Education
I'm a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, where I earned the university's distinguished bachelor of journalism degree.
Professional Background
After graduation, I spent more than 15 years as a writer and editor in the fast-paced world of newspaper and magazine publishing. My resume includes; Managing Editor of Phoenix Magazine, Phoenix's prestigious monthly with a circulation of more than 100,000; the Associate Editor of the Round Up, the journal of the Maricopa County Medical Society; and I was the award-winning Editor-In-Chief of Scottsdale Life Magazine - a full-color slick city publication with a circulation of 30,000 - where I oversaw every detail of every issue, from story development to page layout.
I have an extensive background covering diverse topics such as
lifestyle, healthcare, hospitality, dining, travel, politics, the arts, cultural issues, and much more.
A Story of Me
Let me set the stage. I was 7 years old and in the 2nd grade. My class and another were working together on a Christmas program that we were going to perform for our parents. Some children were going to recite the classic Christmas tale A Visit From Saint Nick while another handful of children would be on stage acting out what was recited.
In all honesty, this little hiccup in time probably never would have imprinted on my brain had the program gone on as the teachers' wanted. And the imprint of this story would have been far less defined had this not been one of my mom's favorite tales to tell about me as I was growing up. But I digress.
So, the two classes had gathered in the library to
practice. A few children, as I mentioned before, were on stage acting out the
poem as it was recited. I'm taking a guess here, but I think, most likely,
those students reciting the poem probably had to recite about two lines each. I
was to be one of the students reciting the poem ? not a difficult task for me
because we read this book every year around Christmas time.
We began to practice. One child stepped in front of the microphone to recite his two lines then stepped back into place on the bleachers while the next student walked to the microphone. Our two teachers stood at the back of the room to make sure all could be heard.
As the practice proceeded, the teachers would
stop us at regular intervals and whisper together in the back. After each one
of these sessions, they would say to me, "Linda, we're going to add to your
lines a little bit. Now we want you to say..." At one point, they even moved my
position in the bleachers closer to the microphone.
After about the fourth time of whispering and conferring and changing my lines, I started to really sweat and stress about all the lines I had to recite. I've never been much of a public speaker. I was becoming envious of my friend on stage - she didn't have to say anything. They must have noticed the stressful look on my face because my teacher said, "Is this getting to be too much?" I nodded, yes. And they stopped adding to my lines.
Well, soon enough, the day of the performance rolled around and the two classes presented the program to our parents. I have no memory of the actual performance, but I do remember standing in the punch line after the performance (the punch turned out to be disgusting, that I do remember) and all kinds of parents I didn't know were coming up to me to tell me what a great job I did. I had no idea what they were talking about.
It was years later that my mom started retelling the story. That's when I found out that I alone recited nearly the whole poem by myself. Apparently, the majority of the other children couldn't remember their lines, so the teachers just kept adding to my lines because I was having no problem.
I guess the moral of this story is that I'm not afraid to take on extra burdens and can be relied on if things are not going exactly as planned. I think this little incident in my childhood holds true to who I am today.| +1 480 688 4207 |
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