First Week of the Internship

My first week at Cultureshock Media is done, wow. It feels weird to say the least. Weird because it's an actual office job like the kind you see in movies where the main character loses his mind because the beige wallpaper starts speaking Japanese to him. Honestly, if this job gets any more dull I think I might start talking to the walls. The company is really cool and my co-workers are great people, or at least I think they are (I don't talk to anyone 80% of the time), but my job, so to speak is more or less remedial tasks that a sloth could do.

My responsibilities include reviewing the profiles of our clients for two of our websites - funkyvenues.com and funkyweddingvenues.com, paraphrasing newsletters, posting offers from clients, and managing the sites' facebook and twitter accounts. It's amazing I haven't passed out into the computer screen yet. When I'm given a small assignment I spring out of my coma and get right to it. I'm actually surprised at how efficient I am. Usually when I first do something my mentors suspect I have ADD and perhaps a learning disability, but here I barely get distracted.

I think it's easier to get distracted at school because a lot of it is bullshit that the administration wants you to pay for. There. I said it, higher education is turning into/is a money trap. Why do I need to be told by more than one professor who invented the fucking printing press? Whatever, I digress. Back to Cultureshock.

Cultureshock is a publishing, production and content providing company that works with all platforms of arts media; books, film, ads, tv, magazines, you name it, they probably do the odd jobs to help iron out the kinks of getting it together. We're like a bridge or a portal if you will, into a world where dreams and ideas come to fruition. It sounds awesome, and I'm sure it is if you actually work there, but I'm just a six-week intern whose relationship with these people is transient, as I will be back on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in less than two months.

I hope I can work with my co-workers soon, it gets a little lonely and psycho-y when I have only my own brain to silently communicate with (I REALLY hope I haven't done that thing where I think I'm thinking my thoughts but am in fact, saying them out loud with an unsettling glaze cast over my eyes). I know these people are fun, and they all seem to have at least a personal interest in fashionable clothing which is damn-well near good enough for me. But the metaphorical walls of work ethic are separating me from them. Is this too much to ask for? Are they content in their own space? Are their jobs as boring as mine?? Oh shit. Please tell me adult life isn't like this.

Needless to say, my less than thrilling internship, despite the obvious cool-ness of my co-workers, has me worrying. I really don't want a job that confines me to an office chair all day. I'll go insane. Whether I actually have ADD is unclear (I actually don't remember the test results from when I was younger) but I definitely have muscular ADD (don't wiki that, I just invented it) and can't be still for a prolonged period of time. It's like restless leg syndrome but with every part of my body... even my eyelids. Hopefully I'll be given more responsibility soon. I have faith that this company is a fun place to work; maybe they just needed to see how well I faired in the first week.

My fellow intern is a 16 year-old girl named Sophie... upon meeting her I thought, "Wow, if they're giving me the same tasks as a toddler, they must have been really impressed with my resume." Then I got competitive and wanted to show her the throw-down. I imagined my self rolling up my sleeves, towering over her and saying, "YA GOIN DOWN FOOOL!" But then I remembered, "Wait... I'm an adult." You live to impede the self-esteem of college students another day, Sophie. Actually she doesn't; she was only there for this week as part of her school's work experience requirement. Yesterday she brought in cupcakes to say thanks for the opportunity which gave her 7482o0758492 points in my book. Cake could probably end war if we took it seriously enough.

Anyway, I have the second of three papers that I and the other interns in the program have to write about our internships soon. The assignment is to create a project based on the journalistic aspects of the job. Going to be difficult seeing as how the company doesn't ever write/report anything whatsoever. Maybe I'll ask permission to follow the V&A Museum (one of our clients) while they shoot a documentary on British Art. I think they're going to say yes; if I make enough cupcakes they'll have no choice.