It’s a long haul

To the graduates, on the fringe benefits of committing to a job.

By lunch break on my first day at my first job, I wanted to quit.

It wasn’t that it was a bad job, mind you. It paid okay and my co-workers were generally decent — it just wasn’t what they promised me.

My first job was as the editorial assistant for a start-up magazine, a prospect that seemed impossibly exciting at the time. I was still finishing my final semester in college then, and was thrilled at the prospect of a publishing company (no matter how small) taking a chance on me. And the fact that it was a new title magazine pegged after New York magazine, and under the leadership of editors I respected? Even better. Maybe even a dream job.

And so I went into that job with that mindset, eager to learn and eager to apply what I’d learned so far. When, during the job interview, the publisher told me in passing that they would ask me to pitch in with their other titles (a baby mag, a wedding mag, a travel mag), I thought he was making vague allusions to “being a team player.” And when he reiterated that I would be under him and not the editors I was eager to learn from, I thought he meant structurally.

So I was surprised when a week into the job, I found myself sent to advertising meetings, editing a breastfeeding article, and brainstorming for an upcoming travel event. I was out of my comfort zone and out of my skill set. Worst of all, it was, I thought, out of my job description.

It felt unfair and I felt tricked. Like a sheltered kid kept away from patintero by strict parents, I only worked on the project I took the job for and the editors I was so eager to work under, once or twice a week. What I thought would be the focus of my job was suddenly the periphery. I wanted out.

I remember those heady days post-college, meeting my college friends for dinner and taking our turns lamenting about our crummy employment situations — how she wasn’t being utilized enough, how he was being utilized too much, how I was being made to edit articles on breastfeeding. We threw around the word “quit” casually, as if jobs were just student orgs you could join and not show up for.

As the months went by, my friends quit one by one. Most changed industries; some even decided to go to school.

I didn’t quit though. I decided to ride that first job out, at least for a few more months. For a while, I wondered if that meant I was settling. I wondered if I merely lacked the backbone to quit.

I didn’t quit, because I realized staying had its merits, as minor as they were. As unhappy as I was, a part of me also realized it was because I was out of my comfort zone, and forced to play catch-up with skills that I never really bothered to learn. As wrong as changing the job description was, as much as I had the right to want to leave, I also realized that it meant I would learn all aspects of the publishing industry, the industry I wanted to work in. From advertising to events, from editorial lineups to making sure systems run, it was the best education I could’ve gotten.

Today, as an editor for a newspaper and several magazines, I find myself enriched by those experiences in little ways — having enough marketing sense to know how to make advertisers happy while doing the work we love, knowing how to talk to event coordinators, understanding the beast enough to know where to place passion and where to place economics. It might not have been the experience I was looking for, but it helped anyway.

By the time I left my first job — because the upstart magazine had, for some reason, lost its funding and would now dissolve — I left with the feeling that I had truly put in work (all kinds of work, actually). And it’s a philosophy I’ve taken with me.

I’m a Millennial, part of a generation that is typically allergic to being nailed down by a 9-to-5, a generation that prefers short stints over prolonged grinds. What I’ve learned in learning how to commit to a job is that growth can only really come from patience and commitment, from doing your time and paying your dues. It teaches you to make the most of what you have, to appreciate your lot in life, and maybe learn to seize an opportunity when it comes. Because, really, that’s how you get promoted and eventually graduate to the “work you should be doing” — it’s by taking a small opportunity and turning it a big showcase for what you can do.

And it’s not always about learning the skills. Sometimes, you come into a job already knowing how to do everything, and that’s good. But there are other less tangible things you can only learn through time and experience — communicating with superiors, handling a team, troubleshooting, motivating people you work with, managing a crisis.

I’ve been doing this newspaper job for four years now — five years if I count the year I was just a regular contributor. It’s not that I’ve never thought of quitting. In fact, I think about quitting almost every week. Because the ride from my home to the office (Port Area) sometimes takes two hours. Because the medium can be limiting. Because we’re understaffed. Because sometimes I hate it. Because sometimes I love it too much. Because there are some things I can’t control. Because it challenges me almost daily.

I’m still here not just because I love it — that comes and goes. I stay because it’s a commitment and a responsibility now. And by doing so, I’ve seen it grow, I’ve seen people find their voices, and I’ve seen myself become an editor I can be proud of.

Complete happiness is overrated and more importantly, impossible. And a career is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. You will never be completely happy in anything you do. And that’s okay. Because the thing is, that’s not just work. That’s life.