Words by Danielle Castillo
Have you ever experienced doing something for HOURS, and it turns out that you were only doing it for a few minutes?
Well, that’s how it is for me — it’s been two months, twelve days, twenty-three hours, fifty-eight minutes, and a few seconds since I started my job here at Athena, and I feel like I’ve been doing this stint now for years.
It’s been a whirlwind of emotions but a slow and agonizing ride for a beginner like me.
Makes me wonder why I even started this entire thing in the first place. But then, I remember how much they’re paying me to do this job and all regrets kind of just fades into the background.
I’m sure you’re wondering, though. What is it like to start being an executive assistant, a power role supporting incredible executives worth millions of dollars, when you’re just a noob starting from scratch?
Well, I’m here to tell you and also serve as a reminder that you could do it too, with the right combination of grit, motivation, and insanity.
Scratch-your-head start from scratch
I won’t lie.
I didn’t know a single thing about being an EA before two months ago.
I didn’t even know that there was a role called “executive assistant” — all I knew was the PA or personal alalay (servant), a position that my classmates back in elementary have come to make fun of.
So when I ventured into this field, it was really a whole lot of mistakes, apologies, and promises to do things better next time. It was a good thing that my client was patient with me the entire time.
I was nowhere near as good as my colleagues either.
I had to constantly ask for their help to the point where I knew that they must have found me annoying.
Google is a great friend to have, but real people are better when it comes to finding real solutions.
Lastly, my head was always filled with thoughts of self-doubt.
Not knowing everything about a job you’re new at is normal. Not being better than your older and more experienced colleagues is expected as well.
However, what should not be normal is beating yourself up over these simple facts, which I did (so don’t be like me).
I was constantly in a fight with my inner self-saboteur. It made things worse because it amplified the hardships by making me feel inadequate — like I’ll never be enough.
This is a lie, though, as we are always good enough to learn something new. Starting from scratch can be challenging, but it is doable as long as you keep your head in the game and keep trying.
My role as an executive assistant
Being an executive assistant isn’t a walk in the park. However, it’s not a highway to hell either. It’s a hot walk from the furthest parking slot to the airconditioned mall — inconvenient at first but incredibly rewarding at the end.
I can’t say that my position as an executive assistant was THAT difficult.
Some parts were easy to grasp — inbox management, for example, was as simple as reading emails and labeling them.
I loved making morning bios, which were tedious but relatively easy. They only involved scraping LinkedIn pages for info and formatting it uniformly in a single doc.
General research was also part of my activities. I’m the one my client turns to when they find that Google is not convenient enough. These projects are always fun to do.
My most memorable research task would be finding the best places to travel to in Central Europe and compiling an itinerary about it. Really fun stuff.
There were high-stakes activities, of course.
One of those involved managing the executive calendar. I got in trouble a whole lot because of minor mistakes because mistakes were unacceptable in this task.
Talking to investors also always got me sweating buckets, no matter how nice they seem to be. My fingers always seem to shake before hitting that “Send” button on Gmail.
Not going to lie, though; it’s incredibly satisfying to schedule a meeting after days of back and forth.
Lastly, there were tasks that were just frankly boring.
I also generally abhorred looking for flights and travel details. It’s super time-consuming, and airline websites can be incredibly slow.
I once had to manually scrape an airline’s website for possible travel options for the next three months. Spent two hours trying to find a way to automate this process before giving up and just doing it manually as was asked.
Lead generation was also one of my tasks. I loved doing this at first, but then it got super tedious when I found out I had to find contact information for 700+ companies. Totally not fun.
At the end of the day, my responsibility is to help this ultra-busy superhero of a person accomplish as much as possible in a shorter amount of time.
This means optimizing older systems and building new ones. Over the past two months, I’ve learned that leaving your client off with well-oiled functioning systems and workflows is really the job description.
It’s definitely not just a do-the-task-assigned-to-you kind of thing.
Grit, decisiveness, and insanity
I mentioned this before, but what do I really mean by it?
The ability to pursue and dedicate yourself to your craft despite adversity is very rarely found nowadays.
What I’m talking about is grit — a powerful combination of determination and direction — which is characterized by your willingness to just grit your teeth and let the gritty parts of life just pass you by without giving up.
There will come a lot of times during your role as your EA that you will want to just quit — I know I did — but do you know what’s important during those times where doing so feels like the only option? Don’t.
Being an EA means that you have to be decisive for you will be handling a person who needs to be decisive to survive.
Have you ever heard of the phrase “decisiveness comes before preparedness”? In a nutshell, it means that to be motivated to do something, you must first decide to commit to it.
To be successful in the EA role, you must first decide that you will do your best no matter what happens.
Lastly, to be honest, you’d have to be a little bit insane to try and become an EA.
Not because it’s a hard job, but because it requires complete and undivided attention to another person’s life and career.
It’s not something anyone can do, and even if they could, why would they choose to be someone like Donna when they could be Harvey?
You are quite frankly expected to show a deep level of empathy and selflessness to properly do your job of caring for your client.
This, combined with the heavy weight of your executive’s expectations to know virtually anything, must mean that you need a little bit of insanity to try out this job after doing your research.
Looking forward to faster days
They say that time flows by faster when you’re happy. I agree. I look forward to days where I can say that I’m delighted with my own performance as an EA.
Until the hours are actually hours and not mere minutes, I guess I will have to learn, persevere, and continue doing what assistants do best — help and assist.
You can become an EA now at Athena using this link.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!
Please also consider sharing and visiting my stack and my website for more articles like this in the future.
Thanks for reading RE: Righting My Life! I release newsletters anytime during the weekends. Consider subscribing if you haven’t already. Wishing you a great week!
Thank you for sharing you're experienced as EA . I really excited to work at Athena. I'm prying to accept my application.