When working in any profession, there are going to be certain activities, phrases, and actions that are unique to the line of work you do. The same is true in a radio station. If you currently work in a radio station, you can probably relate to most, if not all of these 10 signs.

1. You Never Know Who is Going to Walk Past You at Work

Different radio stations have different formats and different key demographics. To keep listeners interested and entertained, all sorts of different people might walk past your office, booth or other area in the station. Maybe it is a famous celebrity, or a person in politics. Perhaps it is an athlete or someone with a snake wrapped around their shoulders. It’s hard to tell, but every day will bring new surprises.

2. You Grow Upset When People Complain About the Pledge Drive

You understand how different it is to run a station and you also understand how much money it takes to run the radio station. So, people are either complaining about too many commercials or they complain about the annual or semi-annual pledge drive. It irks you either way, but you are not alone. Everyone else in the business completely understands the way you feel.

3. Headphone Hair

Other people might have no idea what this is, but you sure do. Those larger, professional headphones weigh down your hair directly above your ears, so that perfectly designed hair style is totally destroyed, but it’s all good. You’re used to it.

4. You Forget the Weather Even Though You Hear the Weather Report a Dozen Times a Day

You are so focused on your job much of what you hear that isn’t pertinent to your work is just background noise. That includes the weather report, so when you step outside and it starts to rain, you silently become upset at yourself for not listening to all the times the station gave the report.

5. An Editor Kills Your Dream

You worked non-stop on a story, it is all produced and ready to go, and then the editor kills your dream and says it just isn’t going to work.

6. Can You Dumb it Down a Bit?

If you conduct interviews on the radio and you have someone especially smart sitting in front of you, before the live interview starts you tell them to explain it like you’re in kindergarten. You might feel silly saying that to a Nobel Prize-winning expert, but thankfully, you suggest it is the audience who might not fully grasp a more in-depth explanation.

7. You Love Workplace Fashion

With most people sitting behind microphones and computers, you don’t need to worry about wearing business suits and blazers to work, so everyone has something unique to wear and it really is amazing.

8. You Know the Difference between Local Public Radio and NPR

If you tell people you work in local public radio, you are then forced, almost every single time, to explain the difference between that and NPR. It drives you nuts, but you know you’ll need to do it every single time.

9. Your Voice Sounds Weird to Yourself

You never get used to how your voice sounds live. Ever. And it is always weird.

10. Your Hard Work is Often in the Background

You are fine with the fact that your hard work is often heard in the background at offices around the city.

If you’re interested in a career in radio, contact Miami Media School for more information.

László Nemes’s acclaimed Holocaust drama Son of Saul opens Friday at Music Box, and longtime Reader contributor Jonathan Rosenbaum weighs in with a four-star review. We’ve also got new reviews of: Anesthesia, an indie ensemble drama featuring Kristen Stewart, Sam Waterston, Gretchen Mol, Michael K. Williams, and Tim Blake Nelson (who also directed); The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, a documentary about the annual footrace that leads through Tennessee’s treacherous Frozen Head State Park; Cemetery of Splendor and Mekong Hotel, the two most recent films by Thai filmmaker (and SAIC graduate) Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who will attend the Monday screening of Cemetery; The 5th Wave, a sci-fi adventure about invading aliens that stars Chloe Grace Moretz; and The Finest Hours, a Disney drama about the daring U.S. Coast Guard rescue of a commercial tanker that split in two during a storm off the Massachusetts coast in 1952.

Best bets for repertory: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (2015), Saturday and Sunday at University of Chicago Doc Films; Ronit Bezalel’s 70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (2015), Friday through Sunday at Gene Siskel Film Center; Carl Reiner’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982), Wednesday at Doc; Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), Friday and Sunday at Doc; Fred Zinnemann’s Julia (1977), Thursday at Doc; Charles Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), Tuesday at Film Center with a lecture by Pamela Robertson Wojcik of Notre Dame University; John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Wednesday at Northbrook Public Library; Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s On the Town (1949), Monday at Doc; Seijun Suzuki’s Pistol Opera (2001), Saturday at Film Center; and Steve James’s Stevie (2002), Friday at Northwestern University Block Museum of Art, with James attending.

Don’t miss these special events; As Above So Below, a program of award-winning local shorts from last year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival, Friday at Co-Prosperity Sphere; Paul Sharits, a documentary on the experimental filmmaker, Thursday at Block; and Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918), Friday at Filament Theatre, presented by the Silent Film Society of Chicago.