My glamorous career

I hosted a few  job shadows this morning -- high school kids who wanted to step inside the newsroom and see what's what.

The girls, all juniors (from City High, Solon and Clear Creek Amana high schools), enjoy writing and are trying to figure out how to make a career of it -- kudos to them! I was neck deep into a bachelor's degree in English before I thought that far ahead -- at the polite insistence of my parents, who were pretty eager to get me off their payroll.

Jami Stewart, Job Shadow Coordinator for Kirkwood's Workplace Learning Connection, e-mailed a few weeks ago to set it up. Just show them around the place, talk about how I got to where I am and let them tag along for a few hours of work, she said. Great!

So I bought a dozen donuts, sharpened some pencils, grabbed a stack of reporter's notebooks and today's papers, and prepared to tell them all about my glamorous career.

On tap today: the thrill-a-minute issue of Project Labor Agreements. Timely, critically important and interesting if you're a civics kind of nerd. But not an easy introductory issue for a high schooler who just wants to put pen to paper for a paycheck. Boy, did those impressionable young things pick the wrong day to visit.

But they were fast learners and good sports, slogging through background material and coming up with some great questions for our 11 a.m. phone meeting with folks from the Associated Builders and Contractors of Iowa. They even took notes -- writing down factoids and answers to the questions we'd brainstormed before the call.

Then I sent the girls off with a handshake and a business card -- telling them to count me in their budding professional network. I hope they enjoyed their peek into the rumpled, paper-strewn and detail-laden soul of modern opinion writers.

Hey, at least we've got donuts.