The last day at CNBC

As quickly as it's started, my internship is coming to a close today. What I'm left with is an unusual mix of feelings. In many ways this has been one of the most difficult summers of my life. Moving back home, to a part of the country that I never particularly meshed well with, was difficult. That, combined with the fact that I also didn't know anyone who lived here left me in a place that at many times threatened to become very lonely and dark. Yet I survived here, and even grew. If I am honest with myself, though the end result was me being more self aware and understanding who I am and what I want, it was an extremely painful experience at times. When I was young I would often awaken in the summer heat with growing pains in my legs, and this summer was quite like an unrelenting version of one of those nights. When I first got here I realized that this part of the industry is, day to day, mostly operational. There is little chance for creativity. The people I met here fall into two categories, either those who ended up here and stayed because of the stability, or people who were drawn here for some reason career or otherwise and then decided to stay. The latter group are those with whom I have become the closest to during my time here. Some are close to my age, some are much older, but they all seem to have in common the same enjoyment of their craft. It is from these people that I've learned the most important lessons.

One, even if you don't know what you're doing, fake it, and then backtrack.
Confidence is the key to pulling this off, if someone thinks that you don't think that you have the ability to execute a task then they won’t give you the time of day.

Two, people in this industry spend most of their day innundated by fakery and, if you'll excuse the term, bullshit. Therefore they can smell it a mile away. The most frequent comment I've gotten is that I'm different from other interns because I'm comfortable with the people that I work with on a personal level. One person said that it was really refreshing that I wasn't sharking out a job the entire time I was here. I was simply here to learn from the people that I met, and gain experience. Because I wasn't trying to impress anyone I ended up actually making friends with the people that I worked with. Sad as it seems, being real and frank is a rarity in this business and my natural inclination to do so sets me apart.

Three, ask questions. Ask a lot of questions! Everyone assumes you don't know anything, and frankly going into a new situation you don't, so take advantage of the fact that the people around you have experience and try to suck as much knowledge out of them as possible.

Four, have a sense of humor. Shit happens, and sometimes you end up in a bad spot, not taking yourself too seriously makes it easy to recover quickly from mistakes and to take something positive away from them. I learned a lot of technical stuff, which I'm not going to go into here, but I feel like all of that was secondary to the emotional stuff I learned.

So where am I now? I feel a lot more confident than I used to. To be honest I was pretty bored and apathetic about everything but theater and writing in high school and I only really came into myself during my college years. To stay within that environment (i.e UVM and the Burlington community) was very comfortable and I was terrified to return home to a place that I so intimatly related to feeling insecure. When got to Jersey I realized that in many ways I was defining myself in relation to the world around me at school. Being in a place where nobody knew about me and knew nothing of the place that I had been forced me to really solidify who I was and what I was about. I discovered something pretty important, I'm naturally pretty unusual. I might even go so far as to say weird. I literally don't think like anyone else I've ever met and for a long time I was concerned that this would be a detriment to my adult life. I was afraid that Burlington had gotten me used to a very different environment and that coming back to suburban New Jersey, the proverbial land of cookie cutter houses and copious hair-gel use, would awaken me to the fact that I was unable to function in normal society and was going to be doomed. Add on top of that the fact that I was going to work in FINANCIAL NEWS, a fairly conservative news media sector? I was pretty sure that I was screwed. However I was pleasantly t. The fact is, companies are desperate for people who can think differently and are interested in being proactive, you just have to learn the lesson of self-marketing. This isn't being some sort of jerk who is convinced of their own importance, but rather knowing your strengths and weaknesses and learning to play them towards the needs of the issue at hand. Once I figured this out I realized that I could do anything I wanted to! It's kind of exhilarating actually.

I've got to get back to the shading department and make sure the newscasters don't look green in the face, but I will probably do a retrospective entry at the end of the month of August, but I'm driving up to Vermont tomorrow so you may have to wait a while for it. As for tonight, I think the CNBC folks and I are heading to the bars. Until later!