Guess what happened after my long-winded rally cry for the
benefits of freelancing last week? I met with that editor from the fashion blog
and we laughed, swapped stories, drank water, and connected on all sorts of
levels and then the bomb dropped: All their freelancers are unpaid.
Story of our lives, right? I mean, I’m definitely still
taking the job anyways, but I guess money doesn’t start raining down once you
upgrade from “intern” to “freelancer.” Oh well, I live and I learn.
But that is not the point of this post. The point of this
post is that I’ve made some TERRIBLE mistakes at all of my internships and
since we’re all rounding the halfway mark in the summer, that usually means the
first (or, who am I kidding, the first ten) big uh-oh mistakes have happened at our prestigious places of work.
There are different levels to these transgressions. There’s
the funny type, which aren’t so bad. Example: A girl at one of my fashion
closet internships took a $40 pedi-cab ride back to the office after one of her
first messenger runs because she was having trouble hailing a taxi.
Then there’s the are-they-going-to-fire-me
type of mistakes. Recently, I reported on a fancy, celebrity-filled panel for a
post at my internship, and I mis-quoted the founder of one of the brands
represented. There’s nothing like getting a ‘Hey! You messed up!’ email from
the PR director of the well-recognized women’s magazine that hosted the event
at 9:30 pm on the day the post was published.
Once my heart started beating again, I emailed my editor and
probably gave the best written impression of somebody in tears that she’s ever
seen. She emailed me back the next morning, comforting my ruined self-esteem
and telling me that my life was not over.
After thanking me for alerting her, she recommended hand-writing notes
to both the PR director of the magazine and the PR director of the mis-quoted
brand, apologizing for my mistake. (I later found out that the PR director of
the brand had angry-emailed my editor as well, and that email had way more
capital letters and exclamation points then the one that I had received).
I dropped $20 on Crane & Co. paper and arduously
hand-wrote the apology letters. A week later, the PR director from the brand
emailed my editor, thanking me for the note and telling her that I was “one
classy gal!” Crisis over, thank goodness.
But it got me thinking, stuff like this happens all the
time. Not everybody goes so far as to blatantly mis-quote a super important
industry professional, but even the little things can get under our skin if we
let it. Things like: Why didn’t I get
picked to go to that event tonight? Why does she keep asking me to do all the
transcribing? Do I really have to go get coffee AGAIN?
It can open the floodgates to a ton of self-deprecating
thoughts and general bad attitude towards work. And, make no mistake, that
attitude shows no matter how well you try to hide it.
In honor of my painfully embarrassing mis-quote, I thought
I’d put together a handy little how to for bouncing back when things don’t
always go as planned. Sadly, I am not a psychologist and I also didn’t consult
anybody remotely professional on the contents of this list, it’s just really a
short list of stuff that helps me when I feel like the worst intern on the
planet.
Here goes:
1.
You are
an intern. Remember when that email of acceptance finally came and you felt
so validated? If your current self could go back and tell your past self about how
it’s harder than you anticipated and sometimes you think about quitting, your
past self would probably be pretty disappointed in your lack of chutzpah. I
just tell myself, pick your head up Zöe*,
at least you’ve got an internship. That always seems to help.
2.
It is not
a competition. Seriously, when I spent too much time comparing myself to
the other interns who I’ve worked with, it went downhill fast. Every little
edit that was done on my posts was translated in my mind as unnnghh my writing is terrible! And
every time I found out another intern was sent to cover an event that I didn’t
know about, it was translated in my mind as unnnghh
my editor thinks I’m a terrible writer! All of sudden, I found myself at a
point where, according to my twisted logic, nobody, not even me, liked my work.
3.
Buy
yourself a brownie. Whole Foods makes these great Oreo Explosion ones. Heat
it up in the microwave when you get home, and then just focus on how great it
tastes. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our work—either what happened, or
what’s going to happen—that we forget to just breathe. Living in the present is
one of the hardest things to do, yet it’s the most necessary for our
well-being. As cliché as it sounds, every one makes mistakes. Don’t sell
yourself short because you tripped up a couple times.
Since you’ve probably heard all of those tips before
(they’re pretty generic, but they do work!) I’m going to tack on a bonus one. Sometimes,
no matter how many brownies you eat, you still can see that you really aren’t
the best intern on the team. It happened to me at my fashion closet
internship(s). I just want to say that that’s perfectly normal. The point of interning is to realize where
you fit in this crazy industry, and if you don’t perform as well in one area,
it’s because your best fit is still waiting to be discovered. Don’t sell
yourself short just because you aren’t the best intern in a career path that
isn’t the right fit for you anyways.
Have any
cringe-worthy intern mistake stories you want to share? Or, does another point
need to be added to my list? Let’s talk about it!
Until next week (or until someone comments),
Ed’s Entertainment Intern
*Obviously, that's not my name.
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