What Freelance Means To Gen Y
Posted by meredith on 01-12-2009
Today’s Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from our resident authority on young media professionals Liz Funk who weighs in on why some Gen Y-ers (including herself!) are opting out of an entry level gig in favor of becoming freelancers. Remember, you can communicate directly with any member of the Ypulse Youth Advisory Board by emailing them at youthadvisoryboard at ypulse.com.
What Freelance Means To Gen Y
Yesterday, I worked on publicity for my upcoming book, Supergirls Speak Out: Inside The Secret Crisis for Overachieving Girls, spent some time on my novel, responded to e-mails, and wrote a pitch for an article. I did this all at my dining room table with my collie’s head on my knee. These days it seems like there are more and more young people like me, who are either in college or have recently graduated and just can’t see themselves fitting into a typical office atmosphere. Instead, they opt to start a freelancing career.
After making it through the incredibly competitive college admissions processes and completing four years of college, today’s college graduates are a highly capable bunch. However, after emerging from the less structured campus life where their achievements were mostly fueled by self-motivation, an increasing number of young people are balking at the idea of getting a traditional job with a supervisor and an office hierarchy. While naysayers call this “entitlement” young professionals are really making a name for themselves outside the cubicle!
Amber Madison started writing her first book Hooking Up: a Girl’s Guide to Sex and Sexuality when she was a senior at Tufts University and she knew that she wanted to build a platform as an expert on sex and sexuality. She worked on finishing and promoting her book by traveling the country giving lectures about sexuality. At the same time, she also worked at restaurants and bars a few nights a week to earn a steady income. Although it wasn’t always easy, she learned a lot along the way and she has some advice for young people who want to freelance, “My biggest mistake was that I didn’t have any kind of plan for after my work was done,” she says. “Doing your own stuff is really hard and to be successful, you have to have a plan. If one project is about to end, you need to have a new project that you’re going to do.”
Freelancing seems to be a natural thing for Generation Y. Chad Kennedy, who started Teen Scene magazine in 1999, says, “’Fleeing the cube’ is much easier for our generation than generations past because almost anything that we need to learn to be our own boss can be found online. At the start I had no idea about professional etiquette, mentors, industry events, so on. I learned a lot through trial and error, which for me is the way I enjoy learning.” Kennedy adds, “I like owning my own company more so because it gives me the ability to set my own hours and try out new things without the fear of being fired if it’s not successful. [But] I absolutely log more hours than most ‘regular’ jobs.”.
Rachel Ament, who started writing freelance on the side while she held down a full-time editing job, found that she was able to save money, which was her padding when she decided to write freelance full-time. “The thought of applying for jobs again scared the hell out of me so I decided to just concentrate on freelancing,” she says. “It’s fine for now. I can pay rent and eat, but, of course, having health insurance and benefits would be nice….[Still] I like freelancing much better than a real job.”
As a freelance writer, I can personally attest that the lifestyle has its drawbacks and a lot of it has to do with growing up and facing reality more quickly that anticipated. While my peers with 9 to 6 non-profit and media jobs can use their downtime at work (paid downtime!) to browse blogs, IM with friends, write e-mails, catch up with people in their professional network, and screw around on Facebook, I know that when I log onto YouTube or start Facebook stalking at 2pm on a Tuesday, I’m not getting paid to do that and as such, it’s not work. But if I’m tired at 2pm on a Tuesday, I can stop working and go see a movie or plop on the couch with a good book, and if I get a second wind at 11pm, I can get some work done!
About Liz
Liz Funk is a freelance writer and college student. She has written for USA Today, Newsday, the Christian Science Monitor, the Huffington Post, Girls’ Life, and CosmoGIRL!, among other publications. Her first book, Supergirls Speak Out, about the pressure on girls to be perfect, will be published by Simon and Schuster in March of 2009. She writes a blog for the Albany, NY newspaper the Times Union and she edits the teen culture and politics blog GirlHeadQuarters.org. She is a senior at Pace University and lives in Manhattan. Her web-site is www.lizfunk.com.
Categorized under: Youth Advisory Board
January 17th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
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