The Final Assessment, I think
This internship was very unconventional, compared to other internships that my friends have had. It was unconventional in the following ways:
- I never actually applied for it-I emailed Chuck, explained that I needed to do an internship as a senior project, and he agreed to “hire me in” over my winter break.
- Instead of Chuck writing my schedule, it was “When can you be here?”, and if I had an appointment or whatever in the morning or late afternoon, I would let him know ahead of time.
A lot of the tasks were very mundane, and boring things that no one else really wanted to do. Things like entering things into numerous excel spreadsheets, making copies and whatnot. Nothing I didn’t expect though.
What did I get out of this experience?
Easy:
- Board Meetings=not as boring as they sound, half the time. At least the one I was allowed to attend wasn’t anyway.
- The Professional World of Theatre is a lot more relaxed and casual than those at the University level want us to believe.
- MS Excel-luckily, I know this MS application fairly well, so most of it
Day 17, the final day: Jan 21
Got in late due to a morning appointment and snow. Had warned him ahead of time. He didn’t care.
My Day consisted of the following:
- Finished entering in the agency contact information from the day before.
- Stood around.
- Took up some plastic that we had put down on the carpets around the building.
- Stood around.
- Listened to Chuck and Peter argue over Billy Joel, Elton John and Katharine Hepburn (NO, you don’t want to know)
- Looked up to see how many Facebook and twitter fans/followers we have during a discussion about giving them a deal to get them to come to the theatre.
- Ate my dinner
- Sat around some more, waiting for the 8PM Show, Our Town presented by Saybrook Stage Company to start at 8PM.
- Got bored, wrote my intern journal. 🙂
- Watched Our Town.
- Went Home.
Day 16: Jan 20
By the end of this internship I will hate MS Excel with a heartfelt passion. No lie.
Spent the entire day entering in contact information for agents of potential future acts here at The Kate for Chuck into a MS Excel document.
Yes. All 6 hours I was at The Kate.
Day 15: Jan 19
Again, not much to say here:
- Made two phone calls-well, made one and attempted another, anyway. One was to a company confirming reservations, the other attempted one was to an upcoming artist’s record company to explain what the two different ticket prices meant for their event.
- Went to the box office manager to request a number for someone for Chuck
- Made a copy of something for Chuck.
- Did some filing for the box office manager after Chuck left for his meeting
- assisted the box office manager in re-setting the theatre seats for this weekend’s performance of Our Town by the Saybrook Stage Company.
- attempted to fix the DVD Player in the museum, with no luck.
Day 14: January 18
Got in late due to the horrific ice storm. Was semi-panicked that he’d be mad that I was late by like a half hour. He wasn’t. He didn’t have anything for me, and it was him, the box office lady and myself all day-our box office manager lived an hour away and couldn’t get out of his driveway, and I imagine the same for our business manager and marketing specialist. The box office lady left at 2, leaving Chuck and I alone for two and half hours in the building.
My Day consisted of the following:
- Got there about 10:30.
- Stood around.
- Entered some info on potential new board members for Chuck into the computer.
- Stood around again.
- Helped the box office lady stuff some things for mailing.
- Stood around some more.
- Helped Chuck move some chairs and take down the cabaret setting from this weekends shows and bring back the “regular” chairs to our theatre.
- Stood around.
- Sorted through receipts for Chuck organizing them so he could categorize them for our credit card.
- Stood around.
- Researched on how the weather was on a past date so Chuck could write something. He wanted to be accurate with his weather description.
- Chuck let me turn off the lights and lock the doors at close.
Day 13: Jan 14
I went in slightly early, to start my day out getting ready for the 10am board meeting, of which I had been invited to sit in on. I figured that it would be a bored meeting rather than a board meeting for me (ha, I had to! ;)). Boy was I wrong…..
It turns out those evil spreadsheets I had been working on had been a project for The Board so they could see our show history, our show attendance, etc along with the presentation on marketing (of which I have copies of everything that was given out at the board meeting).
In the presentation about marketing, much of it was on the social media aspect of our marketing campaign, I was mentioned several times-how I run the facebook and twitter sites, and how I have been doing it since before Chuck was even hired in 2008. Yeah, that long. I think that impressed them. The board asked me a few questions about it, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
I spent half my day in the board meeting-10-12:15. Then ate a quick lunch, and help set up for the comedy cabaret in the evening. Then Chuck ran some errands, so I was left alone. The box office manager didn’t have anything for me, nor the business manager or marketing specialist, so I just stood around. Then the board president asked me if I knew how to make copies. I looked at her and said, “Do you have a code for me? And how many do you need?” She gave me her code, and told me she only wanted one copy of the list of current board members, so off I went. Then back to standing around, after wandering around a bit, I went and chatted with our marketing specialist for a bit about what kind of strategies we could potentially use for the future and some other ideas. I hung out in the boutique for a while as no one was staffing it in case a customer came in with a question After about an hour of that, I got bored and the boutique was closing anyway. Then I noticed my dad was there to pick me up, so I went to tell the box office manager that I was skipping out a little early-after all, I HAD come in early and just been hanging around the last two hours anyway.
Day 12: Jan 13
Crazy day-
Got in later than usual due to a morning hair appointment. Warned him ahead of time.
At first, he didn’t have anything for me, so I kinda stood around.
Then he sent me to get snacks for us.
Then I stood in front of the copier for a while, getting things prepared for tomorrow’s big Board meeting. Copied, collated, organized things for the meeting.
Watch part of Fela! a live simulcast from the NT in London at the end of the day. Not too bad, I thought it was better than it really was.
Day 11:Jan 12
Day off due to 20+ inches of snow. 🙂
Day 10:Jan 11
(Still working on Jan 9th’s entry….)
I’m begining to dread it when he opens MS Spreadsheet to show me what exactly he wants.
I worked on spreadsheets, then was requested by the box office manager to go re-fill the outside brocure things, which at that point, I didn’t mind a break from spreadsheets.
Favorite moment of the day:
We had a rental real estate meeting thing in the morning, and they left the theatre a mess. Our executive director went up there to see if it needed cleaning. Well, he went up to the booth to call us and tell us (the box office manager, me, and the business manager) it was a train wreck. Our box office manager was on the phone with a customer, Business manger was away from her desk, and I didn’t know whether it was an outside call or if it was one of the light/sound guys wanting Chuck for something, so I let it ring. Finally, our box office manager gets off the phone, and Chuck gets a hold of us. Peter (BO manager) takes the call, gets off it and says “He’s lost patience with us, but you know how he is-it’ll be a joke when he gets down here.” And it certainly was a joke. Chuck reenters the office, and goes-“what’d you all do-have your phones on do not disturb?”. And we all told him the truth-Peter was on the phone, Robin not there, and me not knowing what to do with it, then jokingly told him, “No, we saw it was you and knew better than to answer.”
tracymecsuintern 