Write on: Replay

Any journalist will tell you: It can be rough listening to yourself when transcribing an interview.

My writer friends and I commiserate often about how our own voices make us cringe. “Do I really talk like that?!” is a common sentiment.

The other night, I read an old journal I wrote from ages 23 to 26 and had many of the same feelings: “Ugh, why did I write that?” and “Ugh, why did I think that?”

But even as I read with my hands half over my eyes, I couldn’t look away.

Feeling equal parts nostalgia, fascination, and self-loathing and love, the journal shot me straight back in time.

I was 23 again, a recent college grad with a grown-up job I’d earned. But I was grappling with a bad case of imposter syndrome and insecurity.

As the youngest person in most of my professional interactions, I was asked constantly if I was the intern.

It happened during story interviews. It happened during photo shoots and events.

It even happened in non-work settings: Once, I answered my parents’ front door, and a woman collecting census data asked if she could please speak with someone older than 18 instead.

And for the record, there is nothing wrong with being an intern. Our interns at 225 are some of the most talented, intelligent, hard-working people I know, and a super important part of our team here.

But it was the way I got asked if I was an intern that stung. The tone. Oh, you’re cute. You must just be the little intern!

How, I wondered, was I ever supposed to get a good story if no one would take me seriously?

My boss, who was four years older, offered me some sage advice. She’d been there, too, she assured me. I couldn’t really change how I looked, she said, but I could change the way I dressed.

Clothes, as it turned out, would be an important part of my own Lady Bird coming-of-age moment.

I swapped my colorful dresses for pencil skirts. I ditched my girly tops and stocked up on button-down blouses, and I traded my flats for heels. I stowed away my sheer lip gloss and started wearing lipstick.

And slowly, the intern assumptions stopped.

I knew things had really changed when I went to profile an older journalist. I was wearing my professional best, a Loft blazer and Anne Klein heels.

When she greeted me, she had lipstick on her teeth. I quickly told her, and before she could get embarrassed, we laughed together about how it happened to me all the time, too.

It turned out to be an instant bust-down-the-barrier moment, and it led to an easy, great interview.

I left with a notepad full of colorful quotes and a promise that we’d get coffee together soon. An interview had turned into a reliable contact I could fall back on for future story ideas.

I remember driving back to the office feeling so proud. My clothes were working. I was finally assimilating into the respected adult community. My real life in the real world could begin!

But all these years later, as I reread my cringeworthy journal entries, I realized something I couldn’t see back then.

All those times people thought I seemed so young—maybe it wasn’t just my appearance. It was because I was young. And maybe because I was acting immature, too.

On the flip side, when I finally grew up, maybe I didn’t give myself enough credit for it. I thought it was all thanks to the lipstick and heels, but what about the woman I became when I was wearing them?

It made me think about how important it is to self-reflect: face those interview recordings, listen to our own voicemails and reread our own writing.

They’re there to help us remember how far we’ve come—or pinpoint those areas where we still have room to grow.

And sometimes, they’re there to help us realize who we’ve been all along.