An Outlet: Part 3

15 May, 2018 - Internship Begins

I woke up at 6:15AM today. I read some E-news and then helped mom roll some chapati and make a savoury shredded bread dish for breakfast.

I quickly got ready to go to office. I still haven't recieved a last confirmation so Kristen had asked me to come over to office to just finalize things and get to know the further procedure. We decided to meet her at the desired station by 9:30AM.

Since I take an hour and 45 mins to reach the place, I decided to leave my house early.

Looks like was a bit too early. I reached the station at 9:15 AM and had to wait for quite sometime for Kristen to reach too. Our timings are from 10AM to 6PM, by the way.

After meeting Kristen we went to our office place by a share cab. I knew a system like that exists outside every station but I didn't know where the cabs would come outside this particular station.

We reached office and I met with Boss R, the cousin brother of the person Kristen mostly works under (Boss Y). I learnt that I will be working under him. Well, technically under Kristen (cause she is in charge of all interns) but doing his work.

Boss R gave me a brief about his product- what it is, for whom it is, how does it work, what must happen for this to work, who all are involved in making this work possible and what progress they've had.

In very minimal words, it is something to do with free lance writers writing for students.

After that, he asked Kristen and I to edit a story on Rosa Parks and add stuff so that the illustrator knows what exactly to illustrate.

In the middle, I met my other boss, Boss I and she explained more or less the same stuff to me that Boss R had said but I didn't mind it. I would obviously have needed another briefing session anyways cause that is a handful of information to remember at once. Apparently, Boss I gives a lot of work. Boss R requested Boss I to not to load me with work today cause it's my first day. Let's see what happens from tomorrow.

After that I continued with the Rosa Parks story with Kristen. At some point, Boss Y called Kristen for his own work so she asked if I would be able to handle this on my own. Content work? I've done that for a year so I was cool with it.

In the middle, Boss R called me into his office. He then explained his ideas for multiple segments that he wants to introduce in his product. He has a rough idea about a couple of them and he kinda explained it to me. What he wants me to do is ideate 2 of the segments. He wants a full detailed explanation of what I think the segment should include, in which form, how to go about with it, what will be the process for it, how will it look, what might be the budget, how will I market it to customers in a way that the quality of the overall product is improved.

I showed a confident front but OH MY GOD I felt so overwhelmed with everything that he told me! My heart just clenched at the thought of it all. I really have no clue how to about with even the research for this project. I don't even know how much time I have for it. Apparently Kristen will also be helping me with the ideation process but she has more stuff to than that (and she herself seems a bit confused) so I'm most probably on my own.

I temporarily decided to forget it and get back to the Rosa Parks story and got done with it.

We also had a hilarious printer problem today. So I was working on Kristen's work space today and there was a printer next to it, which she apparently had never used. She wanted to print a bunch of papers back and front but didn't know how to. I tried to help out and decided to change a bit of the settings and print just two sides to check if I'm going correct. But somehow the printer ending taking paper after paper and throwing out irrelevant shit. This went for the a couple of minutes and we were so frazzled! The printer just wouldn't stop printing! Everyone around that area kept looking at us in amusement and no one knew how to help us either. Eventually, Kristen got it correctly printed but I just couldn't help but keep smiling/laughing about the incident even when Boss R came to give us more instructions.

I made an intern E-mail for myself and I had to share the password for that with Kristen. I found it a bit odd but it's fine. It's just Kristen. And since she is technically my boss, I'll have to report my entire day's work to her at the end of every single day.

Coming back to the additional work that Boss R came to give instructions on. So he explained the process of how the writers will get in touch with us and what all communication will take place between the company and the writer. He wrote it in rough and the one thing that caught my attention (for all the wrong reasons) was the communication part.

I HAVE TO DIRECTLY SPEAK AND COORDINATE WITH WRITERS WUT?! AND THAT INCLUDES TALKING ABOUT RATES AND STUFF?! DO I TELL HIM THAT I HAVE (self- diagnosed) SOCIAL ANXIETY?!

Good Lord, how am I going to go about with this?

Anyways, I got to know where I'll be sitting. Unfortunately, it's a away from Kristen's work space but it's alright. I cannot be stuck with her for everything.

While leaving, Boss R told me that he wants me to download two news apps and that we will discuss 10 articles before leaving. I was also to attend two meetings tomorrow. One with a mutual funds person (I wanted to know about mutual funds!) and one with the D-Mat account person (I wanted to know about D-Mat as well!). I like that he's thinking of my goals and trying to rope me into some Finance stuff as well, however minor it is.

Kristen and I left office a bit after 6:15PM, caught a bus after waiting for a long time and reached the station. We parted ways there because we had opted for different compartments (I don't think mom will ever stop taunting me about it).

I had to work even after coming home (which was at 8PM) and it's safe to say my family was not happy about it.

I sent my first ever work email and guess what happened? I sent it to the wrong recipient. And the person did not seem happy about it. He was very rude when he informed me about it (ofcourse via mail). Since Kristen is also logged in to that account, she saw it too and couldn't stop laughing about it.

So that's how my first day of internship has been. I have already been loaded with so much of information and I have 2 whole months of it. I'm not really happy not really sad about this whole thing, especially because it was too rushed.

Let's see how I survive.