Career Thoughts

So, I have an interview on Monday. With Legal Aid.

My Director passed on my resume to their Director, who happened to have an opening, and she called me and asked if I wanted to interview for the position. Never one to turn down a rollicking good interview, I said “absolutely”!

And now I am pondering this – on the plus side, it’s close to my current work, I wouldn’t have to leave the OPS to take the job, since my Director said she would arrange a secondment. It pays about the same as my current position, is only for 6 months, and it has a writing aspect to it that my current job lacks. I’d be preparing speeches and news releases and feature articles and whatnot.

Also, Legal Aid is a really cool concept, and I’d be working for and with a lot of the same stakeholders we have in my government job (single mothers fighting for child support from delinquent fathers, domestic abuse cases, new immigrants, seniors living below the poverty line, persons with disabilities). So there’s that aspect of helping the community and using my communications skills to further social causes.

But on the other hand, I’d be working with lawyers all day (I sense they’re not all as cool as Paul), and I would be really probing new territory while also learning a new corporate environment. It’s one thing to change companies, it’s quite another to change companies AND learn the finer points of business writing at the same time. This ain’t LiveJournalling, kids, it’s SPEECHifying!

What do you think? Should I really push for this change?

Comic Retail Resume

I finished my “comic book retail” illustrated resume last night, and got really excited at the prospect of scanning it and being able to email it out or post it online.

What I forgot in my victory glee is what my artist friends have been complaining about since I met them: REPRODUCTION SUCKS! To make matters worse, quality reproduction with illustration board involves several interim layers of image degradation, unless you’re sending it off to a printer or you happen to know someone with a very large scanner.

I don’t happen to have a big-ass scanner on hand, so I opted for the quick and dirty method. 10 minutes in the 5th floor Map Room at Robarts with their oversized photocopier, hitting reduce, reduce, reduce. The photocopies are pretty decent, actually. The scans of the photocopies, however, lick sweaty donkey balls. They look like I drew the whole thing with a Mr. Sketch marker. All of the fine brush detailing and most of the delicate taper of the line is lost.

C’est la vie. After all, it’s not like I do this for a living or anything. And I feel the whole project has made me appreciate the work that goes into making graphic novels and comic strips just that much more. I used to look at the number of names listed on the inside covers of the mainstream, regularly issued series and think “Why on earth would you need a letterer, a penciller, an inker, AND a colourist? These artists types – so lazy. Couldn’t you get just one person to draw the whole kit and caboodle?!?”

The answer is a clear and resounding NO. It’s exhausting doing any one of those jobs, and I now feel completely justified in the vast expenditure of my personal income that goes towards supporting the arts via The Beguiling and Silver Snail’s cash registers. On further reflection, perhaps that’s not such a positive side effect of my learning experience. Whatever: it insulates me against the icy chill from the draft blowing through my perpetually vacant bank account.