Fridays are casual in the office, so I come in wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I prepare myself a toasted bagel with cream cheese from the breakfast spread we get every Friday, and turn to my regular daily tasks and the loose ends I need to tie up before the weekend.
The global consumer marketing meeting scheduled for 10 AM has been cancelled, leaving me more time to get everything ready for the weekend. While I may not be in the office Saturday and Sunday, social media does not rest for a minute. All the organic engagement posts should be prepared and scheduled today, and the ads for our back-to-school promotion need to be checked one last time before going live. This way I only have to monitor things a few times over the weekend, and barring any unexpected problems can devote the rest of my time to the “life” part of the work-life balance.
The view from our office.
Saturday’s content will include a post about Spanish for #SpanishSaturday, by now a tradition on our social media channels. The image of a girl swimming with the text “To swim = Nadar” was created a while ago by our creative services team, and I just need to come up with some interesting copy to accompany it. I want our followers to comment on the post, which is particularly helpful for making it onto people’s newsfeeds on Facebook, and so I decide to ask them what their favorite place to swim is. Of course, since this is a #SpanishSaturday post, I want the question to be in Spanish. Luckily, we have plenty of Spanish speakers in the office who can help me out.
I also create posts for Sunday, which turns out to be National S’mores Day according to the content calendar an intern compiled for us over the summer. I find an appropriate photo in one of our databases of stock photos, crop it in Photoshop, and add a little Rosetta Stone logo. I then put together copy about the origins of the word “s’more” (we are a language company, after all), which I discover with a quick Google search, and schedule the posts. It’s nice to have the occasional opportunity to do some basic language-related research.
To end the workweek my coworkers and I head over to the Georgetown waterfront for some happy hour drinks. Chatting with them about weekend plans, I’m reminded of how I was shocked to be asked by a colleague at my first post-PhD job what I was going to do over the weekend. “You mean to tell me Saturday and Sunday are a separate unit of time from Monday through Friday?!” I had thought to myself. Yet another thing I’ve happily gotten used to.
Thank you for joining me this past week, and thank you to Michelle for giving me the opportunity to share my experiences. I’m more than happy to answer any questions about my field of work or the post-academic world in general.
Questions? Share your thoughts!