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I grabbed my stuff, took the key to the office from my key chain, placed it on the desk and said goodbye to the other interns and the editor-in-chief, whose goodbye felt like it was the exact opposite of my goodbye with the production and operations manager. I turned back to wave goodbye to the operations manager and she waved me over for a farewell hug.
“Thank you for everything that you’ve taught me and for this wonderful time at this internship. I had a lot of fun,” I said as we both stepped back out from the hug.
Her eyes almost looked as though they were holding back a small flow of tears. “Thank you for helping us out, and if you ever need a recommendation don’t hesitate to ask.”
I walked out of the office myself suddenly tearing up at my final trip from the office of my second internship to my car, when it abruptly hit me that I was going to miss coming into the office and seeing her every other day. It was definitely bittersweet, since I now was able to spend my newly allotted time on my new paid internship, my last quarter of school and my many other new projects, but it was an easy decision to pursue new endeavors and leave the internship that had taught me so much and treated me quite well.
But of course the departure from my first internship wasn’t as smooth as the second.
I left the second internship after training one new intern that was supposed to replace three of us interns that were still remaining. It was then that all the flashbacks throughout the internship began to flood my head. I laughed at all of the good times that I had with my friends, who I wouldn’t have met otherwise without the internship, I looked back at all of the stories I had written for the popular internet show that my boss had created, and I thought about all of the craziness that the internship put on all the interns.
All of the random errands that led me into interesting situations, such as dropping off people and personal items at private residences, all while pouring un-reimbursed money into the gas tank, ran like a fast paced low budget sitcom in my mind. It certainly felt like my time during the internship fell out of a scene from the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ when I thought back to the more stressful days, but it also wasn’t all that bad.
Although the internship did take up quite a bit of my time and money, unlike the second internship where I was compensated for parking and I was inside before the sun started to set, it did end up introducing me to the online internship site that I used to apply to this internship with. Regardless of what influenced what, I was able to land a few decent paying jobs that involve social media and writing, including being able to be in charge of other students as an Uloop editor. I was able to have been published in the Huffington Post, which garnered more traffic on my blog, and because of the internship I was able to have had my face flashed before thousands of YouTubers (even if I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that yet).
I’m a strong believer in thinking that everyone has a purpose and that everything happens for a reason. We all may have not ended up with jobs with the companies that we have interned for this summer, but I’m sure we were all able to still gather knowledge about our respected businesses and make new contacts and friends in the process.
At the first internship an intern, who was asked to work her way up in the company to a host position, eventually got a job doing just that but with another company, and another intern was able to reevaluate his situation and try doing what he really wanted to do in the first place somewhere else. He eventually plans on returning to the big bad city with an incredible resume and will try his luck again with a new game plan.
I, on the other hand, still have three more months of school before I’m finally done with the journey toward a Bachelor’s degree, but I’m not as worried as I was before about not getting a job in my chosen field and settling down in someplace interesting, and I ended up sticking around in the place that I stayed for the internships during the summer in order to be around one of my new internships and my many upcoming projects.
I’m broke but I’m starting to do more than I ever have before and I’m slowly starting to make some money. I’ve come to terms with the fact that things aren’t all what they seem to be, even if the people that you’re working with are some of the best people on the earth. Sometimes you just have to step away for a bit. I still very much enjoyed my summer though, and in some crazy and weird masochistic way, I’m glad that I did this. I’ve met great friends, learned a lot, and found out how tough my car and I can be.
It’s obviously the end of these two internships, but it’s just the beginning of some even better things.
Jazzed About Stuff 