Intern or Burn

A few weeks before graduating college I created this sort of mental checklist of what I thought I had to do to "be successful", or at the very least make some sort of slick transition into "the real world". Ah yes, the real world. Unlike the wildly popular display of substance abuse and personality disorders on MTV, if Googled simply, the definition of the real world used as a phrase is this: 

real world: the practical world as opposed to the academic world; "a good consultant must have a lot of experience in the real world" 

Practical experience in the real world. Sounds simple enough, right? Graduate college, land a job in the field of your expertise and live happily ever after. If only this was 1979. Enter the Internship. The ultimate catch 22 of Generation Y. 

Ironically enough, the Googled definition of Internship is extremely vague.

An internship can be a method of on-the-job training for white-collar and professional careers, yet there are no formal standards defining them as such.

Ok so 1) graduate college, 2) obtain an "internship" and then 3) land a real world job. Boom. Plan made, straight to the top, BRING IT ON LOS ANGELES! * Cue Ludacris's song "Move B*tch!" *

Well...not so fast. Obtaining a professional, great internship doesn't happen overnight, let alone obtaining an internship that actually teaches you skills and practical application to anything remotely related to what you want to pursue. So then where does that leave 22 year old wide eyed and bushy-tailed Lauren ready to chomp down on this whole real world thing? 

That's where my advice begins. Advice on finding an internship (or several internships) that will actually bring you useful knowledge and help prepare you for whatever it is that you decide you want to spend all your precious time doing. 

For me, it was the 'cast the net wide and see what comes back to you' theory that taught me a lot about applying for internships. I had heard about this great internship website for the Arts through a college professor and spent the better part of three days applying online and sending out cover letters and emails. Internships for Theatres, internships for working with under-privileged youth, internships for playwrighting, stage management, set design, graphic design, you name it, I applied for it.  It wasn't until about email number eight or nine that I realized I wasn't even sending out a readable format for my resume, let alone writing a sufficient cover letter. After fixing my over eager mistakes and researching proper cover letters, resume formats, professional email etiquette, and the complex task of exporting pdf files, I was beginning to feel confident that I was getting the hang of it. I even received several replies of 'thanks but no thanks' and three whole interviews. Three. After applying to well over fifty internships in the greater LA area. I mean, come on! Didn't they know I had a college education AND a great personality to boot?  I could hardly bare the disappointment and injustice that had been made against me.  

Alas, I attended all three internship interviews with my head held high in the best professional attire I could muster up. All three internships happened to be Theatre related. The first was to work for an up and coming company that was more or less the parallel of IMDB in the Theatre world. The second, a teaching position for an inner-city arts program for youth, and the third, to assist at a high profile regional theatre as a graphic designer. Clearly I was extremely qualified for all three positions with my degree in Theatre Arts from a private Christian School. Opposite day. To my shock and horror, I wasn't chosen for any of the positions.  (I will say that I had one hell of a time getting to my first interview in downtown LA. The story involves a gas station car accident and a phone sex prank call at 9am, but alas that is a story for another time).  

So there I was, three interviews later and no internship to write home about. I had failed miserably, time to move in with mom. Well, not exactly. I ended up getting a  job serving at a BJs in Century City for the time being to pay my rent in Studio City, and quickly learned that I knew absolutely nothing about driving in Los Angeles. Once I figured out that getting a job in Century City when I lived in the valley was financial suicide and personal torture (it took me about two months to put the pieces together), I felt I was ready to give the internship thing another shot. I set out to find more opportunities and had heard from a creepy yet informative lunch patron at BJs about a website where internship postings were abundant. Naturally, I applied to whatever I could get my hands on and I learned quickly to try my hardest for opportunities near where I lived so as not to commit murder on the 405 freeway. Dozens of emails, cover letters, and interesting interviews later, I landed an internship at a production company in Studio City, five minutes from where I lived. YES. Life crisis averted, I am going to be okay. I even landed a second internship position the next week and had the very real world task of juggling two schedules at once. I decided to give the production company my Mondays and the talent agency, which was a little more intriguing to me at the time, my Tuesdays and Thursdays. Okay, I thought to myself, I am really cooking now...I can do this. Move over Harvey Weinstein! 

All that to say, the days and weeks passed and the magic of having real life LA internships faded away quickly. The majority of my time was spent fetching gluten free salads, re-stocking paper supplies, making Folgers coffee, and sitting by a phone waiting for it to ring so I could pretend for one brief moment that I was important. Now, don't get me wrong-I learned quite a lot from both of my internship opportunities, and even landed a pretty swell part-time job from one, but looking back I realize now the true lessons learned from this stage in my life. The point in getting an internship was never to actually obtain a "real job" or find my perfect career path at age 22, though some can find success that way. The whole point was to practice putting myself out there. To learn what types of opportunities were to be found in the first place and how much time and effort goes into each of them. To learn lingo and terminology used in the industry and in professional emails and why words like "pin" and "avail" and "watch and advise" are so incredibly exciting and frustrating at the same time. To learn the best streets to take at eight AM rush hour in the canyon or to find a perfect spot to sit and have a cup of coffee while you people watch and unwind. To learn what you don't want to do just as much as what you want to do, and to observe miserable people in their jobs so you can do everything you can to avoid ending up like them. 

Sure, I still have my printed and signed letter of recommendation from my very first fancy internship on hand just in case it saves my life one day, but deep down I know it won't. The stale words on my perfectly printed resume don't matter. What matters are the experiences I chose to enter into. Researching, applying, interviewing, failing, succeeding, listening, observing, reading, getting frustrated, getting interested, getting yelled at, talking with people about their career paths, cheesy email pleasantries, traffic survival routes, and what business casual attire actual means. Those are the things I remember and cherish and will bring with me into the real world. That is my definition of practical experience, and I am so thankful to have had it. 

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   Website references: 

   
   

   LA County Arts Internships

   
   

   Entertainment Careers Internships