All of the jobs I've had since age 15 and the pros and cons of each

Hey kids, trying to figure out what to do with your life? Can't decide which career to pursue? Well, here's a handy list of possibilities, all of which I've done in my life and most of which at least provided a living wage so that my family didn't starve. Which is a plus.


Dishwasher in an Italian restaurant (1985)
PRO: Free food.
CON: It turns out there are a LOT of dishes to wash in an Italian restaurant.

Wendy's employee (1986)
PRO: Free food (whether or not it was supposed to be free).
CON: Drunks who came through the drive-thru at 2:35 a.m. after the bars closed and thought they were hilarious when they ordered a Big Mac.

Newspaper sports department clerk (1988-90)
PRO: The thrill of deadline, helping to put out an award-winning sports section every night and getting paid for it while still in college.
CON: No free food.

Newspaper sports writer (1991-96)
PRO: See the "PRO" entry under "Newspaper sports department clerk" above.
CON: When they ask how much money you make, people can hear in your voice the implied quotes when you talk about your "salary."

Health insurance plan document writer (1996-97)
PRO: Each day would eventually end.
CON: Each day would inevitably begin.
(NOTE: In all fairness, this was with a very solid, reputable organization. It just wasn't a job that fit me especially well.)

Managing editor for a urology-themed trade newspaper (1997-99)
PRO: Urologists are hilarious. Seriously, some of the funniest people I ever worked with.
CON: Almost everything you write and talk about in the course of a normal work day involves penises, prostates and assorted old person problems.

Hospital public relations guy (1999-2002)
PRO: Being in the operating room and getting to tell stories about amazing research and clinical care at one of the finest academic medical institutions in the world.
CON: Lots of blood, some of it not your own.

Public relations agency account executive/vice president (2002-06)
PRO: Travel to many cool places.
CON: Travel to many cool places while your kids are little and your poor, pregnant wife is stuck at home.

Community foundation public affairs representative (2006-11)
PRO: Some of the nicest, coolest, most talented colleagues I've ever had.
CON: It's amazing how much people hate you when all you're trying to do is give away money.

Tech-oriented nonprofit marketing and communications VP (2011-13)
PRO: Broadband access is fascinating.
CON: Startlingly few people care about broadband access.

Unemployed guy (2013)
PRO: No work!
CON: No paycheck!

Blender company director of communications (2013-present)
PRO: There's always food here.
CON: There's always food here.

I really do miss the urologists

For a two-year period back in the late 90's, I served as the managing editor of Urology Times magazine.

That's absolutely true. UT is one of those obscure publications (of which there are hundreds if not thousands) that exclusively cover very narrow niches within the business world.

These "trade pubs," as they are often referred to among the journalists and publishers who staff them, are great sources of ad revenue because they deliver a very targeted and engaged readership.

UT, as the name implies, offers news of interest to practicing urologists on a monthly basis. Most of the news is scientifically oriented, but there's also notice of new products and legislative happenings that affect the specialty.

If you're not familiar with urology, it's the branch of medicine that deals mostly with diseases of the prostate, kidneys, bladder and adrenal glands, as well as the male reproductive organs.

I'll give you a minute to let out a heartfelt "Ewwwww!"

And it really does score high on the Yuck Spectrum. I watched dozens of urologic surgeries during my 2-plus years with the magazine, and none of them were especially pretty.

Which leads to the question of why someone would choose to be a urologist. I asked a urologist about that when I worked at UT. His answer was two-fold:

(1) He called it a "gentleman's surgical sub-specialty." A lot of urologists wanted to be surgeons in medical school, but they quickly realized they didn't want to be taking out someone's gall bladder at 3 in the morning. Most urological procedures are of a non-emergency nature, so they can be scheduled at convenient hours ("Convenient," that is, to the urologist who wants to make sure he gets in 18 holes of a golf on a nice summer day.)

(2) They also get paid well. Physicians in general score pretty highly in the paycheck department, but at the time I was covering the field, urologists were among the highest-paid sub-specialists.

And I'm fine with that. Someone in our society needs to worry about pee-related problems, and I doubt you or I are going to volunteer. So when a person steps up to the plate and promises to be there if I develop a nasty advanced penile cancer, yeah, I'm OK with them getting a big fat paycheck in return.

Almost to a man (and the vast majority of them were men), the urologists with whom I dealt were hilarious. Which makes sense, doesn't it? You have to have quite a sense of humor if you spend your days sticking your finger into places it shouldn't be stuck into.

I used to attend urological research meetings, and I always enjoyed interviewing the urologists and urologically inclined medical students after they made their research presentations. They were not only nice, they were also genuinely shocked that someone cared about their work enough to write about it.

I freelanced for UT for a few years after leaving the magazine and moving into public relations, and to this day I'm still overly knowledgeable about prostate tumors and the demographics of bladder cancer. It's the kind of stuff that never quite falls out of your brain, even though you have no use for it.

So I miss it a little. Or at least I miss the people.

I also miss the funny names. During my time at UT, I came across urologists whose names were (I'm not making any of these up) Drs. Wang, Johnson and Zipper. And they PAID me to write about this stuff.

Suddenly we're all doctors

So Melanie came downstairs on Saturday morning and complained she had itchy skin bumps on her legs and arms that had kept her from sleeping well. This wasn't good for two reasons:

(1) You never want your child to experience something like that, and

(2) It brought about the seldom-seen-yet-no-less-annoying phenomenon I call "Scott Tennant, M.D."

I never attended medical school, nor do I have any sort of formal medical training. Yet I consider myself perfectly qualified to diagnose and treat a variety of ailments for the same reason millions of other Americans do: We have Internet access.

I imagine doctors must hate the Internet. With the advent of WebMD and other health-oriented sites, the average Joe and Josephine suddenly fancy themselves to be medical professionals, capable of pinpointing every disease and prescribing self-treatment. This allows us to bypass the unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming process known as American health care.

What these sites actually do, of course, is empower each of us to turn medical molehills into mountains. You get the sniffles and find yourself perusing a list of symptoms online, and you quickly become convinced that what you have is not a cold, but rather some exotic sub-Saharan form of rickets or beriberi.

This is made worse in my case by the fact that two of the jobs I've held have been in the medical field. One was as a public relations man for the world-famous Cleveland Clinic, where I got to see more than my share of surgeries up close and personal (and of course now feel I could easily conduct an organ transplant on my kitchen table if given access to the proper tools...and to a patient, of course).

I also spent two years as managing editor of Urology Times magazine. This is true. One of my most tired jokes is when I describe that job as "yellow journalism" (Get it? "Yellow" journalism? It's funny because pee is yellow and...OK, forget it).

But yes, for two years I covered the exciting, fast-faced world of professional urology. Well, I suppose the word "professional" is superfluous. I mean, it's not like there are amateur urologists out there trying to remove people's kidney stones in their garage for 10 bucks a pop. And if there are, I don't want to know anything about it.

One of the byproducts of that job was that I learned an awful lot about urology and urological conditions. More than any non-urologist should know, really. The other byproduct was that I'm now a lot more likely to misdiagnose one of my family members with a life-threatening urological disease based on some benign symptom or other. More than once, I've been fairly convinced my wife had prostate cancer.

Anyway, Melanie came to me with these itchy skin bumps, so I immediately got out the "Illustrated Family Health Guide" from Giant Eagle and fired up my web browser. After seven minutes of exhaustive research, I concluded that Melanie was experiencing some form of hives, possibly as a result of an allergic reaction to the antibiotic she had been taking for strep throat.

And do you know what the worst part was? I was right! Seriously, I nailed it. I took her to the pediatrician, who confirmed my crack diagnosis. She put Melanie on a different antibiotic and gave us some sample packets of Zyrtec to help treat the rash.

Now, of course, I've concluded that I'm smarter (and less expensive) than every doctor out there. I'll be insufferable every time one of the kids gets sick ("Don't worry, Terry, I've got this. What Jared has there is clearly a case of candidiasis, what you non-medical types know as a 'yeast infection.' I recommend a topical vaginal ointment.")

The good thing is, I won't charge Terry NEARLY as much as our pediatrician does to see the kids.