How Do You Deal With Competitive Interns?

After what seemed like years of anticipation, I'm finally back at Teen Mag! It seems like since the moment my plane landed last week, I've been buying clothes, stocking up on Moleskines, and flipping through my notes on HTML from last summer so that I could jump right into my work at Teen Mag. And it was so worth it!

I knew I was so excited to head back, but I didn't realize that my editors were excited to have me back as well! I was so happy that they each hugged me and asked me how my time abroad had been. It was so sweet! I was especially flattered that one of my editors called me her "star writer" and told me she couldn't wait to have my writing all over TeenMag.com. Seriously, I thought I might die of happiness.

Meeting this year's crop of interns, however, was not half as fun as reuniting with my editors. I had great expectations for them: Teen Mag is known for building intern classes that become really close, and my intern class from last summer still Facebook chats, tweets, and follows each other's blogs. (One of my fellow interns from last summer came to get lunch with me after she finished up an interview!) This summer, things don't look as peachy.

First Impressions: Fighting With Printers, Compiling Gossip Packets & Taking It All In

Hello fellow Edsters!

I have officially completed the first week of my internship in the features department and feel like a thousand doors have been open. The first day was filled with a lot of butterflies, hellos, and questions, similar to the start of anything new. After pacing the street outside my office for a good 15 minutes before my start time, I worked up the courage to walk through the massive glass doors leading into the building. Intimidated by the beautiful publishing building and stylish ladies and gentleman going up the elevators, I held my cool and went up with them. After meeting one of my two bosses and another friendly intern, I was officially working at a magazine.

Although it shouldn’t surprise me, everyone I met was extremely nice and welcoming. All the editors I was introduced to seemed like great colleagues; they were willing to answer any questions I had and happy to teach me about the magazine world. After refocusing myself, I read through the intern packet given to me. At previous internships, I was never given a bible-like guide on how to be a superstar intern.

5 Expert Tips For Nailing Your First Month

Edsters,

I’ve been super nervous in the days leading up to my first week of work, mostly because I have so many questions. Will I like my fellow interns? Who will I get lunch with? How do I schedule informational interviews with editors of the three different magazines I intern for?

With all of these questions, I looked to the intern diaries of last summer. Not only have they assuaged my worries, but also gave me some great advice going into my first internship. Here are my favorite five tips from last summer’s interns:

Starting A New Internship Is Kind Of Like The First Day Of Middle School

The first few weeks of any internship are consistently the most awkward weeks. It’s the first stages of a budding relationship, when you and your editor are figuring out how everything is going to mesh and, by default, the intern always acts 110% excited about everything.

To illustrate, here’s a couple sample gchats from some of my first weeks in the past:

Editor: Hey, can you transcribe this interview for me?
Me: Sure, of course!! That’s no problem at all!

Editor: Hey, when you format this post, don’t forget to tag each person’s name.
Me: OMG! I’m so sorry, I totally thought I did! So sorry, it definitely won’t happen again!!

Editor: Hey, can you do a quick Starbucks run?
Me: Sure! I’d love to! Be right back!!

It’s not pretty. And as an introvert it’s even worse, because I’m forced to break out of my comfort zone of 25-30 words per hour in order to answer fun obligatory questions like: How are you adjusting to NYC? (It’s great. A ginormous rat almost ate me in the subway his morning.) Not like your hometown, huh? (I grew up on a grape farm. So, no.)

I thought this summer was going to be different. Because my entertainment editor and I had already worked together last summer, the relationship was supposed to already be established and I was going to glide right in there and pick up right where we left off.

Eh, not so much.

Day One At A Women’s Lifestyle Mag: What To Expect (And Not Expect!)

Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Hi there, Edsters!

I just finished my first day as a web intern for Women’s Lifestyle Mag! Now that it’s over, I can hardly wait for day two. But I was INCREDIBLY nervous for Day One. I had no idea what to expect, as this was my first in-office internship at a magazine. Needless to say, I was prepared for the worst.

Here’s what I thought would happen on my first day on the job…and what actually went down.

Expectation 1: Everyone will be super serious and no one will talk to me.  

LOL.

Hi From Your New Fall Intern

Hey fellow Edsters! (Ha! It’s so weird to be on the other side of this blog!)

It’s 11 p.m. the night before my first day and I’m psyched! A bit frazzled over what I’ll wear and, of course, just keeping my fingers crossed that day one goes smoothly, but for the most part, I’m so excited that I wonder how I’ll ever get to sleep tonight!

A quick about me: I’m a journalism and media student in New York, and — like most of you — absolutely obsessed with magazines and totally fascinated by the new twists and turns of web and the digital world.

Speaking of twists and turns of the digital world, this won’t be my first (or second, or even third) editorial internship, but it was the first time I landed a position through a Skype video interview!! In fact, I’m pretty sure it was the first time my editors had conducted one too!! Which I think is so awesome, and one of the many ways the digital era is shifting and updating the industry.