Day Nine: My First REAL Day at Work

Central Park run that I talked up yesterday? Yeah, didn’t happen. In the ongoing battle of sleep versus exercise, sleep has the overwhelming advantage. I let myself “sleep in” this morning until 6 a.m. (I’m trying so hard not to break into the 5 a.m.-range) and then mosied on over to work. We began our day with a briefing on our client for our intern project. To clarify, every year MS&L gets its summer interns to work on a PR campaign entirely their own. It’s usually with a real client of the company’s and at the end of the internship (eight weeks) the interns present the final project to senior-level management at MS&L New York, possibly some national MS&L people and maybe, if we’re lucky, the client itself. If the project is out-of-this-world groundbreaking (which, of course, ours will be) the client might even choose to implement parts or the whole project into its PR and communications strategy. It’s a great way to get not only some hands on client/account work, but also some experience in leadership and team management.

Anyway, we started with our intern team meeting and then I broke off and met with Andrew- my mentor for the Digital practice, to talk about which specific accounts in which I might be involved. One of the reasons I’m so excited to work in digital is because it looks like there might be a greater chance of working on higher-level, significant projects. For example, today I sat in on a meeting about how to structure a Twitter campaign to reach and engage influencers and to build and maintain an interactive social media community (that was so PR-y that I amaze myself). My assignment for tomorrow is to go over some engagement tactics and give both explanations and examples for each one. So no, I’m not simply fetching coffee and organizing desks (not that I’m above that- I’m definitely not- but be nice to me if you’re reading this digital team!)

One of the things that I keep hearing over and over, from most everyone but especially from the digital team, is that you get out of the internship what you put into it. Don’t you think most things in life are like that- minus a few notable exceptions like the lottery? The fun thing about being 22 in a PR internship at an amazing company in New York is that I WANT to be here. I went through an extensive interview process and followed-up until I was blue in the face to get the opportunity to work my butt off for them. I’m looking forward to getting as much responsibility as I can because it allows me to prove myself. I actually like staying at the office until everyone else leaves- It sounds crazy but from the stories that my parents told me about working in the city I expected to be there late. It’s all part of the experience. I admittedly might have a different attitude about it if I were in a different industry- maybe one I wasn’t as passionate about, but I am young and just out of school and I actually love what I do. I know that a fair amount of people are rolling their eyes at me thinking, “She’ll be saying something different in about three weeks,” and I’m sure there will be high points and low points- but right now I have a very clear goal in my sight and I’m determined not to lose touch with it. The long and short of it is: I know I just got here, but I also know that I don’t want to leave. Not yet. Not for a while. Someone told me last week that they thought New York either “makes you or breaks you.” I love it here and I know that it will be the former and not the latter. Even if I’m living off ramen noodles and instant coffee for a while. I’m determined to not only make it work but to make it work for me.