My third interview was with a culture and content planner at a company that creates lectures and programs aimed toward people who want to achieve various goals. She became interested in creating this type of content after attending a lecture that exceeded her expectations and really helped her sort through some difficulties in her life. After that lecture she wanted to create impactful content that could help other people like the lecture she attended helped her. She now works as a manager creating content for various lectures and events put on by her company. Coming up with a concept usually starts with brainstorming meetings and consulting media and news to get a feeling for what many people are currently struggling with and worrying about. Some topics that she has worked on have been things like personal branding and how to handle stress. The company usually does about 3-4 lectures per year.

She said that the most difficult thing about planning the lectures is coming up with content that hasn’t been done before and is actually fun and interesting. But the difficulty of coming up with ideas is worth it when she sees the energy that people come out of the lectures with and how the content can open doors for them. Her goal for the future is to actually give an impactful lecture herself.

This interview made me realize that there can be a lot more to a job than it may first seem. When I first met this person, I knew she was working on personal branding content and did not find it particularly interesting. However, once I talked with her in detail about her work and learned about how much thought, effort, and research goes into planning each event, I realized that it was much more interesting and complex than I thought. I have noticed that this is the power of these interviews for me. Talking to people in person about their work gives me a much more detailed and clear idea of what actually goes into the job than any description online or passing conversation. I think that these interviews are a really beneficial way to learn more about careers and find more potential paths as well as make connections with people.