Nila never signed up to be my mentor.
She was a boss first, my editor at my first full-time magazine job. I was weeks out of college, rough around the edges in every way, but she saw just enough raw talent and enthusiasm for her to hire me.
We were a small team. Nila and I were the only full-time editors, which meant her biggest job was wrangling me into writing half our content each month, and more importantly, getting me to write it well.
In my first year on the job, I made mistakes. Constantly.
What I didn’t realize at the time was how much I was changing and how quickly it was happening.
It was all because of Nila. She believed in me. Instead of reprimanding me for errors, she patiently taught me to avoid them.
She made me a better writer. She’d mark up my stories with a red pen, come sit next to me at my desk and walk me through her edits. Her honesty could be brutal—“This isn’t your best work,” she told me once about a profile I’d written. But that also made any praise she gave me that much more meaningful, because I knew she meant it.
I learned the most, though, simply by osmosis: watching Nila or listening to her on the phone.
I’d listen to her coach freelance writers into total rewrites of their articles. I heard her convince reluctant sources to be interviewed and photographed. I listened as she got into arguments with our publishers, repeatedly defending our journalistic choices. I studied her easy rapport with our art director, production manager, photographers, writers and interns.
When she’d do a phone interview for one of her own stories, I’d always marvel at her ability to make instant friends with sources—and then the next minute stick them with a tough question.
I’d dreamed of being a magazine editor since childhood, but I’d never truly known how it was done until I watched her do her job.
One day, after almost four years of working for her, Nila asked me to coffee. She told me she had gotten a new job. Panic set in—I didn’t want to work for anyone else. Then she said she’d recommended me to take her place. “You have it all,” she said.
That night, I went home and cried. I had never been so sure that I didn’t have it all. There was no way I could do her job.
But a month later, I moved all my things to her old desk. I quickly realized that I’d been doing all the reading and homework required for that job for years—simply by watching Nila and being fueled by her encouragement.
Talking with New South Story Lab founder Virginia Archer for this month’s cover story brought these memories back. Archer’s program pairs volunteer writing mentors with students interested in storytelling. During our chat, Archer and I agreed that we had both never had a true creative mentor growing up. I was lucky that I finally found one when I entered the workforce.
The conversation reaffirmed how important mentorship is, from programs like Archer’s to our 225 team giving our interns a positive learning environment.
At the end of this summer, one of our interns sent me a card. “I can honestly say that this is the best internship I’ve ever had,” she wrote. “It made me realize that writing is a strength of mine and that I want writing to be a part of my future.”
It was the nicest note I’ve ever received, but it only made me want to be better at my job. Because you never know who is watching—and learning from—you.
This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of 225 Magazine.
