With great responsibility comes great power

I was promoted today, sort of. Although I have not yet been officially promoted to the position of account supervisor, I am going to start taking on some supervisory responsibilities on two of my accounts, which is to say that I will now have one person working under me to take the bulk of the work, while I provide counsel and strategic direction as needed. Tomorrow, everything starts to change.

It scares the shit out of me.

I have always been ambitious, and I've always been driven to succeed. It's been my goal to be the vice president of public relations at some company by the time I'm 30. I have always believed that I would go far, but I guess I didn't really expect that it would happen to me so young in my career.

But at 26, while most of the people I graduated with are still account executives*, I am getting ready to make the leap into management. In fact, I am younger than my new account executive by 2 years.

It literally scares the shit out of me.

This is a really big step for me, both personally and professionally. I know that there will be challenges ahead. I know that I will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. I know that I don't know everything I should probably know to be in this position. But I've worked my ass off to get here, and I deserve it.

The notion that I deserve it is something I'm coming around to.

The only bummer in this situation is that I will be supervising my two favorite accounts. The one allows me to really feel like I am DOING something... that I'm not just selling products or ideas, but solutions that will really, truly help people. The other client is my favorite because of the people... my "gay boyfriend" is my main client contact and I don't know how I'll go from calling him three times a day to calling him three times a month. Basically, I'll be DOING less work and OVERSEEING more work. Make sense?

Not only will the scope and responsibility of my work change, the way that I am viewed by my peers will change. This is what I am having the most trouble with. The girl whom I will be supervising is my friend. We eat lunch together in our little group of 6 almost every day. Her brother is trying to date me. I can practically feel the tension mounting.

Plus, the other girls at the lunch table won't feel like they can grouse about their jobs in front of me. I'll go from being a friend to a superior. I don't like the thought of losing my social network when my social network is so small to even begin with. I KNOW that this is the next logical step in my career and I have always known this day is coming. I guess I just thought I had more time to get used to the idea... I guess I thought that I'd become a supervisor at my next job, not right now.

(Here is where I have to stop myself from being so melodramatic. It's not the end of world, and I'm not even technically a supervisor yet.)

It is nice to know that my own supervisors have faith in me. I like knowing that they trust me to take this step and are willing to help me through it. It seems ironic that 2 months ago I got a nasty gram from them, telling me that I had a lot of areas to improve upon. I guess I made the improvements they requested, and then some.

I feel like I am becoming the PR professional that I am meant to be. At the same time, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety over leaving behind the professional that I am. I need to take the faith that my supervisors have in me and have it in myself.

But god, I'm scared shit less!

*NOTE: The typical progression of a professional in the PR field is as follows. The numbers behind each position indicate the number of years of experience each position generally requires. Note that I will celebrate my 5th year out of college next summer: Assistant Account Executive (1-2 years); Account Executive (2-4 years); Senior Account Executive (5-7 years); Account Supervisor (6-9); Senior Account Supervisor (10-15 years); Assistant Vice President and so on...