My first jobs after grad school each deliver memorable lessons, including when to fight the grammar police. One Friday afternoon at work, I was obsessively watching the clock. I left work early every Friday to get ready for Shabbat--this had been an accepted condition when I accepted the job of publications editor at a Fortune 500 healthcare company. This was a mighty plum job, one that I had learned about through a [...]

Grad school teaches me about some moral complexities in journalism. And, I learn what “winter” really is. Students walk past Fisk Hall at Northwestern University The topic of the day in my journalism class was the “public’s right to know” and how journalists and editors define it. Unexpectedly, it became one of the most memorable days in my grad school program. Our instructor held up a page from one of [...]

I bid goodbye to writing about Teddy bears and take on cancer research and forensic dentistry. Early one Sunday morning, instead of sleeping lazily till the spirit moved me to arise from my bed, I headed over to the UCLA Medical Center wearing my best “I’m a public relations professional” outfit. Animal rights extremists had broken into the animal research laboratory, and my boss had called me the night before to ask [...]

In the face of romantic heartbreak, women have been known to cope in a variety of ways. Frequent crying is de rigueur, but you can only cry for so many hours a day. Complementary activities may include overeating, undereating, shopping, gambling, or writing a memoir or novel, such as Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild” (which requires really good hiking shoes). The less hearty among the sorrowful might slip away for a weekend cruise or [...]

As the sun was nestling down close to the horizon one Saturday evening in May, I popped a quarter into the newspaper vending machine and grabbed the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Impatiently, I dumped the inner feature sections and snapped open the main news section to the last page, greedily scanning the letters to the editor. My intense curiosity was completely self-centered. The week before, the paper had published my humor essay, “Fear [...]

It took me a while to absorb the reality of my great good fortune: I was a full-fledged, full-time magazine writer soon after graduation and very grateful. I had joined “the trades,” the world of industry-specific magazines that included prestigious titles such as Editor & Publisher and Variety before plummeting down the food chain to titles such as Candy Nut & Wholesaler, Chickens—The Essential Poultry Publication, or, in my case, Hospital Gift Shop [...]