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SAVVYSAVINGBYTES is a New York City artist/writer who explores finances and shares tips for saving money with style and smarts. Here she talks about student gigs, the best part about getting fired, and always listening to that inner voice.

The UPSIDE of Getting Fired
When I was a student, long before my career as a self-employed visual artist and writer, I was lucky enough to get fired from two retail-selling jobs. Selling bored the bananas out of me. I also hated the regimentation of working in stores that demanded employees arrive, depart, eat and take breaks at the same time every day. My firings corroborated my future unsuitability for any job set in a strict nine to five atmosphere or that required any hint of marketing ability.

Getting Warmer…
My part-time job at a local newspaper was far more to my liking. For one thing I had a little social column with my very own byline (a big thrill for a sixteen-year-old). For another, I enjoyed subbing for vacationing employees, doing everything from bookkeeping to subscriptions to classified ads. My co-workers were a colorful, offbeat bunch and for added entertainment we had occasional visits from local eccentrics, who I later discovered seemed to congregate around the fringes of publishing. From this I learned that variety fueled my interests and oddballs fed my fascination with kooks of all kinds.

And Warmer…
My next part-time student gig involved working alone in a small cottage, hand decorating Christmas candles and wreaths. It was cozy in there with around the clock music and I enjoyed the serenity of working alone with no interruptions.

Then Colder
There was one student job, however, that came perilously close to sending me on a path I shudder to think about now. I came within a whisker of accepting a job promotion all because of MONEY. When I applied for a summer job my second year in art school, a New York employment agency advised me not to mention the fact I was a student. I needed the job to pay for next semester’s tuition, so I followed their advice and was hired as an administrative assistant at a trade weekly. I was well treated there and felt badly when it was time to go back to school and I had to make up some lame story about needing an extended break from my long suburban commute.

But just before my final semester, my parents were suddenly unable to come up with my tuition. Hastily I put together a portfolio and started pounding the job-search pavements. Icy winter winds blasted me around Manhattan streets while I shivered and sniffled in a lightweight spring coat, the only decent one I owned. For an artist with a half-baked portfolio and neither diploma nor experience, the beginning art job market was turning out to be impenetrable. Had art school been for nothing? Did no one want to hire me?

As it happened, someone did, but not in an art capacity. The trade weekly I had deserted contacted me about replacing the employee who had hired me — the office/advertising/subscription manager. I was offered over double the money I had been making, which was probably 3 or 4 times more than the salary of a beginning paste-up artist. Big dilemma –I was utterly broke, had no money for new clothes or my primary goal of moving away from home into a city apartment. After debating, I decided I would take the job –but only temporarily. I’d pile up enough dough to find an apartment in New York, buy some decent clothes and then I’d start looking for a job in my chosen art field. I agreed to start on Monday. But that weekend, I felt miserable — backed into a place I didn’t want to be.

Once I was making decent money, would I be able to step backwards monetarily. And oh god, the boredom of it. Though pleasant, my co-workers were too tame — too normal. But most troubling of all — my deepest instinct, the inner voice I had always counted on to point me in the right direction was yelling, “DON’T DO IT!” Never had I gone against that inner voice. Could I — should I– do it now?

NO! By Sunday I knew there was no way I could start that job. Unable to face the publisher and his disappointment in me, I fired off my regrets in a telegram.

And Finally HOT
With frigid winds blowing my portfolio around the streets like an erratic sail, I continued applying to employment agencies. About a month later I received two art job offers — one from Vogue and one from Harper’s Bazaar.

Moral: always follow your Smarty-pants inner voice.

Check out her blog or follow her on Twitter.

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