My Interview with Lauren Weisberger

!http://www.universitychic.com/files/weis.JPG! Lauren Weisberger calls me from a doorway at a California Barnes and Noble. She's in the golden state, signing books on a promotional tour for her second novel, _Everyone Worth Knowing_. In case you've been living in a cave, her first book, _The Devil Wears Prada_, spent an impressive six months on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list and is currently being made into a movie by FOX starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Right now, Lauren's life is crazy busy. She's making stops at bookshops and hotels in San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Toronto and Miami. She's also beginning to do research for her third novel AND she continues to do freelance magazine work, like this summer, when she wrote an article about scuba diving in Bali, something she actually got to do...now that's a good job, the kind of job I wouldn't mind having... *I suddenly feel an overwhelming desire to copy her every career move* ...I start asking rapid-fire questions and taking desperate notes, the way I did in my freshmen political science class. *Where did you go to college and what did you major in?* Lauren tells me she went to Cornell and graduated in English and that she also took courses in near-Eastern studies, a combination she describes as very random and very unemployable. While she was there she joined a sorority, AEPhi where she met some of her "great oldest girlfriends" and she also was a campus tour guide. _"I loved the school so much that I learned to walk backwards and talk to people."_ *What did you do during the summers? Did you have internships?* She tells me that the summer after her freshman year she moved back in with her parents and got a job at a restaurant. Pretty normal. And the summer after that she worked as an intern for a public relations firm in Washington D.C. _(I casually mention that I'm from the D.C. area and we chat about that. I'm surprised and relieved at how easy she is to talk to. She seems more like a college roommate than a best-selling author.)_ *Was your position at Vogue the first job you applied for after graduation?* "Yes, very first," she says. "Which was incredible, as you can imagine. I just thought I wanted to work at a magazine and started applying and basically sent resumes to every publishing company in New York and Conde Nast was the first one that got back to me." *What did you do in between the time you finished at Vogue up until when the Devil Wears Prada was published? Did you have any other jobs?* "I did. I went from there to work at a travel magazine, a high-end travel and lifestyle magazine, Departures, which is published by American Express publishing for their platinum cardholders. One of the features editors at Vogue left to become editor in chief at Departures so I followed him over there. It was there that I was working on writing _The Devil Wears Prada."_ And I ended up selling the manuscript while working at Departures. *In what ways has your life changed since you began writing novels?* "The obvious one is that I set my own schedule, which I just adore," she says in a way so candid and refreshingly blunt that I have to giggle. "It's like being back in school again." She tells me that her life really hasn't changed so much, but she travels a lot more now. Especially while she's on her book tour, every second of her life is mapped out, but when she has down time she tells me she loves hanging out with friends and family and she isn't really into clubs. I tell her I'm the same way. "You love it or you don't," she says. She also tells me she loves to travel and read. "Fiction, nonfiction…anything,"_ she says. The main character in her new book loves reading romance novels, so I ask her if she has any guilty pleasures like that. "Not romance novels, although I have read a couple," she says. "I'm not hooked on them. I would say, US Weekly, tabloids, sensationalistic TomKat update stuff. It's embarrassing, but I love it." *The main characters in both of your books have difficulties balancing their new careers with their personal relationships, in fact, they end up having to choose between the two. Is this something you've experienced firsthand?* "It is. And maybe not to that extreme, but I think, I hope, that's one of the things about my books that young women relate to. In their twenties especially…" _(She pauses to ask me if I'm even there yet. I tell her I'm twenty-two and I just graduated from college and she congratulates me in a way that's more sincere than some of my actual friends. I'm embarrassed. I mutter a thank you and she goes back to what she was saying.)_ "It's a long road. But I think that the main thing facing people is trying to get that balance between work and social life and love life. And you can't ever seem to get all three to play at the same time. You sort of fix one and the other one falls apart. So, I think that's something I try to write about in my books. And it's something that I definitely had trouble with in my twenties and it's something that me and my friends are always talking about." *In your new book, the main character changes careers several times, (starting in investment banking, switching to event planning and, at the end, contemplating a career in writing,) what would you say to young women who are unhappy with their current jobs?* "I would say that nothing is permanent. Again, I know it sounds like a cliché, but I think that when you're just out of college and you have a job that other people think you should feel lucky to have, and in a lot of cases you should, it's hard to get any jobs especially at that point, but it doesn't mean that it's something you have to do forever. And I think there's that feeling, my sister had it, I had it where you think to yourself, it doesn't matter what you're doing, _'Ohmygod, I'm going to throw myself off a bridge if I have to do this for the rest of my life.'_ And I think that's very common early on in your career, but things do get better. You change jobs, opportunities come up out of nowhere, when you least expect it. And even if you do stay, it gets a lot more interesting as you get more responsibility, and start meeting more people in your industry and you're doing real things rather than just administrative stuff. I mean, work is still work, it's called work for a reason. I think the first two years are so hard and you can't get discouraged." *What's the best piece of advice you could give to women in college who are just beginning the job-hunting process?* _"Like me!," I squeak. I immediately feel like I've thrown a real personal question into the mix since I happen to be in the "vortex" of the job-hunting experience right now. She tells me she can't remember ever being asked this before. And I guess that, in a way, I'm invested in her response, hoping, wishing she'll tell me something inspiring. And she does._ *"Don't be afraid to take a risk.* Everyone follows the format: Cover letter, plays it very safe, resume is always done the exact same way. And anyone who is hiring people for any position is getting dozens and dozens and dozens of resumes and cover letters and I think *the only way to get noticed or to really stand out is to take a risk.* Do something funny, something different, something really outside the box. And I think the more you want the job the more you should do that. It's not the type of thing where you say I'm desperate for this, I'm gonna play it safe. As long as it's nothing inappropriate, I don't think there's anything to be lost by it. I think it's very hard, when you're just starting, to distinguish yourself because there are so many accomplished people. That's what I would tell people. _"I like that,"_ I say coolly. It was all I _could_ say. But inside I'm thinking, _"Yes! That is exactly what I think too, but no professor or academic advisor has ever told me to take risks. That's something I've had to do on my own. And in that moment, I realize I'm a lot like Lauren, and that maybe...just maybe, with a lot of hard work and outside-the-box thinking, I can take a risk too."_ delicious | digg | technorati
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