There’s a new jock starting at my radio station today—her first full-time job—not long out of college, enthusiastic and ambitious with a lot of potential, but still with a lot to learn. And so I have been thinking about my first days at my first full-time radio job. I got promoted from part-time to full-time at KDTH in Dubuque, Iowa, in February of 1982. Because of my part-time experience, I was somewhat familiar with how the place worked, but there was a certain learning curve all the same.

When I give career advice to college students, I remind them that they will be working closely with people who are not the same age as they are, possibly for the first time in their lives. Not everybody is going to have the same generational touchstones, value the same things, or understand the world the same way. Most important, those people are probably not going to perceive you the same way you perceive yourself. In jumping from part-time to full-time at the same place (no matter what the place), the culture shock is less because you will have met some of your colleagues already. But age difference is still something you need to recognize and adjust to.

When I started as a full-timer at KDTH, one of the biggest adjustments I had to make was to the number of people in the building. When you work nights and weekends, you often have the place to yourself. During the week, the halls bustle with salespeople, front-office people, creative-services people, engineers, clients, and other visitors. It took me a while to get used to that. Today, even though I’m used to the bustle, I still enjoy working on weekends or at night, because the building is quiet again.

When you’re a part-timer, you answer only to your program director, and you deal only with other jocks and listeners on the phone. As a full-timer, your constituency expands. You work with creative-services people and salespeople, and sometimes directly with advertising clients. Salespeople run the gamut. Some of them are thorough professionals who understand both their job and yours. Others understand theirs but don’t really get yours: “Look, I know this copy runs 28 seconds already, but I promised the client we’d put in the phone number twice. Can you cut it again? I have a meeting with him at 3:30.” (This inevitably happens when it’s 2:45 and you’re on the air at 3.) And some are clueless enough to make you wonder how they got hired in the first place. When you’re on your first job, negotiating the personalities in the sales department is daunting for a while.

There are a few people who work at a radio station but are not radio people. Their jobs involve the business end of the business—accountants, office managers, and the like. Sometimes they buy in, and they embrace the unconventional spirit that suffuses the best radio stations. Others never do. You’ll learn soon enough who’s in and who isn’t. Not buying in doesn’t automatically mean they’re bad people. It’s just that you’ll have to relate to them differently.

You’re under more pressure as a full-time jock, especially if you work in a rated market. You will be told what the ratings are. You will know how your daypart is doing. And if it’s not doing well, you will be expected to fix that. You will also have the pleasure of meeting with consultants who parachute in from out of town, critique your work, and then go back to where they came from. As a young jock, you will find these sessions to be extremely stressful. As you gain wisdom and experience, you will find these sessions to be extremely stressful.

My main memory of my first day at KDTH has nothing to do with what happened at the office. That night, my boss took me out for too many drinks, and afterward I spiraled unsteadily home, back to the furnished apartment I’d moved into the day before. On the way, I remembered that I needed to make a stop at the grocery store for critical supplies. I bought the following: an eight-pack of Coke in returnable bottles, a bottle opener, and a package of toilet paper. Which could be some sort of metaphor for the career that has followed on from that first day.