In high school when I was in tenth grade the adults around me started telling me that I should engage in a lot of extracurricular activities such as Spanish Club and Debate Club because it would look good on my record when I eventually applied to colleges. I joined a few of these things but it mostly seemed pretty silly to me and I wasn’t getting much out of it. I liked taking classes out of school and I took classes in dance, visual art and writing. Joining associations has never really been something that I do unless prompted and even when I was prompted it wasn’t a fit for me. I went to a couple of meetings of the Spanish club and it wasn’t like anyone was learning more Spanish there, they were just socializing and I preferred to socialize with different people or to be off reading or writing.
Writing for an association was something I was interested in however. Association writers for newspapers and magazines seemed to have a good monthly gig going with lots of author interviews. I started watching what association writers wrote to see if I should work on doing some of that sort of writing. A woman I knew was a painter and has a master’s degree as a city planner. She did some extra writing here and there for city planning associations. She had to travel to towns around Washington and write an informative article on the town. This is what the association wanted her to do. She didn’t get paid for this, but she said it gave her necessary exposure and may have helped her to get a job.
I helped her edit the article she wrote about the first town she did this for because I had more experience editing than she did. She was thankful. I had another friend who would write articles for newspapers when the regular writers were on strike. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, but I read the writing she did as well. Seeing the articles that both of these people produced, taught me that I wasn’t the best fit to do that sort of writing myself. I found it tedious. So even though I had first thought I might become a part-time association writer, I ended up turning away from it.
