Internship Blog Post 3: I Should Be Better At Headlines By Now.

Seeing all these blog posts that start  “So my time here at ____ is coming to an end and it’s been great…” makes me really want to write about something else.  But I’m a hypocrite, and my time here at 160over90 is coming to an end, and it has been great, so what the hell.

I’ve got about 4 more hours until my exit interview, I’ve pretty much completed all my projects I’ve been working on, and it’s too late to start any new ones.  So, Temple Advertising community, why don’t you join me in a practice that I’m sure we’re all familiar with; killing some time at work!  Especially if you’re an intern, you are well-versed in the art of downtime.

I’ve heard people complain of internship duties, having to make copies or run errands or do the basic grunt work that nobody else wants to do.  As a copywriting intern here at 160, sometimes I actually wish I had more of this type of stuff to do.  For one, it’s sometimes hard to find enough work to do, which is completely understandable.  Writers who are actually getting paid for this stuff want to be responsible for their own work and don’t necessarily want to pawn it off on some intern with no background or credentials.  And also, there’s not exactly a lot of grunt work in writing that can be passed on.  A lot of the work that goes in to writing is the, well, the writing.

With a bunch of mindless, office-monkey tasks to do, you may not be deepening and enriching the folds in your brain, but at least your day goes by faster – it only takes you so long to look at every presentation for every client in the agency folder.  And with someone who shows up to work and wants to have a certain amount of work to do, this may be frustrating at times.

But that’s not to say I haven’t gotten my fair share of work to do here.  For a good stretch of time I was actually engulfed in a couple of projects, one that involved writing 50 or so product descriptions for lacrosse equipment.  Having no experience or interest in the sport really, it was still amazingly satisfying to have a project of my own that would take up more than an hour or two of my time.

And the people here have been good about giving me assignments when possible, I understand that it’s hard to mentor an intern when you’ve got your own work to do, work with actual real-world consequences.  But people have taken their time out to help and I’ve much appreciated it – I’m definitely a far better copywriter now than I was when I started.  Or so I think.

Well, I really didn’t want to end up writing a retrospective about my experience here, but I guess I just did.  Oh, well.  I guess I’ll just save something special for my4th blog post that I’ll never write because I only have to write 3.

Happy Job Hunting, all.  May your rejections be my offers.