That’s alright because I like the way it hurts (the last sappy intern moment)

About a year ago, I graduated. I had a complete portfolio. It won a national award. My teachers told me I knew what I was doing. Professionals told me I knew what I was doing. I told myself I knew what I was doing. But actually, I wasn’t all that certain if I, you know, knew what I was doing.

It took me sixteen years to trust my gut as a violinist. And I still remember the moment it happened. It was right before I graduated from college. I was being torn down and insulted by my studio teacher. He was not a teacher I’d chosen. He was a teacher who had been brought in to fill the position of the teacher I did choose. She’d passed away the year before. And as I stood there, listening to this new teacher who’d known me for less than one year, I suddenly knew. I just knew. That he was a violinist with an opinion that was different from mine. Not a teacher who I had to believe because I didn’t know enough yet.

As soon as I started the creative program in grad school, I started wondering when I’d feel that way as a copywriter. It didn’t happen when I graduated. Or won awards. It didn’t happen when I landed the internship and started working. I felt ok, confident enough. But I didn’t know.

Until the last part of my internship when two things happened. The first thing was that I created an ad campaign. Not for work, but for my personal portfolio. Just me and my art director from school who I’d roped into helping me in exchange for inordinate amounts of coffee and Eatzi’s. This was not just a new campaign, but one that included more than a paragraph of copy. One that veered from my usual funny, sassy or tongue-in-cheek into the rarely explored heartfelt. It was unfamiliar and it was painful. I spent evenings and weekends staring at a blank page, breaking out into a mournful “I SUCK” or two (hundred). Then starting all over again. And again. And again. You know, the usual. But this time, my art director and I couldn’t count on office hours and weekly in-class critiques to help us annihilate the bad ideas and play “keep or kill” with my copy. We had to trust our instincts.

Then it came time to show it to someone else. I chose to unveil this new unfunny, uncheeky campaign to the mid-level copywriter on my team at work. My heart was so far up my throat that I could taste my aorta. Unfortunate since I also felt like I was going to lose a week’s worth of lunch. I braced myself for bloody murder. Which is why I wanted to write her into my will when she liked it. Really genuinely liked it. And everyone else that saw it – including the president of the agency – liked it too. And that is when I started to trust.

The second thing that happened was alarmingly similar to the violin situation. Except that this time, my portfolio and ideas were being lacerated by someone I have long admired and respected. Even revered. So you’d think I’d have been on my knees, peeling fragments of my heart off the floor. But I wasn’t. And somewhere amid hearing the word “WRONG” over and over again, that feeling finally came. I thought of all the work I’d been doing at my internship. Work that was accepted, purchased, produced. I thought of the new campaign that had just bled out of the pores of my brain. And I looked at the portfolio that he found so vile. And I still liked it.

Then I knew. This person is not a god. He is a talented and successful advertising person with an opinion that is different from mine. Good for him. But good for me too. Because y’all, I know I have a lot more to learn. Years of colossal failures and small triumphs more to learn. But I’ll be damned if I let myself believe I don’t know a bit about what I’m doing right now.