Internship Shminternship.

Now begins the work portion of the trip...well, the entire reason that I'm in the UK anyway.

I didn't blog yesterday because, of course, there's nothing exciting to say about any of it, really.
Now that I have another day of work under my belt, I might actually have some things to say.

Anyway, yesterday was my first day and I woke up late...I just have that luck. It wasn't awfully late or anything, but I still had to hustle and I would've preferred to be more than 5 minutes early to Radio Jackie...but there were no complaints.
As I've mentioned earlier, I'm working in the news department...and that's sooooo not my style. Everyone who really knows me knows I know nothing about politics, world affairs, or any of that nonsense. But you can ask me about who's dating who or who's knocked up or who just got arrested for purchasing crack cocaine "as research" (Tatum O' Neal, who was in an episode of Sex and the City, I didn't know that. She was one of the youngest people to win an Oscar...why am I telling you this?) and I'll be on it. For starters, since I prefer DJing and music, my director? I guess you could call him that, had me sit in on a morning show for 2 hours. The main host wasn't very friendly, but it was still entertaining. After that, I was basically instructed to read news stories and then try and type up a few of my own, which all had to be modified. It's exactly like I did in Writing for Mass Comm. (even though I took that class about a year...actually 2 ago!), but I had the same problem then...taking out the most important bits and making it unbelievably short. Either way, it still worked out. They recorded me reporting the news too, and that was kind of fun and weird and whatever.

Today, I had to come in an hour early (9) but leave an hour later (3), so that was kind of nice, even though I had to get up at around 6:30 AM...p.s. it's about 1 AM for y'all which means most of you are either just nodding off or still up zoning out to the TV or IMing on the computer. I made it to work on time yet again, but had to sit on a couch near the door and wait to be told what to do.

By the way, its disgusting here today. Cold, rainy, and nasty. The building was freezing because they keep the door open for some reason.

After a while, I got to read some news bulletins and record them again...actually, I ended up doing that about 4 times. Rod, the director guy thingee, says I have a good voice, and I think if all goes well I might end up pre-recording some news and having it put on air! He said he's had some American reporters before and that read the news pretty well...so that's quite fun...but also intimidating and scary, even though I know how to record everything myself.
I was also thrown out to the wolves with a mini disc recorder and a microphone to ask Londoners what they think about the recession. I was supposed to get about 7-8 responses. At first, I got three, and they weren't even that great. Everyone avoids you when you stand in front of a supermarket with a microphone. But when I went from store to store, even when people turned me down, they were still really cool with me interrupting their business...I found that surprising.

I had to edit a piece with the responses I got...25-30 seconds long with 3 responses. Luckily, the program they use is Adobe Audition, and even though I dealt with it almost a year ago, I still remembered how to do some things and pieced together a pretty cool sound bite. I also wrote up a small story to accompany it, and hopefully someone will be presenting that tonight.

It's pretty neat, even though its been work for real, and even though I still feel like I'm not doing enough to prove myself. It's only the second day, and I'm only doing an internship. But I'm proud of myself...I'm not much of a go-getter, but I approached the streets all by myself to pester people and have done some things I never thought I would do in a place I never thought I would do them.

The only problem with the internships starting is now we actually have to start working, thinking about what we're doing, thinking about writing a huge paper and doing a presentation of that writing...it's just sooooo much to handle. And we all still want to have fun.

Luckily, we kept it light last night by finding a decently priced movie theater extremely close by to see Sex and the City. The place is called Coronet, and they have Student Night on Monday, which means we only have to pay 3.50 pounds to see the movie...that's about the same price I'd see it at 9 at home too! Most of the movie theaters are flat out 7, and there's even ones that go from 10-16 pounds...so we lucked out. The place was way cool, too. There's only two theaters (the other one was showing Indiana Jones) and when you approach your theater, you have two options: Stalls or Circle. We had no idea what circle meant, but we went in the doors and it turns out, it's the balcony! Yes, we sat and watched Sex and the City in balcony seats in a really pretty theater in London...the movie made us all forget we were there, though. It was a fun experience, even though I must say, though the movie was entertaining, the show didn't need it. I liked it, and it's cool, but the show ended so good on its own and now they all kinda look old and haggy...but I shouldn't complain much.

Well, that's all for now! Hopefully I'll be doing something interesting tonight. Everyone is still off doing their internships, about to leave or on their way back now. I doubt that we'll do anything extremely interesting or entertaining, but the more time we hang out or go out or do something, the less time I have to focus on home or mess around on the computer. It's so great to catch up with people and keep up with the haps, but I need to focus on the fact that I can do that for the rest of my life, but I might never be here again!