Contest Calls, Concerts, and…Jeez, That’s A Lot Of Glitter!
Any professor, professional, or anxious college student will stress the importance of the summer internship while studying towards your degree. As one of those anxous college students, I recently added an intern position at a radio/media group to my resume. For the sake of anonymity, I'm leavig the company name out. However, that doesn't mean that I can't share the trials and tribulations, the good and the bad and the altogether weird happenstances that make this particular summer internship one for the memory books.
Manic (Music) Monday
My main assignment this week was to call a bunch of contest winners and give them information on the grand prize drawing for a Chevy Silverado happening that weekend. Sounds tedious…and it is. But the funny part about going through a stack of winner sheets and dialing their phone numbers multiple times? You start to build a rapport with these people. Sure, some of the callers were a creepy flirty and asked if I personally was going to be at the drawing, but hey, when you’ve been calling these people four times in one week “just to double check,” you might start to ask for more information about your daily reminder-er yourself.
The highlight of the workday, however, was being treated to an in-house acoustic performance from The Dirty Heads. The band was super chill and took pictures and signed autographs after. That’s the biggest plus of working at a radio station – it’s all about the music, all the time. (As an added bonus, there’s also the swag – never forget the swag. I have a number of station shirts and Taylor Swift bracelets to prove it.)
Friday, Friday, Every Friday’s A Par-Tay…
As one of my first off-site promotion gigs, I helped work the station tent at a Ke$ha/Pitbull concert. Between helping set up for our live broadcast to taking pictures of teenagers running around in ripped shorts and ungodly amounts of glitter (seriously, if this show had a theme, it would be You Won’t Leave Here Without Glitter), it was a long but enjoyable day. My fellow promotions people and I gave out prizes to listeners, searched the venue for affordable (and, luck be a lady, FREE) libations, and even got to enjoy the show. This was the kind of event that reminded me of why I wanted to pursue this internship (and this field) to begin with – to experience live music and promote it in a way that shows others how awesome it is. Ke$ha covered the crowd in (you guessed it) gold body glitter as she started a kick line with a guy in a chicken suit. Pitbull, in true Mr. Worldwide fashion, literally had people samba dancing in the aisles with his recount of almost every Top 40 hit you could think of from the past 4 years. By the end of the night, I was exhausted – and I still had an hour-long drive home. But, nights like those are the ones that make the internship and the overall experience both memorable and meaningful.
Each week is obviously different – depending on the number of events scheduled, the work days could fly by or drag on. However, with each entry in the Intern Diaries, I hope to shed some insight on not only my own experiences, but perhaps inspire you to search for your own opportunities – or write about the ones you’re experiencing now.
