Video killed the radio star

Long before the days when The Devil Wears Prada entered the everyday lexicon and before Lauren pretended to intern at Teen Vogue, I dreamed of finally growing up and joining the shimmering mirage of media and magazines.  In one of my many media internships, I chanced upon a high up staff member who had worked everywhere from The London Review of Books to the Economist and was one of the editorial directors of an incredibly prestigious, “wow” brand type of magazine.  In the most diplomatic way she could, she basically advised me, the young, eager and willing upstart, to look for a career elsewhere.  Obviously it wasn’t because of my less than burgeoning talent in picking up coffees or running errands – necessary jobs of an intern, and something you cannot stuff up.  Instead, it was more along the lines of her likening the magazine industry to dinosaurs.

Now the whole “oh, old media is dying, new media is taking over the world” kind of gist isn’t new of course.  What is frustrating however is that the traditional media seems more or less unwilling to change, instead they seem to be taking the passive angst route, where they sit silently, and bite their fingernails while waiting for their imminent death.

Uni — ooh! ah! — what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Well, actually…

The other day in my tutorial we were discussing the “culture” of the current university I’m completing my Masters in. After much discussion and comparisons with our undergrad experiences at other universities, a few themes revealed themselves. Apart from the Fail Boat that University Administration seemed to find themselves sailing in, the most common observation about the culture of the university was that it was focused on churning out “well-rounded professionals”, as opposed to liberal Arts wankers who could wax poetically about Baudrillard and simulacra, but couldn’t lodge a tax return to save their life.

 

Arts Degrees: Please take one.

Death of the Flower Child

 

Fight your impulse to make out with the man

So I have a confession to make: I hang out with a lot of squares.  Perhaps it’s because of my first day back at work after a blissful six week break, but I suddenly feel the urge to comment on the strange trend I find in my day-to-day friends and acquaintances.  As the specter of unemployment haunts our city streets, it seems that the young twenty-something year old is suddenly convinced that at any moment they could be exiled from their computer console in their corporate jobs and thrust into the no-man’s-land of…well…retail, I suppose.  

  Not only does it seem like every young part-time corporate hack is living in constant fear that the dagger over their heads will drop, but they seem to be thanking their lucky stars for their status as Office Bitch.  Perhaps it is the now very real prospect of unemployment at the tail end of a five or six year university slog, but it just seems that the days of picking up your backpack and taking to the road seems less and less likely.

D-Phat

I recently found out that my step-sister is coming to the end of her one-year maternity leave. Yes, you heard right. One year. Now, before you all quit your jobs to sign up to whatever it is my step-sister does, I should warn you. It’s not as easy as all that. In order to get this job, she had to do a law degree, a Master’s Degree at Cambridge (yes – the one in England, not the one that sells free degrees from their grimy window in Surry Hills), an internship at the United Nations, and who knows how many sexual favors. And even then, there was the background check, the psychometric test, the written test, and then the interviews. All this, to get into the trainee program at the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

D-Phat

And yes – to answer your question: my step-sister is annoyingly perfect.

I can think of at least 20 people – off the top of my head – who would lie, cheat, kill or steal (or a heady combination of all four) to get one of these coveted Grad jobs. I can think of another 30 who would quite like one, but who’d have to stop and think for a second before shooting their best friend in order to qualify. I suppose that it’s fair enough; one you get in, you relocate to Canberra (gross), apply for international placements, learn a new language full time, then have all your accommodation and travel paid for while you get sent on three-year postings all over the world.

And it is hideously, painfully, and notoriously, difficult to get a place as a Grad.

More than one keen as mustard International Relations major has been left disappointed, finding themselves rejected by the one place that wouldn’t think their papers on MI-5 links in the Uzbek Symphony Orchestra anything other than a conspiracy theorist wank written by a Dan Brown wannabe.

You know you’ve finished your thesis, when…(or I’d root the shit out of Chewy)

International Sign For Geek

There is a small cross-section of society who can sit at a table in a bar, roll their own cigarettes, surrounded by William Burroughs’ letters to Allen Ginsberg, playing root/shoot/marry using only fictional characters, before exchanging Vulcan High-5s. 

And yet, last night I did just that with the band of English geeks I adore: my English Honours cohort. 

People come to Honours for different reasons.  For some, the lure of the life of an academic – the dashing, globe-trotting Trotskyite – is too much to resist.  For others, the Honours year is just one step in what has been a 10-year plan of getting a a Rhodes Scholarship, a job in the Public Defender’s office, then the Whitehouse, then piles of money to swim in with nubile youths who never would have acknowledged you in the halls at high school. 

Talking about my generation: overachievers and etc

According to Wikipedia, I’m a Millenial. Or a Generation Y (which makes me think, so after Generations X, Y, then Z, what comes next?) I thought I could put a lot of effort into this and source proper journals and texts then I thought, alright, seriously, that’s just way too much work. Wikipedia tells me also that putting so much effort is out of character being a Generation Y-er. That I’m attention deficit, true, perhaps, because I have over five internet browser windows open and whilst listening to music, chatting on MSN instant messenger, Facestalking and browsing eBay. eBay: the bastion of consumerism and modern capitalism.  Wikipedia assures me that being Generation Y, I like technology and stuff in general so why not really run with it?  

She's the pretty one, the smart one, the nice one, the Chanel-Teen Vogue intern, the one wearing Marni...

Then you’ve got those kids who ruin all this self-absorbed fun for us.  Emily Weiss and some girl called  Winter Raymond (seriously, is that even a real name?)

Emily Weiss (bless her) will probably be only known to Teen Vogue addicts and The Hills watchers (they can be considered one and the same). Ignoring the fact that I’m just bamboozled by the way reality shows propel nobodies to stardom, she did utter the best line of the season “I’m taking 18 credits, two days a week… then I work two days a week at Teen Vogue… and I also intern at Chanel!” leaving pretty much any self-respecting university student feeling pretty depleted as well as in awe of her multi-tasking abilities. (I would like to note that I proudly no longer watch the Hills, and have replaced it with Gossip Girl. hiushoe watches West Wing for the politics and like, serious stuff, I watch Gossip Girl for 3.1 Phillip Lim dresses).

WWAD?

What Would Amy Do?

I have wit, I have charm, I have brains, I have legs that go all the way down to the floor.

So. Ok. I am a massive, unapologetic West Wing fan. To the extent that the end of the series made me curl up in foetal position and twitch for about four days. But this post isn’t about the time I stuck my own face on a picture of President Bartlet or my encyclopedic knowledge of the fabricated careers of the characters on the show. This is about my motto: WWAD?

Amy Gardner isn’t my favorite character on the show. I’m more of a C.J. woman myself. Plus, I was an avid Donna/Josh shipper (yeah. I said shipper. So what?). Her character sometimes seemed a bit too polished – a bit too unnatural. But for some reason, when I reach for a woman role-model, I keep coming back to Amy. Sort of like admiring that pimped up blue ride with wheels the size of a small elephant, while driving a volvo.

Why ProGrad = full of FAIL.

The advertisements are innocuous enough.

Looking for:

• Fresh graduate. Hey, that’s me!
• No experience necessary. I’m listening…
• Funky CBD location. Keep talking.
• Starting salary from $45,000, with the possibility of earning more. What’s the catch?
• No catch! Holy shit, I can’t not apply. Where do I send my resume?

I hope to God that's the key to my future and not the janitor's closet.

I received a callback from ProGrad after applying for a communications job on Seek that was too good to be true. They invited me to an Assessment Day that Thursday. I obliged. I like to believe that I have a healthy cynicism when it comes to, well, everything, especially recruitment companies that promise you the world and use fake advertisements to lure possible placements. So, I did what any tech-savvy individual would do with a prospective employer: I Googled them to do some ‘research.’ I undertake my employer research two ways; first I visit their website to understand their company culture; and, second, I look for experiences of previous employees and recruits. With the Internet as your oyster, you’re bound to find at least one person who was either happily-satisfied or irate enough to share to the world wide web their experience. I was lucky enough to find this thread in an IT forum, through this website, which outline what the ProGrad Assessment Day is like.

The comments in both the thread and the website piqued my curiosity, but I took every criticism with a grain of salt. After all, ProGrad have been in business for quite a while and so they must be doing something right. Right? Besides, I thought, it would make for an interesting blog entry. I kept in mind what I had read, anyhow, until Thursday’s Assessment Day. I was soon to find out, however, that there may have been more merit to the experiences of the participants from the thread than I thought.

The Fortress of Solitude

Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spiderman.

Whenever I hear those solemn and prophetic words, the same thought comes upon me: Fire out Peter Parker was a tight-ass wanker.  Sure, receiving your destiny and learning that it is your fate to wander alone across the cold face of the earth is a bit heavy, but come on.  Last time I checked, getting bitten by a spider usually came with dettol and a band-aid, rather than a bunch of super-powers designed to be a shot of heroin to your flaccid social life.  Also, most people whose cells are altered by an aggressive outside force usually call themselves cancer patients, rather than Spiderman.  So all in all, Peter Parker should stop bitching and start saving my train from plummeting off the side of a cliff.

That spider altered the fuck out of my DNA

There’s a party in my fortress…

In case it isn’t obvious from the preceding rant, I count myself as one of those part-geek, part-human creatures who enjoy the under-appreciated subset of the canon known as the sci-fi, comic-book, super-hero genre. And yet I have several things going for me that your average acne-scarred trekkie-cum-hacker does not: my literary and cinematic tastes are more varied then re-runs of Kyle XY, I have occasionally been known to talk to members of the opposite sex, and (this is the real kicker) I am a woman. So I’d really appreciate it if you kept these things in mind while reading what I have to say.

All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.

Financial Liabilities

There’s a group on Facebook I’ve joined titled, ‘All my friends are getting married. I’m just getting drunk.’ It’s crazy, really, that this should be relevant to me. I’m only 21. In my high school graduating class of 2004, Facebook tells me a size-able percentage of these girls are in long term relationships, are married (or will be soon), and have kids (or will be having them). For someone who considers kids as dream-killing, money-suckers, it truly boggles the mind that my peers could be so, well, ‘adult.’ I question whether this is a matter of their being grown-up, or whether I’m complacent in just being a perpetual kid and being selfish.