Even though I drafted my last post about a week ago, it seriously feels like it’s been months since I’ve posted! Our days are so busy that it often feels like a full week within one day. Thankfully, that’s exactly what I was hoping when I moved out to the city so it’s been perfect!
In my last post I had really only spent a couple days at my new internship. Now that I’ve been here a week I feel like I can actually give some insight into what I’m doing. First of all, the transition to working eight hours a day, four days a week has actually been a bit more strange than I would have imagined. Being a student there’s so much time between classes where you go back to your room and take a nap, or hangout with friends, or even just grab a cup of coffee, but working (almost) full time you’re basically there all day. As someone who throughly loved those small breaks within the day, the adjustment has been a little weird! Thankfully, I really enjoy my co-workers and feel like I’m getting the hang of it more and more every day.
My first week has been a total whirlwind because The Magnificent Mile is actually launching a new website this coming Tuesday! So that essentially meant getting totally thrown into work right off the bat, making sure everything looks 100% for the launch this week. My fellow interns and I spent almost all week plugging in events from now until December into our events calendar so people visiting the site can see what’s happening all around the city. Doing this for about eight hours every day did lead to some occasional slap-happiness, especially when my Norwegian exchange student co-worker was tasked with finding information on Chicago’s infamous Blue Man Group, a show that is definitely a little strange to most Americans but was completely ridiculous and odd to someone not from the U.S. I believe her exact quote after looking at several pictures of the Blue Men was, “Umm…I think that is a very strange person who would want to do that….” I can’t say I disagree with her.
As if launching a new website wasn’t enough to keep us busy this week, The Magnificent Mile also helped put on the annual 5K and Half Marathon, Run Mag Mile, this past Saturday. This event had us down in the city at 6 a.m. ready to help wherever we were needed. Mainly we unwrapped the medals and handed them out to runners after completing the half marathon. This was an incredibly humbling experience as someone who cannot run more than 3 miles. I actually met a man who finished the race at 71 years old. Yeah, like I said, pretty humbling.
While my time has been a bit crazy so far, I definitely like the internship so far. It’s cool to get a “behind the scenes” look at how much goes into the marketing of different events and venues. In all honesty, I just feel really lucky to have gotten the opportunity to intern at such a unique and cool place. This is again, my plug for people to do The Chicago Semester. (I swear, they didn’t tell me to write this!!) It really is such a fun once in a lifetime experience and I can’t wait to keep sharing with you guys!