There's No Place Like Oz

This is the first in a new “What’s Next” series. In upcoming posts, I’ll share the biggest, life-changing lesson I took away from Australia and how it’s impacted my first five months back in the USA — and of course in the months to come.

There’s No Place Like Oz is not my first blog. I used to write about my travels on another site (with maybe 5 family members and friends reading!). Before that, I rambled on a LiveJournal account almost daily about life after college graduation, my first job, and eventually graduate school. I’ve always been a story teller (sounds nicer than rambler, yeah?), and I suppose I eventually wanted to share my stories with a wider audience than my family and best friends who had probably heard them repeatedly. Bless you all ♥.

In addition to the years invested in sharing and documenting my experiences in blogs, I always gave my academic writing a significant amount of time and effort. I agonized over every paper, trying to find the perfect words. I hated timed essays — I wanted time to develop an outline, think through my points carefully, and present them as clearly as possible (not concisely, perhaps, but clearly). Thankfully, over the years I learned to trust the academic voice I’d developed and by graduate school I could write a stellar 20-page paper in one go over the course of a few hours.

I suppose all of this is to say that I’ve always enjoyed writing in one way or another. I wasn’t the creative type, but I could write an academic paper like a champ and the ISFJ (MBTI type) loves reflecting on experiences and recording memories through blogs.

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In my first five months home, I’ve been given a couple of opportunities to write in new ways. Both tap into my interest in international experiences and travel, and I am really thankful for and excited about both.

Developing “work abroad” content for a career services site

Before I left for Australia, I was known as the go-to career counselor for undergraduates who wanted to learn about teaching, volunteering, interning, and working abroad. No, I wasn’t a true expert, but I was passionate about finding resources for students and helping them explore international opportunities.

When I returned to Virginia, I met with a former colleague for coffee, and we chatted about where life might take me next. Two months later, she contacted me to see if I would be interested in a short-term contract, developing a “Global Opportunities” section for her team’s career services office. They had found themselves temporarily short-staffed and wanted the new section of the website up and running by the beginning of the academic year. I gladly took it on.

While she had a vision for the site and some notes, she encouraged me to make it my own and contribute what I knew was important. Over the course of several weeks, I researched a variety of topics and wrote numerous pages of content. Some days I drove to the university to work in an office, and other days I worked from home. I loved having that sort of flexibility.

How fortunate am I that I could combine my skills and experiences as a career counselor AND a career breaker/work & holiday maker in one writing project?! The content is currently in the hands of IT colleagues and will be live for our university’s students soon.

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Working with HerPackingList.com founder Brooke as the site’s contributing author

Toward the end of the content development job above, Brooke introduced the possibility of joining her to write for HerPackingList.com, a website she developed that’s geared toward the female traveler.

Ladies, you can find HPL on Twitter @herpackinglist, on the Facebook fan page, and of course, at HerPackingList.com.

Links to highlight:
About HPL, Brooke, and me
How you can contribute an article to HLP
An up-to-date list of articles I have contributed

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What I’ve learned in my new writing projects

I’m learning to write for another person’s vision and product. I’ve written for professors, and I write my own blog posts, but creating content for another person’s website is different — I feel an extra responsibility (in a good way) to contribute what they hope for and ask of me.

Having the opportunity to work remotely is affirming that short-term contracts and remote work are the types of experiences I want to pursue (part of that big lesson I mentioned learning in Oz).

What’s next?

The career services writing project has come to a close, and I hope to supplement my current part-time career counseling position and writing with HPL with additional short-term and/or remote projects in the weeks and months to come. If something crosses your path and you think of me, I’d love to learn about it.