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In the shadow of greatness
BY BRYCE DONOVAN
If there's one thing
schoolteachers love more than being around kids, it's not being around kids.
Exhibit A: Job Shadow Day
(pronounced "Here, YOU deal with them."). Somewhere along the line,
an ingenious schoolteacher, who probably was not in the mood to teach a bunch
of rowdy 12-year-olds about indefinite articles, came up with a way to get the
kids out of the classroom under the guise of "learning."
The resulting creation was
what is now referred to as "Job Shadow Day," a day when schoolchildren
select someone in the professional field who has a job they consider to be
interesting and exciting. Then they follow them around for a day to see what
their job is really like. How the child picks this person is by strictly
adhering to the following set of criteria:
1. Is this something I
would be interested in doing for a living?
2. How much money can I
expect to make in this particular field?
3. But seriously, who
cares? I get out of school for this!
Once the student arrives
at his decision, the school then contacts the person ("sucker") and
asks him if he would mind hosting ("baby-sitting") the child
("liability") for a day ("or more") at his place of
business ("HA! I can't believe you actually agreed to do this!").
Typically, children pick
people such as firefighters, doctors or lawyers to shadow. They never pick
writers. Or so I thought. That is, until I got a phone call from Sierra Debrow.
Sierra is a sixth-grader
who goes to the School of the Arts in
We agreed she would shadow
me on a Thursday. When she got here, the first thing we did was walk around the
office so I could introduce her to my co-workers. It typically went like this:
ME: "I'd like you to
meet Sierra Debrow. She's going to be shadowing me
today."
CO-WORKER: (To Sierra)
"It's a pleasure to meet you." (To me) "And YOU are?"
Next, we made our way back
to my desk where she asked several insightful questions, such as, "What
skills did you learn in school that helped you the most on the job?"
"What is a typical day like for you?" and "You know your computer
isn't even plugged in, right?"
After that, I asked to see
a sample of her writing. She handed me a short story about watching the rain
from inside her house. It was good - she used lots of detail - but I knew she
could do better. As if reading my mind, she immediately said: "I want to
learn how to write from the best."
So for the next 2 1/2
hours, Sierra listened intently to every single writing tip she was given. And
then she came back to my desk.
Visibly excited, she asked
if she could show off her newfound skills. It sounded like a good idea, so I
had her sit at my computer and write a description of what I do at the paper.
The following is what she wrote (I swear I am not making this up):
Bryce Donovan, special
features columnist for The Post & Courier, seems to have a hard job. I
mean, writing all day in a small cubicle, or even just writing all day in
general is hard work for some people. But Bryce seems to pull off the job as
easy as cake. Goofing off is all in a day's work for this journalist. I mean
sooner or later, we all decide to, well, play around at work, but Bryce, well,
that's basically what he does all the time!
While I was reading this,
my editor walked by and introduced himself to Sierra. He asked what we were
doing and I explained the exercise I had given her. He read what she had
written, laughed and then said, "You're a sharp kid. We could use somebody
like you on staff."
Great
guy, my editor. Didn't want to
hurt the feelings of a little girl by telling her how clueless she was. He even
fed her some line about how she probably could do my job better than me. And it
was a nice touch telling me to clean out my desk right in front of her.
I just don't understand
why he had security escort me out of the building.
Bryce Donovan hopes to one day shadow Debi
Chard. Reach him at
This article was
printed via the web on
appeared in The Post and Courier and updated online at Charleston.net on