Career Decisions Don’t Have to Be Scary. Meet the Mentors at Get Smart!

By Taylor Covington

The pumpkins are out, apple cider is flying off the shelves, and by some miracle, it’s actually a little chilly in the city of Austin. Halloween is just around the corner, and so begins the respected, if not messy, tradition of pumpkin carving.

It’s one of my favorite memories of time spent with my family — the squish of the pumpkin guts between my fingers, the cries of delight from my little brother as my mom lights a candle inside the pumpkin, the smell of the seeds roasting in the oven hours later as the jack-o-lanterns flicker in the night on our front porch. My mom guided us through each step to creating our scary masterpieces and I hope to teach my own kids one day.

WCA has its own fall tradition, Get Smart, our half-day professional development workshop. This year’s event, on Oct. 27, will focus on harnessing the power of image and video in communication. If you haven’t yet registered you’ll want to sign up today.

As always, our events bring together a fantastic community of intelligent and engaged professional communicators who have experienced just about every peak and pitfall imaginable during their careers – yet another reason to come to Get Smart!

Tap into this depth of experience. Stop by the WCA Mentor Program table before the workshop begins. WCA mentors will answer your questions and help you sign up to find the right mentor to help you along your career path.

Whether you’re a wide-eyed, recent graduate hoping to make your first professional mark on the world, or a well-seasoned copywriter shifting into graphic design, our Mentor Program will match you up with someone who can serve YOU the best. Mentors provide individualized, short- or long-term support. They can even just answer a quick question about resumes.

The Mentor Program is one of WCA’s greatest resources and one part of our long tradition of mentorship. If you’d like to become a mentor or have questions, please stop by the table. More than 20 WCA mentors with a variety of career and personal experience are available to help mentees.

As a mentee myself, the one-on-one communication was exactly what I needed when I first started out as a communication professional. To use a topical metaphor, my mentor went through all the potential faces my jack-o-lantern could be, showed me how to make the cleanest lines for the triangle eyes, and polished up the edges when I made a mistake.

Through every iteration of my jack-o-lantern, my mentor knew how it could be more creative, more eye-catching, and make it stand out as the best pumpkin in our neighborhood. She knew how because she had been doing it for years.

She saw the scariest jack-o-lantern it could be and when we put the candle in, all of the pumpkin’s potential came shining through.

Silly metaphors aside, our tradition of mentorship is one of our best features. Jane Baxter Lynn and the rest of the women of the mentor program are magical, all knowing and sometimes, practically telepathic — really, the best kind of Halloween witches.

On the 27th, come speak with our mentors at the Mentor Program table and discover your pumpkin’s potential.

Happy Holidays!