There are almost as many people in Ventura County alone as there are in my entire home state of Montana. I am a small-town girl, come to the big city. This summer, Mustang has graciously taken me under its wing to help supplement my undergraduate education in marketing, business and public relations. With one year left to go, this is a tremendous opportunity to bring what I’ve learned in the classroom to the real world, with direction and insight from people who have been in this business for years.
My normal summer gig is wrangling horses in the resort town of Big Sky. I spent my warm summer days catching and saddling horses, fixing and building fences, and keeping tourists safe on the mountain trails. Now I find myself spending incredibly hot summer days in a delightfully air-conditioned office with a mix of creative, clever and business-savvy folks. And even though these seem like the opposite end of the workforce spectrum, I can’t help but compare the two.
When saddling, every strap, clip and buckle must be in place. Editing press releases, e-blasts or articles requires similar precision, and while lives aren’t on the line, our relationships with our clients certainly are. In written pieces, the words and punctuation, like the parts of the saddle, must be perfectly placed in each document. They each have a place and purpose, and like saddling, it is my job to put them there. And while horse wrangling may be an odd qualifier for my job at Mustang, I find myself using the same focus, determination and commitment to accuracy that I use in Big Sky.
Editing may sound less interesting, but it is relevant to the shape I want my career to take. Plus, it’s much safer—no paper has bitten me or stepped on my foot. At the end of a day wrangling, I would say goodbye to my hoofed friends and know they would be there to greet me the following morning. But when the words are finalized, I send them off to print or cyberspace to be read, analyzed and hopefully remembered by people like you.
I have enjoyed getting to know Mustang’s clients and experiencing the ways marketing and business work in a real-life setting—and I don’t mind the lack of physical labor, either.