Part II: Workin' Hard for the Money

In about one week, I’ll have just completed my second portfolio review.

By next week, I may have met a professional suitor. I may have gotten a job offer and a week later find myself back in New York for my first day of work as a copywriter.  Of course, the alternative is much more likely – I’ll be exhausted, deflated, hung over and itchy from bedbug bites.

Clearly, I’m feeling confident.

I currently have 12 pieces in my portfolio. I’m told that I will have time to show maybe 5 of them. They say I need to make sure 5/5 of the pieces I bring are perfect. They say if only 4/5 of them are perfect I am telling a creative recruiter that I do bad work 20% of the time. Which makes sense.

They say don’t grow attached to your work, but I am choosing which 5 of my 12 children get on the boat.  Some are more crippled than others, sure, but they are just as sweet, their smiles just as bright.

Showing your work is like introducing your children to strangers. You want to show everyone how smart your kids are, and hope they don’t embarrass you. But inevitably one farts or bites the stranger’s leg and it’s done – your children are idiots and so, by association, are you.

If this portfolio review is anything like the last one, I’m going to have to work on my posturing. As the CDs roostered around the room and scanned the tables for the next lucky student, I did my best to look disinterested and confident. Some kids opted for the “pick me! pick me” bright-eyed look. In general, the attractive girls won the attention. 

I had to play the seduction game while across the table like I was trying to attract a conjugal visit, a hooker fieldtrip to prison. It was uncomfortable. Do I make eye contact? Do I wink? I imagine it’s how the window-girls in Amsterdam feel. I’d much prefer a more anonymous form of review:  a glory hole the CD puts his hand through and I give him the pleasure of my portfolio. After several minutes he gets excited and awards me with the honor of a job, and the bittersweet realization that while my school career is over, the real work has just begun.