I KNOW EVERY AD PERSON HATES THIS BUT I REALLY JUST WANT TO BE DON DRAPER*

*Before this begins, I just want to clarify, Don Draper without the neglect of his family and binge drinking.

I feel like I have this rugged handsomeness to my personality. There’s this serious side of me that not even I understand. I remember legitimately terrifying my class during a presentation once. We had to create our own agency, a common theme in the VCU strategic advertising track, and my team went with the “mind control” route. Think if the Inception operation was all a scam. Our agency, Episode 1, came after the destruction of the world and used “mindful conditioning” to probe the minds of consumers. I wrote an entire monologue and read it to my class in this creepy, monotone voice while a trippy video, that I put together using Vimeo’s dark side and white noise, played in the background. I became known as “that girl that is good at doing voice overs,” but it’s honestly better than “that girl who did a remake of American Idol auditions.” There truly are two sides to every person. For reference:

Looking around the room, jaws were dropped, and I’ve been chasing that reaction ever since. I want to pitch like Don Draper. I did it once and I want to do it again. I know I actually made something worthy of the eyes of the outside world when I’m jumping up and down before a presentation rather than sulking with my arms behind my back. I don’t even want to say that I’m a funny person, because I feel like that makes everyone seem less funny. But, I’m not not funny. I’m just more proud of when I scare people with an idea. Don’t get me wrong, you always have to warm up the crowd and I can thank my extensive theater background and improv exercises for that ability. They made me an expert in how to sway exactly like a tree. I’m not afraid to speak, I speak to make other people afraid of saying to themselves, “how did I not think of that before.”