A few days before Kim Tranell graduated from Penn State in 2004 with a journalism degree, she was offered a job at Glamour magazine, as an editorial assistant. She started working from Glamour’s offices in New York City the following week, while commuting from her parents’ home in northeast Pennsylvania. Eventually, she moved to the city and four years later was offered a job as the health editor for Seventeen magazine, where she has worked for the past three and half years.
HC: How did you make the move from editorial assistant at Glamour to an editor at Seventeen?
Kim: When you’re an editorial assistant you assist certain top editors at a magazine, or senior editors, and normally what happens to get out of that position is you have to move to another magazine. The great thing about Glamour is that they let me do whatever I wanted to do essentially. As I got more experience under my belt they were letting me edit and write, not a ton, but at the end of the day when you’re assisting someone you can’t have all the responsibility of your own that you want. I always wanted to work at a teen magazine, it was always a dream of mine. Right when I was itching to get out of Glamour, a friend of mine, who knew the person who was leaving at Seventeen, sent me an email and sent my resume in. It all happened really fast.
HC: How many hours a week do you work at Seventeen as opposed to Glamour?
Kim: Well, the type of hours you work differs. At Glamour, you’re assisting people. I assisted three editors, so for a long time I had a lot of other research and a lot of administrative stuff to do for those editors, and that had to come first. Whenever I wanted to take on writing or editing, I had to stay late to get interviews done and to work on my ideas for the pages I edited. Now I’m in charge of an entire section of a magazine and I direct all of the health content. So, the hours I would say are just as long, but it’s a different kind of work. Now it’s all my own. If I get it done I can leave the office and feel fine. It just all depends on what I’m working on and what my deadlines are. But I would say most of the time I work from 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and sometimes I have a night or two a week where I work until 8 p.m. Every once in a while I have a night where I’m there getting work done until 10 p.m.
HC: What is your favorite aspect of your job?
Kim: My favorite aspect of my job now is working with teen girls. It’s a really crucial time in girls’ lives to reach them. I really love working on our body peace campaign. I also work with a fun, smart and creative staff and I always say we all ended up there for a reason so we’re all on the same wavelength. I love brainstorming ideas. I love when we have meetings and we’re spitting stuff out and thinking about what to do bigger and better next year and what topics and issues we want to tackle.
HC: What advice would you give students at Penn State that you wish someone had given you?
Kim: You know, people probably gave me this advice, but I just didn’t really understand it or didn’t listen, but I would say ask for what you want. I think I did in a lot of ways, but there are ways where I didn’t. So don’t be afraid to ask for more responsibilities at your first job, or when the time comes and you’re really confident that you deserve a promotion or a title change, that you ask for it. As long as you do it the right way the worst anyone can say is no, and they’re probably going to be really impressed that you’re that eager and confident.
HC: What’s it like living in New York City compared to State College?
Kim: I don’t think there are that many cons to living in New York. I feel like I’m a New Yorker for life, through and through now. But, I do appreciate getting out of the city more and more now then when I first moved there. State College is beautiful and it’s quiet. Well, I guess it’s quiet for me when I come visit now, but it wasn’t when I was in college. But, it’s still a little bit slower pace of life than New York. But, I do love New York, I love the energy. It can get exhausting, that’s why it’s important to get away every now and then, but mostly I think the people who live there feed off of it.