“Hi, I’m Katey Roshetko with WDBJ7. Thank you so much for meeting me. I’m excited to be here.”
That’s the opening line (or some variation thereof) for almost every interview I do with my job as a local news reporter. It’s my secret to getting over the nerves of having to meet someone for the first time and then immediately pepper them with 20 questions. I always tell myself, if I can get through the initial greeting, I can get through anything.
It’s a trick I learned from years of theater. When you’re standing backstage about to pee your pants, all your senses are heightened. You hear the hushed bustle of the audience taking their seats and watch in the wings for the lights to go down so you can take your place. Every time I stood in the dark, I was convinced that this performance would be the time I forgot all my lines, all the dance moves and all the lyrics. I’d sweat and shake in a way that can only be attributed to the thrill and chill of a live performance. And every time, I’d say to myself, just get through the first line. Because without fail after that first line, all my preparation and hard work would take over. I’d no longer have to think about the moves or the script because it was innate, natural. I stopped being an actress and became a character.
As a reporter, my job is also a bit of a performance. Not just because it’s something I do on TV, but because who I am when I’m wearing my WDBJ7 reporter cap is not who I am when I’m at home with my husband or at a restaurant with my friends.
You relate to this too, right? You can think of all the different roles you play in your life and know how you change based on that position. Does it mean you're disingenuous or lying about who you are? Not necessarily. It just means we’re multi-dimensional, complex human beings.
I’m obviously not the first person to compare life to theater. From William Shakespeare who wrote, “All the world’s a stage; and the men and women are merely players,” to Erving Goffman who spent his career developing an entire interpersonal theory called the Presentational Self. The relationship between life and theater is well established.
In my role as a reporter, this comparison is even more amplified because it is a performance-based job. We do stand-ups instead of monologues; record track instead of recite lines; conduct interviews instead of holding a dialogue; and at the end of the day we have a newscast instead of a performance.
In this arena, my role is the reporter. The curtain rises and it’s time for my opening line.
“Hi, I’m Katey Roshetko with WDBJ7. Thank you so much for meeting me. I’m excited to be here.”
This is the part of the performance that everyone I interview gets to see, but there’s a lot more happening behind the scenes that never makes it on air. It’s the not-so-pretty part of television. It’s the not-so-pretty part of me.
I want to rotate the set for you so to speak so that you can get a glimpse into the part of me that’s not what you see on TV or that you don’t see when I reach out to shake your hand before an interview.
I’m usually a hot mess of anxiety before every interview. Over the years, I’ve gotten less and less anxious as I’ve grown more and more confident in my abilities, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped being nervous.
And before I was on medication and in therapy to help me cope with my anxiety and depression, there was rarely a day when I wasn’t in tears in the car on my way to a story feeling like I was on the verge of throwing up.
I can remember one time even having to pull over on the side of the road, a mountainous windy road that was probably not all that safe for me to pull over on in hindsight. But I had to pull over because the nausea was so bad. I’ve never been pregnant, but I can imagine I was experiencing a lot of that kind of morning sickness. I felt like I was going to throw up even though I hadn’t eaten that day. The dry-heaving was making my eyes water. So while my stomach is lurching back and forth, my head is telling me that this is why I’m a bad reporter. This is why I shouldn’t have ever tried to do this job. This is why today is going to end in disaster.
I found out a few months later that this intense nausea was not just from nerves, but also from gallstones. Once I had my gallbladder removed, the intensity of the nausea de-escalated tremendously, but my nerves were still there.
Getting through those nerves is something I battle every single day. Whether I’m about to do an interview or I’m about to go live on the morning show, my anxiety is at the forefront of my brain telling me all the things that could go wrong.
So while everyone else sees the confident, bubbly, personable and energetic part of myself that I put on the surface, I want you to know the effort that it took to get there. Because I don’t want anyone to be deceived by what they see on TV or social media. Both of those worlds are designed to look polished and put together, but underneath it all I’m just a struggling human being too.
I hate my weight. I get acne. I fight with my husband. I get lazy when I’m stressed and stressed when I’m lazy. I’m judgmental. I hold myself and others to impossibly high standards. I also have depression and anxiety. I get nervous meeting new people. I worry about whether or not people like me. I fear not living up to my potential and my potential not living up to my dreams.
I’m also stubborn. And I don’t like being told no, whether it’s from a person or from my anxiety. Very few things get me motivated as much as someone telling me I can’t do something.
Which is how I’ve gotten to the mental head space I’m in today.
I fight to overcome my demons. I refuse to let the nerves get the better of me. Even on that day on the side of the road when I thought I couldn’t go on, I put my car in drive, made it to my interview and produced my story for the day. Then I did it the next day and the next day. And I’ve been doing it every day for over two years.
I’ll never have it all figured out and I don’t want to pretend I do. But I know that if I keep showing up, good things will continue to happen. They’ve already happened for me and I know they’ll happen for you too.
Whatever it is that’s going on backstage in your life is one small fraction of who you are. It doesn’t have to be the part of the show you keep hidden away because you don’t want anyone to see. You can invite people backstage to help you run through the performance better. You can stand in wings and be anxious for your entrance without letting it become total stage fright. You can take back control of the show, change the script, flip the stage and stand in the spotlight as your 100% complex and authentic self.
Choose your cast wisely. Let them take some of that pressure off of yourself. For I believe we've been drawn together to create a life we love.
Meeting new people is hard! So here are some practical things I do to ease that transition from stranger to friend.
Never underestimate the power of a warm smile, firm handshake and sincere greeting. It’s often the most important part of the interview because that first impression will dictate everything else that follows.
Don’t forget that most people are nervous about meeting you too. Take the focus off of yourself and ask, “How can I make this person feel more comfortable around me?”
Always remember their names. I don’t know when we began to treat “not being good at remembering names” as acceptable or funny. It is the most basic thing you can remember about someone so do what it takes to remember that name. A first step is to say the name back to them. “Nice to meet you, Jerry. I’m Katey.” Or find something to compliment them on the name. “Quin is such a unique, fun name. Is there a story behind it?”
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