As Brian May once wrote, "Here I stand (here I stand) / Looked around, around, around, around, around." That's how I felt on my first day. I was nervous and felt overwhelmed by everything, but I somehow managed to lose those feelings within the first couple of hours. I have been keeping a journal, so I can remember everything that happens each day. I have found this to be very helpful, as the days do seem to run together. Below is a summary with the highlights of each day of my first week.
Day 1
The first day of my internship was admittedly a little overwhelming. Ty, my amazing supervisor, gave me a tour of the building, which was good because we got a lot of steps in for the day (our first inside joke). Then, she gave me all the assignments I will be working on for the next ten (now nine) weeks. This was the overwhelming part. I had to look at everything I will be doing this summer at once. I am sure that once I look back on these next ten weeks, I will think it was nothing, but on day one it felt like a lot. I also had the opportunity to help Ty with a video project for the SC State Library's Young Minds Dreaming contest, which I was super-excited about. By the end of day one, I had written a script for the voiceover.
Day 2
My second day, I sat down and got straight to work. This was after I somehow got lost in the parking lot. I spent the morning doing research for the SC African American History Calendar, and at 11:00, it was time for the Employee Appreciation lunch. If you're curious, I ate a hot dog. But that wasn't the highlight of the event. The highlight for me was getting to meet a lot of fellow ETV employees! I also saw my friend RoseCatherine, who is an intern in Rock Hill. It was nice to see a familiar face on my second day. The best part of day two was getting to record my voiceover. Ty took me over to meet Alfred at South Carolina Public Radio to record the voiceover. It was a really cool experience to be in the broadcast booth (or at least what looked like one... I am not a radio expert) and feel so professional. I was really proud of myself that I was able to record the entire voiceover in only one take, because that it something I have never been able to do.
Day 3
Day three started out like day two, except I didn't get lost in the parking lot. I immediately started working on the Young Minds Dreaming video for Ty, which I could do now that I had my voiceover. I find that I really enjoy the editing process, so time flew by and before I knew it, it was lunchtime. I finished the video, but it still needed music before it could be finished. So, I went back to doing research for the people featured on the Calendar for July - December. After a while, I switched to researching possible topics for my own Knowitall series to work on for the summer. The first three things I came up with were all topics that had been covered on Knowitall. I finally came up with idea of doing a career education series on famous people from South Carolina, which was inspired by the SC African American History Calendar.
Day 4
Thursday morning I added the ETV bug, copyright and the music to my video, and handed it over to Ty. When I wasn't working on the video, I was compiling a list of all the famous people from South Carolina, regardless of how well-known they were. The final list included over 80 names, and I am not even sure that was all of them. So, then I have to narrow the list down to include only 60 names. Now, I am going to have to write the bios for each person, and see which ones will be the most important to include. The list does include a wide range of careers, from politicians to athletes, from actors to astronauts, and from musicians to military generals; the list really does have it all. I finally pitched the idea to Ty, and she seemed to like it.
Day 5
I was told that, apparently, I need to decorate my office (see picture above). On my fifth day, my video was posted on Knowitall.org and I worked on a blog post for the SCETV Education Blog about the event. It was really nice to see all of my hard work come together and be published. You can find all of my work on the Young Minds Dreaming contest here (on SCETV.org) and here (on Knowitall.org). I spent the rest of the day researching people for my untitled famous people from South Carolina project and writing this post.