I’ve finished the first day of my internship! A syuzhet for now considering it’s hard to say where it fits in for now. I thought there wouldn’t be much to my first day but it seems to have opened up a lot of possibilities for me in terms of what I will be doing while I’m there, but also what I want to do in the future. A bit soon for that! But that’s how I roll.

A member of their HR department came and initiated me into what goes on at ‘the corporation,’ gave me a tour, introduced me to some people, and finally delivered me to the people I’m mainly working with.

A lot of different things go on at the corporation, so it is interesting to look at how the different departments are set up. Some people have cubicles, some have multiple people to an office, and some folks have their own office. It turns out I share an office – take that cubicled folks! – with three other full-time employees. They seem fairly friendly, when I walked in they were all laughing about something. At my desk I was given a log-in and password so that I can access the company’s content management system (CMS). The CMS wasn’t working for me at the moment, but it looks like I’ll be starting with basic desktop publishing software, Word and Photoshop.

After I was shown my workspace, I went to talk with my advisors about what kind of work I’ll be doing. One person I’ll be working with and I talked about the work I could start doing tomorrow. We talked about doing a bit of research and some press releases using their CMS so I could get used to it. A lot of this work will involve taking the information companies send the corporation about their products and turning it into compact consumable tid-bits for their online and print publications, as well as reformatting media to fit these formats. I will also be researching noteworthy events that pertain to the corporation, including anything noteworthy going on with its members (I suppose it is important to know that this is a member based organization, therefore publishing news about its members is a relevant task). The first person I’ll be working with had to leave early, however, so I spent another hour taking with the other about another set of things I could do for them. This is where things really started to get interesting. The second person I’m working with runs a, for lack of a better word, magazine that the corporation publishes. The magazine includes articles, news, and products relevant to the company. Her job involves developing new ideas for content, choosing content, editing, corresponding with contributers, formatting, and writing for the magazine. I’m sure there is even more to it than that, but that is mainly what we talked about. As we talked about what goes into the production of the magazine I realized that I’m really interested in all of the work that is involved. I really like the idea of having such a diverse set of tasks so that your job is to create ideas, edit, write, and design. Most importantly: she said I’d get a chance to work on the magazine with her! I guess we’ll find out if I like it or not!

I wonder if there are jobs working for magazines that have this same sort of multifaceted approach? It seems like at bigger magazines people’s jobs are probably more specialized – but perhaps there are smaller publications I could work for where I could play a larger hand in their production? Once I’ve had a chance to try my hand at it I think this is something I am going to need to research. Oh man, I don’t need anymore job ideas that I want to pursue! But, I guess more is always better! And think of all the subversive uses I could put magazine production towards! Anyway, that’s why for now I’ll call this a ’syuzhet’ – though, I suppose every day is.