Hi, guys. I’ll get a blog post up later today. Just wanted to jot a quick note first.
A year ago, I was encouraged to apply for a position. I took three weeks to pull together all the relevant paperwork and then heard nothing. I was briefly disappointed, and then promptly forgot about it. In the beginning of August, some people involved in the process randomly contacted me to let me know the whys. Basically, I was too old. This happened just as I was in the middle of a meltdown about turning 50.
The next week, the Atlantic offered me a position as a regular contributor. Again, out of the blue.
I’m going to be writing about schools, higher ed, and parenting once a week for the education channel at the Atlantic. My latest article should be up on the website later today.
Congratulations. That’s great. I was wondering about that tweet, but I couldn’t tell for certain.
Does this mean you get to do the next article on fraternities and butt chugging?
Dude. I aspire to be THE leading expert on butt chugging.
Congratulations!
Yay! Am looking forward to your articles.
Congratulations on the Atlantic being smart enough to hire you. “Suck it ” to anyone calling you or anyone 50 too old.
Yes, poo on being perceived as too old! Especially for this kind of a gig. Huge congrats, well deserved, long time coming, etc etc. Super looking forward to reading more of your writing!
Great news! Congratulations. I’m sort of shocked that they are hiring anyone to do anything, so I hope this is also good news for old-school journalism, which I think is desperately needed.
Congrats!
A job offer that is much, much, much deserved, Laura. Congratulations!
Congrats!!!!!!!!!
FYI, that was me. 🙂
Congratulations!
Excellent!!
Great news! I’ve been reading the blog for years, and glad to see you’ll be getting the wider audience you deserve.
Well done! Congratulations!
Congratulations! Age leads to wisdom.
Congratulations!
YAY, great, Congrats!! But NOOOOOO – how awful of them not to hire you because of your age! 😦 Simply outrageous.
People on the K-12 beat aren’t supposed to be old enough to know anything about the K-12 beat or to have read articles by anybody else on the K-12 beat.
It’s the law.
Too old? For what? Pretending to be a traditional college student? Bah!
Kudos on the promotion to regular contributor status – it is well-deserved and it will only increase your profile as a smart and insightful commentator on these issues you know so well.
Congratulations! Your hard work and perseverance paid off. You should be very proud, in my opinion.
So, benefits? Good for you!
So cool to see your new article, and quickly look back at what you’ve written in the past for the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/author/laura-mckenna/. Need to make sure I still have my paper subscription.
Congrats! You deserve it.
Congrats on the new job.
Boo, Hiss! on the folks who thought you too old….unless they wanted you to do manual labor? Even then, they should’ve asked you to lift that bale and tote that load before turning you away…
Congratulations!