Just what you want to be, you will be in the end

DISCLAIMER: Excuse the format, lameness and lack of contractions in this post... the truth is, we're required to write blog posts for class and being that I'm SO exhausted (and quite tired of looking at computer screens all day), I decided to be lazy and copy & paste my entry for class into this blog... I'll eventually go back and add photos and be really-super-obnoxious and re-publish all of the photoless posts later. But until then... enjoy (or don't, since this is a class assignment)... ALSO, I realized that I had the name of my organization in my original class entry - but being that I'm too lazy to reword things, I'm putting in asterisks where I named the paper. HAHA. Sorry =) Needless to say - not one of my better posts. Bear with me.

When I first walked through the doorway, towards the receptionist’s desk in front of the ******* newsroom, I was more nervous than I had probably ever been for an interview, let alone an interview for an unpaid position. Although I may have been through the routine before a number of times in attempts to brace myself for the real world of declining readership and the rise in online journalism, for whatever reasons, I was absolutely shaking in my boots as I sat on the couch waiting to meet my soon-to-be editors.

Despite all of the pep talk that I had heard from our advisors prior to my interview, I somehow knew in my gut that mine would hardly incorporate a laid-back environment or talks over tea and biscuits - let alone a trip to a nearby pub. Nevertheless, it came as very little surprise to me that I was greeted with an empty board room - and what could have served as interrogation lights in a penitentiary - and a one-on-one session with each of the two news editors. While they seemed very nice, they were anything but shy about their expectations for the intern position – nor did they cover up the startling statistic that two of their last five interns were fired.

Being that I still have much to learn about life in the United Kingdom, coupled with the fact that had I still been in the United States I would still know very little about financial news, I was completely certain – and still very much afraid – that I would become another statistic for them to tell their future applicants.

That being said, a lot has already changed. On day one of my internship, I walked in the door at 10a.m. sharp, which is what I was told to do, and yet editors and reporters were creeping through into the newsroom as late as half-past ten. I must have been there maybe six minutes before the head editor, **let's call him Bob**, turned to me and said, “Do you want the BTG story? You can take the BTG story” and walked back to his desk on the other room. The first thought that popped into my mind was, of course, “What in God's name is BTG?”

I am not exactly sure how I not only managed to get through that first day, but also, how exactly nine hours, with no lunch-break, managed to fly by so quickly. And, more importantly, I am not sure how it happened, but I not only wrote that BTG story, it gave me my first byline in their paper the next morning.

I tried to remain stealth about hunting down a copy of that Friday’s paper in a frantic search to see my name in print. I had written before for a national U.S. publication, with roughly the same circulation rates as *****, but there was something so rewarding about seeing my name in print… in a foreign newspaper… discussing a topic for which, just 24 hours earlier, I had known nothing.

As I’m writing this post after having finished only five days of my internship, I have already had several bylines in their paper, I have been sent out twice to collect a dozen interviews on financial and banking topics and – oh, yes – I have even been humbled with compliments by my editors. While each day has, thankfully, allowed for me to look back in retrospect with pride for my accomplishments, every single day has been a complete and utter challenge.

My internship has already taught – or at least reminded me of – several things. The first, being that I am an American, and while I have not ever really forgotten this, there have already been countless times where something t that would be common-knowledge for anyone and everyone in the newsroom remains something blatantly foreign to me. While everyone has been very helpful and understanding thus far of our cultural differences, there have been little moments that serve as a reminder that my lack of background knowledge in both the British financial world and British culture can be fairly humorous at times. It came as a bit of a reality-check for me when I walked into the office one day and proclaimed that I had stayed up the whole night to finally have the chance to see my favorite American baseball team had win the world championship, and yet about half of the people in the room had never even heard of the New York Yankees. That being said, I contributed nothing to the same reporters’ conversation about football a few hours later.

The second lesson that I have already learned from my internship is simple: I am not a kid anymore. Now, grant it, I have realized this a long time ago, but I have realized that, had I taken on an internship in a financial daily newspaper in America (which, by the way, would never happen because undergraduates very rarely receive placement with daily newspapers in the United States, let alone with newspapers that cover topics of which they have no familiarity) I would still be lauded for my successes, specifically because of my age. In other words, although I entered ***** knowing that I would not be “babied” through my endeavors, I have essentially been on my own throughout my first five days. While there are plenty of helpful and generous reporters in the office, everyone is too busy to assist me with however few questions I may limit myself to, and I find myself having to learn things through trial and error.

However, I have noticed, particularly today, that my efforts have not actually gone unnoticed. Just as I was growing more and more convinced that I was doing a poor job and that I was secretly becoming a burden rather than an asset to the organization, as I got up from my desk to leave work (at 7p.m., as usual) both the head editor and the news editor took the time to personally thank me for my work and congratulate me on my early accomplishments.

I still walk into work every day with the fear of failing – of completely blanking on the difference between pre-tax profits and adjusted profits, or confusing banks, or enduring plain-old writer’s block – but the challenges, thus far, have been nothing less than rewarding, In the past two days, I have taken on controversial topics and have actually successfully convinced nearby banking and investing professionals to comment – on the record – despite the fact that they were leery about expressing their opinions publicly. And, oh yeah, I accomplished this feats in the pouring rain.