The Sorcerers Apprentice

Before diving into the unknown's velvety ocean, I worked for five years as a photo editor at Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines where one of my responsibilities was to hire and train the interns.

I worked hard to expose them to the magazine world and provide a laboratory to learn about the business.

I prodded them to ask questions, take initiative and most importantly to instill the professional values I'd gained from my family, friends, and mentors.

Rewind ten years to Toledo, Ohio.

After graduating college, I took off to South America before planning to start law school that fall. Something changed inside me during the trip and I realized I wanted write and take photos.

So I returned to Toledo and was fortunate to land an internship at the Toledo City Paper, at the time, the city's only alternative weekly.

An iron tough, fire breathing (cue Thin Lizzy "We're Not Gonna Take It") Editor-In-Chief with a nationally syndicated column and talent for coaching writers had recently started.

He taught me how to be a writer and drilled into me the cannon of his bible: The Elements of Style.

He gave me the opportunity to write and take photos for the paper and always had time to sit down and walk through his edits.

I watched him work, absorbed his advice and felt humbled after hearing stories of his rough and tumble childhood (for which I'm still waiting to read in the book he promised - how many years ago was that?).

I went to grad school, taught journalism in Armenia, traveled around Central America and finally spread roots in NYC and boogied in the magazine world.

I moved up and forward, as had my mentor, Michael Miller.

He's now Editor-In-Chief and writes his "Lighting the Fuse" column for The Toledo Free Press, the alternatively weekly in Toledo on the verge of dislodging the city's daily from its crumbling pedestal.

He's a wizard of words and I'm humbled and thankful to have been the sorcerer's apprentice.

Check out his column this week - it's about a few people everyone knows pretty well.