How To Be An Expert on Everything (Or At Least Fake It)

It was the first week of my fitness internship when I realized I didn’t own a pair of sneakers. I had just settled in to the city, and decided I should go ahead and splurge on a gym membership if my career (for the next few months at least) was going to be about exercise and nutrition.

Now, I’m no Heidi Klum, but I can safely say that I have been blessed with a fast metabolism that has afforded me the luxury of being able to eat what I want and never gain weight. So, besides a few yoga classes every once in a while, I’ve never really had to work out.

Anyhow, I found a gym close to my apartment and was prepared to walk over and sign up for my membership, but it occurred to me that the only sneakers I owned were converse. Yikes! How embarrassing. My roommates got a big kick out of the situation, but I started to wonder how the heck I was going to make it through an internship with the fitness department when I didn’t know much about the subject. But then it dawned on me: Journalists don’t have to practice what they preach.

6 Brilliant Ways To Be The Best Intern Researcher

Ciao, fellow Edsters!

It wasn’t long before I tired of explaining to my non-Edster friends that the majority of what I do at work is research (as opposed to fetching coffee), so I crafted a little ditty to spice up my unchanging, uninteresting response: “Researching, researching, yeah! Dossiers, dossiers, yeah! Fun, fun, fun, fun.”

Okay, so that wasn’t a fully original composition.

Anyway, everyone seems to take pity on me for spending a big chunk of my internship on Lexis Nexis and Google.

Look, I’ll level with you. I secretly love doing research. I know that makes me a huge geek, but putting together profiles on celebrities we’re interviewing and filling binders with articles by our competitors on a certain subject – well, it just feels like I’m doing something useful, and I can’t say that I feel useful all the time at the office. On Monday, for example, most of my day consisted of reading the July issue and making some phone calls. Not exactly the kind of work that begets satisfying results.