Daughter Brings New Blood and a Way With Words to Newsroom

My school district may have stopped supporting Take Our Daughters to Work Day for financial reasons, but I think the program is well worth the money.

The Ventura Unified School District said it could lose up to $20 for each student participant, even though state officials say it would cost less than $1 a day. Regardless of the money involved, the experience is one that I would not trade for anything.

Take Our Daughters to Work Day was established in 1993 to give girls more experience in the workplace. In its fourth year, this day has been a success, at least for me.

These past four years I have been privileged to spend a day working at The Times Ventura County Edition, and each year I have learned something different and new about my dad’s workplace and my father as a person.

During my first day at The Times, the whole paper still seemed like a fairy tale. It was something I could be part of for a day but then, like Cinderella’s ball gown, it would disappear, and I would leave it to do whatever it is fairy-tale worlds do for the other 364 days of the year. That first year, everything was like a dream: It was fascinating but it still didn’t seem real.

The second year everything was a little more real. For the first time, I felt that I could relax and be myself and just enjoy writing and hanging around with a great group of people. I finally relaxed enough to watch my dad. I think that was the first time I realized that my dad was like a different person at work, more laid back and having more fun.

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Last year when I came in, it seemed like everyone was expecting me. Katherine Woodson, who is kind of the office mom, gave me a big hug. I worked hard all day writing briefs. It was last year when I realized that a newsroom is just like a team. Everyone is supportive of everybody else.

One reporter was doing a story but couldn’t think of a lead paragraph. The other reporters started suggesting different leads. She sat there taking in all of their suggestions.

This year I looked forward to Take Our Daughters to Work Day as an expectant child looks toward Christmas.

This day has taught me many things, and probably more knowledge has been thrown into my cranium in these days than I learn in a week of school.

The other day, as my friends and I were eating lunch, we discussed who and where we wanted to be in 20 years. Surprisingly, I discovered that not one of us aspired to be housewives. Among us we had Ashley, an astronomer destined for fame; Meagan, a soon-to-be- famous novelist; Michelle, an artist in the making; and me, Jennifer, a hopeful journalist and novelist. All of us aspire to greatness.

Some want children, but they want to be educated and have a career first, which is exactly what Take Our Daughters to Work Day was organized to encourage. All of us were upset about the school district rethinking its backing of the event.

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One friend said, “Before I went to work with my mom, all I knew was that she worked in an office. I watched her for a day and now I know she’s an accountant.”

Another friend, a Balboa teacher, remembered the first day her students came back from visiting their parents’ work. “They were alive with interest in what their parents did. Before if you asked them what their parents did, all they knew was that they worked in an office.”

Laura Studarus, an eighth-grader at Balboa Middle School, said, “Take Our Daughters to Work Day gives us a chance to escape from school for a day and go research something that’s deeply interesting to us. It also gives us a chance to kind of bond with our parents. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true.”

Laura was right. I’ve found that what my dad does is a lot of who he is. I’ve seen different sides of him, and the way he acts around his friends.

But maybe the most important thing is that in my fourth year of working for The Times, it doesn’t seem like a fairy tale anymore. The newsroom has become a place I can realistically see myself in the future, and the people my dad works with have become my friends instead of my idols.

Take Our Daughters to Work has become a success, and I am glad to have been involved with it. In fact it has become so successful that guys no longer talk about how the holiday is sexist, because in many places it has been changed to Take Our Children to Work Day. So now they can go too.