Friday, August 27, 2010

A Note From the Outside World

My internship may be over, but my work for the magazine is not yet done: I have articles to write and e-mails to check. I’m still receiving e-mails from events I attended or from company representatives wanting to know if I can help feature their product. I feel awkward replying, “Sorry, I was just an intern” when I spent the whole summer trying to give off the impression of being a full-time staffer. I forward or delete most of the e-mails, but it’s still fun to open my inbox every few days and see what I’ve got!

My big project from home is working on my articles. I was able to do the interviews for my remaining two articles in the beginning of my first week home. The more challenging task was writing the articles. I assumed I could work like I had at the magazine: carve out an hour of my day to work on the short pieces while still having time to relax and see friends. I underestimated my patterns and habits at home. I was able to do a lot at work because I was getting there at 9:30 in the morning - at home, I usually don’t even get up until 11:30! Then I have to take some time to eat, get dressed, and play around on the Internet before I can be productive.

I wasn’t under too harsh a time constraint since the articles aren’t due until the end of this month, but I did want to finish them before I went on vacation or went back to school. I had to spend some time editing each piece during my vacation week, but I’ve finally sent all of them in! I’m not sure what my next step is: am I in charge of making changes that the editors request or fact checking? Or do I just wait until the magazine issue comes out and bask in the sight of my byline? Either way, I’m glad I’m over the big hurdle of writing the articles. It was a nice way to bookend a wonderful internship.

My internship at the magazine hasn’t been my only great experience this summer - writing for Ed has been a fantastic opportunity. I was happily shocked when I found out I’d be blogging for Ed this summer and assumed it would be pretty easy. Well, I was wrong. Writing blog entries about my internship was much harder than I thought. I wanted to make sure I remained anonymous yet gave lots of details about my experience. It was even more difficult to share the true ups and downs of a magazine internship without sounding too negative. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about my internship, and I’ve loved reading your thoughts through comments on my posts!

So, Edsters, I would love to get lots of comments on this last post. Tell me what you think about my experience in the magazine industry or anything else I’ve written here. Tell me about your own internship this summer. You can even tell me whether you like my writing or not! I promise to try to remember your name in case we run into each other as successful editors in the future.

Finally yours,
Lifestyle Intern

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