Leaving High-powered Careers Behind

Ex-Seventeen EIC Does What We All Secretly Hope To

Whether voluntary or by force, Atoosa Rubenstein left a cushy, swank job as the editor-in-chief of Seventeen magazine in November 2006. With an above average track record of turning the struggling magazine around - according to Wikipedia, she was credited with a 23% newsstand growth by 2005, after five years of declining sales - many thought she was crazy. Since I've been there on a smaller scale, I just smiled as I read the article, and thought back to my own experience.

It's hard for Americans to imagine giving up luxury ­careers when it seems to be a Cinderella life. After all, what could be so bad about endless expense accounts, traveling the country, being seen as the "best boss" by your employees and receiving lavish praise from your superiors? One woman's fantasy is sometimes another woman's nightmare.

With that flourishing career also comes excessive hours and an endless wave of stress.

As a senior in college, I had already been working for the local newspaper for more than a year. I had started as a sports stringer and worked my way up to general assignment reporter before graduation.

It was all planned out. I was already slated to take the regional editor position the day after graduation. This job was great. I kept loose hours and traveled a 60-mile radius to "chat" with the locals and see what stories I could dig up. I was never much of a people person until my college days, and I enjoyed the Midwesterners I got to meet every day.

One day, while on deadline, the owners of the parent company had flown in on their corporate jet, to check on things.

I'm not quite sure how things went down that afternoon but, the next day, I was called into the publisher's office and strongly advised to take a new position within the company. I was to be the corporate recruiter for 54 newspapers in nine states (I majored in management, with a concentration in human resources). There was no existing recruiting department, so I would have to build it from the ground up, at 21-years-old.