost a junior in college when I moved to Florida. I had decided that I was going to major in biology, go to med school, become an otolaryngologist (head and neck surgeon) and save lives for a living.

But then I met a guy.

Not even anyone special, in fact, he was the king of douchebaggery but you know, at the time, we were totally getting married someday. I found more value in hanging out with him than I did trying to figure out chemistry….

Read the rest over at Ophelia’s Webb.

So it really all does come back down to chemistry and science, doesn’t it?

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February 28, 2010

Risks: Unfiltered.

They don’t tell you about this part. They don’t tell you about the part that rips the rug out from under you and the part that makes you question who you were or who you are.

This isn’t what you sign up for.

But this is part of it.

With any great risk there comes great reward. In this case, great risk was putting myself out there for all of it. In this case, the great risk was letting down a wall that was most definitely set in stone and concrete and sheet metal and rebar and any other reinforcing material. The risk this time was revisiting a story from the past. The risk this time was believing in something that hadn’t even had the chance to develop. The risk this time was really being me. And not apologizing. And not worrying about the scary shit.

And if I was given the chance, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I write this post without a single photo to document our time together. Not one snapshot to validate that he was actually here and that we actually took a stab at this. I write this post with only the visual and emotional context of this weekend, no physical proof that it actually happened.

But it did.

Life, like love, is a fickle, fickle bitch. You can plan and hope and predict and dream and wish until you’re blue in the face but at the end of the day, it is what it is. It is. Or it isn’t. And there isn’t a single damn thing I can do to change that.

I told my dad in January that this weekend would be life-changing. And it was.

I now have yet ANOTHER dimension to add to what I need. I have another bullet to add to what I have to offer. By all means, by any preset definiton, this should (could and would) be a total fail.

But it’s not.

We may not be redefining “epic” in the context that I THOUGHT we would, but I’d be an idiot to ignore what is happening.

So, I don’t know where things are headed, but I’m okay.

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