First Day At My Internship

Today was the first day of my internship, and it was not at all what I had expected. I arrived and checked in with Kathleen. She took me over to the news desks and introduced me to Colleen, who assigned me to sit at the desk of someone who was on holiday. Kathleen left, and Colleen told me that Tuesdays were slow and everyone is just trolling for stories, so I should do that, too. So, for about 6 hours, I read every British and American news website. I couldn’t think of any stories – anything I found had already been done, or someone else had discovered it. So that was a frustrating few hours. Throughout the day, I introduced myself to three people: Helen (another intern), Sarah Kate (a reporter), and Steve (a reporter). Jack and Chris (reporters) came over and introduced themselves to me. There were a lot of people in the news area, but most of them ignored me (which Kathleen had warned me about). I understand that they’re busy, but I also didn’t want to disturb them. I’ll try to introduce myself to more people as the week goes on.

For lunch today, Chris invited me to go with him to get a sandwich. We chatted about me and my studies and how he lived in Barcelona. It was a nice break from stalking the news websites. And then around 4:00pm, Helen asked me to help her research British education programs – I enjoyed that because I was actually being productive. We had to print out articles and highlight the parts relevant to our assignment.

At the end of the day, I checked in with Kathleen and asked her about working out a weekday I could have off so that I don’t have to work 5 days a week. She said Tuesday would probably be best, so I guess that means I’m working 5 days this week. At least I won’t have to sit in the office bored on Tuesdays, like I did for most of today.