Sunday, May 21, 2006

[Blog Entry] Jack of All Trades

Jack of All Trades


One of the questions I'm asked often is what do I do, or what job I'm in. I make it succint and say that I'm an editorial assistant. Of course not many people know what an editorial assistant is (especially the kind of "editorial assistant" we have here in the Philippines), so again, they ask me what I do. Do I write? To keep it brief, I downplay my role. I tell them I arrange photo shoots, which is true.

However, the work atmosphere being what it is and my boss being the creative, spontaneous and impulsive person that he is, few people in our organization are stuck with just one designation. And I know that and accepted that fact. One of the reasons why some people left the company is because they had different/conflicting expectations.

Back to the topic at hand, what I exactly do is more than that. sure, I arrange photo shoots, doing everything from scouting locations, acquiring permits, booking the make-up artists, stylists, and photographer. But somewhere along the way, I've also been doing stuff outside of the job description: updating the website, doing clerical work (i.e. typing, transcribing), editing, occassionally writing, bookkeeping, tech support for the Macs we use and the network we're connected to, etc.

Last week though, I didn't expect to use all of those skills within the span of five days. Yup, it's been busy, and some of my work was spontaneously assigned. So expect to see less of me in the next few days as I work on three publications at the same time.

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