GOLDEN TRAIN(ING)

This song came out when I was in the 8th grade. I remember *so* vividly: sitting on the school bus with my grade 8 boyfriend and him listening to this on his walkman. I remember thinking the album cover was cool. A year later, I finally hopped on the Simple Plan bandwagon when my friend took me to a concert of their’s in Pennsylvania. We met Pierre and I took a photo with him. It was like... the coolest thing to happen to my 9th grade self. 

...but I’ve always got an organized workspace. Organization is so incredibly important to me and this is something that I’m learning I really cannot compromise on. Right now, between this internship, performing & managing my own music career, and some contract gigs I’ve got lined up, I’m working five (yes, 5!!!) jobs right now. It’s totally out of control.

When I come to Coalition each morning, I spend the first few minutes organizing my day and I love it. A clean inbox = a clean mind. Don’t let your space or your mind (or your inbox) get too cluttered. In my experience, it’s better to take a few minutes to organize and tackle projects after, than let things get prioritized without knowing what else is on your plate. Well-roundedness and organization will pay off - I promise. 

Michael Scott really is a voice for all of us.

Let’s not be glamourous here: no one thinks Excel is “cool”. It’s like, “neat,” but like, no one’s gonna befriend me because of my Excel skills. At a previous job, I started to see what kind of ‘cool’ things Excel could do and since then, I’ve made it my life’s goal to excel at Excel! (That is not actually my life goal... there’s a lot of word-fluffing going on here.) 

But here’s the thing: excelling at Excel is a huge skill set to have and if you haven’t gotten it yet, I highly recommend you work on upgrading your skills. I’m not talking coding and the super tech-y bits of Excel - leave that to the real pros, but being literate in Excel is helping me more and more each day. 

A moment of truth: coming into Coalition was a little bit scary for me at first. Perhaps it’s the legendary Management Roster, or the fact that I think Justin Nozuka is super cool – either way, I was pretty nervous during my first week at Coalition. But I discovered something quickly: everyone here is awesome.

When you first start at Coalition as an intern, you are given one-on-one meetings with every person in the office to ask them virtually anything you want about… well, anything! I decided to come up with a list of questions that I would ask everyone in order to find out about probably the most important thing to people looking for a foot in the door: how on earth did they get to where they are now?

The answer was pretty unanimous for everyone: someone – once – somewhere in their lifetime, opened them up to an opportunity and the rest is simply history. This entire industry seems to be built on relationships. Learning about those first opportunities was what was so incredibly interesting to me – an internship, a musician parent, a family friend, a desire to improve the performance world for artists – learning these career paths made it clear that there is no one way to create a career for yourself in the music world. So, create your own path and take guidance from others.

Personally, I come from a bit of an odd, yet well-rounded background: I’m an active musician, I’m passionate about arts education and youth involvement in the arts, and I am an enthusiastic administrative type. Coalition Music and I share these interests, So basically, Coalition and I should be BFFs! I’m looking forward to the next few months here and will take every bit of knowledge that the wealth of experienced and ~cool~ professionals in this office have to give me!