Going Up the Apple and Pears

Today was my first day interning with Goodlife Media, a publishing company that puts out two magazines (The Goodlife Magazine and London Hotel). It's also a public relations and events planning company, and it has a lot of contacts with the wealthy and elite people of London.

I was, of course, a little nervous for my first day. I really hate first days of anything because everything is so unknown and chaotic. But I felt exhilarated when I was taking the Tube to work because it really hit me that I was going to work at a magazine in London!

My first day was pretty good. The office is really small with only a few employees, which I like because then I'll get to do more things than if I worked for a larger organization. My boss is a little bit quirky and a little bit bi-polar. She's usually really sweet and upbeat, but she got really mad at one of the other workers today for a seemingly ridiculous reason.

I started out the day by editing a letter that they were sending out to high class jewellers, inviting them to participate in an upcoming party hosted by Goodlife. I was surprised at how badly written it was, but that made my changes look really good, I guess. My boss dictated some stuff to me, but her wording was really awkward and unnecessarily lengthy. At first, I thought she might get annoyed if I "fixed" the things she had me write verbatim, but fortunately she liked my changes. I also wrote a few 50-word book review blurbs based off of back covers and publishers' comments. I will be communicating with clients, so I did a little bit with emailing today. And of course, quite a bit of the day was spent in training and orientation.

There's one other intern from my program working at Goodlife Media. Her name is Brooke, and she is also interested in writing and editing. She was a journalism major in college. It's really nice to have someone else to compare notes with.

Goodlife generally seems like a nice, friendly place to work. I had three cups of tea today because my boss kept asking if I wanted one, and I was like, "Sure." There's also a kitchen in the office, and one of my co-workers had made a lot of Indian food, so she shared it with everyone else (which was nice because then I didn't have to spend any money on lunch today). And at the end of the day, my boss let us try on these designer hats that probably cost more than half the clothes I own combined. That was a lot of fun though.

This evening, I officially got my passport and blue card checked out by BUNAC, so I am set to work for up to six months. Even though I knew I had gotten the correct passport stamp at immigration, it was still a relief to have that all settled because otherwise I would have had to leave the UK immediately and re-enter (which is extremely expensive and time-consuming). At this meeting tonight, we also had a "cultural seminar" to explain a few things about British culture that we might not have known. I didn't find it particularly informative, but I did enjoy hearing about Cockney rhyming slang. The title of my post, "going up the apple and pears," means "going up the stairs." I chose it because it reminded me of "moving up in the world," which is how I felt when I was riding the Tube to work this morning.

Cheers!