Internship Weekly-Journal 4

Week 4

Date: Tuesday 14 & Wednesday 15 February                                                            Total Hours: 8-9

This week I feel like I did more normal "intern" things. After meeting up with Beth at Westfield and going to the office/workspace we got to work. Although there is an issue currently in production we were doing work tying up the loose ends from the previous issue. Julie showed us how to check and mail invoices to advertisers who'd used the magazine in the previous issue. We highlighted, folded, checked total prices, addressed envelopes, and got them ready to post. After that Beth showed us how to put invoices into the Microsoft Excel program that keeps track of money and shows how much they made during the last issue. I won't say how much the issue brought in, but Beth said for a January issue it was very good. After finishing our work from the last issue Julie sat down with us and some of the pieces we'd written that she had looked over. She had made corrections, and explained to us why. A lot of things were cultural writing differences. Those are something I'm going to have to get used to, because I will be doing a lot of writing while I'm here. We broke for lunch and then ran an errand. We went to the Oxford Street area to pick up leaflets from a concert hall, put them in the post to send to the advertising woman (Ruth). We returned to Vandon where we sat down and fixed the pieces we had written that Julie corrected, sent them back to Julie and called it a day.

Today was not quite as eventful, we knew what we'd be doing and could plan accordingly. We were each emailed 10 subbings (long press releases that we convert into interesting tourist info for the magazine) to do. That took a couple hours, but we got them done. Doing subbings always makes me want to participate in all of the exciting things going on in London, even though some of them can only be afforded by the 4-5 star guests of the hotels that our magazine gets distributed to.

I didn't really have any major cultural experiences this week during my internship. I think that if I were in an office with a lot of British people it would be different, but because the magazine is only two people and we don't even see them everyday, it makes the cultural experiences a rarity. The coffee shop we were working at yesterday overlooks the Olympic Park Stadium, so everywhere we go, and especially when they drive we see a lot of British security. Often times, we have to pull over and the car gets an overlook. Overall, I feel like this week consisted more of typical intern jobs...or as Beth calls them, "the shit jobs." But I liked it and I know that the work we're doing is helping make the magazine run smoothly.