My mom always tells me about how women are underrepresented and underpaid in the workforce of today’s America. She’s quite angry about it.

But since I’ve been in New York, it seems the only people I have ever interviewed with or worked with have been women. I’ve only worked with one man since I’ve been here, and I’ve worked with one million women.

Maybe it’s the profession, maybe it’s the city. But either way, sometimes I remember with strange fondness the old days of working with old cranky racist homophobic sexist Wastewater Treatment Men.

It seems my whole life I’ve been hanging out with thrice as many women as men. Perhaps that’s why I am such a woman.

Last night I was watching Whipple’s World for some reason, and he was asking celebrities what their worst summer jobs were. I think most of them were working at the donut shop or things of that nature. I wasn’t really paying attention because I was making macaroni and cheese.

Anyway, now that I’m searching for full time employment, I’ve forgotten about the summer job scene. Ah, the shitty summer job. My summer jobs have included:

• caddying at the Joliet Country Club
• delivering papers for the Des Moines Register
• detasseling near Cedar Falls, Iowa
• working at the Des Moines Wastewater Treatment plant
• framing shitty pictures at Michael’s Arts and Crafts in Des Moines

I’m not sure which job was the worst, but I sure didn’t last too long with the framing. The Wastewater Treatment plant was quite interesting visually, with all the underground passageways and the pipes everywhere and the big-assed engines. And gallons upon gallons of straight SHIT.

Today I have learned more than usual about web design. Next goal is creating liquid pages. Then my sites won’t be so damn small-looking on the large monitors.

Over the past year I have been turning more and more towards web design than illustration. It started out with switching to the Design program from the Illustration program one semester before graduation. I feared the freelance life. So I got into print design, and then into web design in hopes of landing a full-time gig. It’s been a while, but I’m still learning. Still learning how to interview with enthusiasm. Still learning how to prepare for working on a team. Still learning how to communicate with others who seem to know more about it than I do. I am teaching myself, with help from online tutorials and I am getting better at it steadily. And doing less illustration.

I am not making much money doing web work OR illustration, so it doesn’t matter yet. But it will soon.