My NBC Agency Internship

I toyed with the idea of calling this “My Accidental Internship”, but that would not be giving me enough credit for actually getting in the Fort Knox of Corporate Entertainment. Therefore, I am sticking with the current title and hoping that a screenwriter here remembered how to write essays. Also worth mentioning is that my first day of work is September 18^th, so some of the details are still a little unclear, but as the semester moves forward I will be more than glad, and required, to update on the progression of the internship.

The internship will be for the National Broadcasting Company, hereby called by its more informal name of NBC. The building is at 30 Rock, on the 18^th Floor East. The department is The NBC Agency and my supervisor is David Lipsius who is the Sr. Director of Operations. I will be a lowly intern working Monday through Friday working exclusively for the editors with the News Department. I am one of two student interns hired.

This is a brand new arrangement that was sparked by a pre-existing relationship. My father got me in the door to sit and discuss work opportunities with a business colleague of his. After I was told that there was pretty much nothing and that I live on the wrong coast, I was sent on my way, but then as luck would have it there was someone that I just had to meet. I sat an hour in my current supervisor’s office waiting out an emergency meeting and when he came back little did I know, I was on a job interview. A little flustered, I tried my best, he sent me on my way with an assignment due in one week, and if he liked it, he’d hire me. A week later, I nailed it, and I got it. Basically, I got upstairs with help, and the job on my own. Hence, my first title of “My Accidental Internship.”

As I previously said, the tasks were pretty vague. All I know is that I will be working with the editors as an intern, the details will be better in a little over a week. I think that the information I know about the field is small. The field is advertising and marketing in the confines of the News Department. I have no prior experience and really no academic training other than basic knowledge and information that I have siphoned off of my father. I want to learn everything about everything. Seriously, I would love to learn the business and be able to be a functioning member of the office so much that I would need no instruction. Having zero business and corporate experience, if I could do my tasks with a minimal amount of supervision and headache for my boss, that is my goal. In order to do my job, I need to learn marketing, editing(not the physical task, but the why, what, when questions), and even office etiquette.

Experience experience experience. And did I mention experience? I first went into NBC looking for an entry-level position for a job, I came out with a Fall Internship. During the job seeking process I learned many things and most of those were that my resume was poor and I have no experience in the field or in the corporate world. Therefore, the most important aspect of this job is being able to put it on my resume so that I can get an honest look at some other positions that before I would never have been able to reach. My undergraduate program at URI just might be the only school I’ve ever heard of that has no internship program, and is actually discouraged. There is a few majors that will offer course credit, but those majors are more in the education or engineering fields. Now that I am fresh out of school and looking for jobs, everyone seems to want experience which I can not offer. It is a vicious cycle. I can not get experience without experience. When they said that they only do credit internships, the timing of our third semester could not have been more perfect. Some of the other benefits I mentioned earlier. Office and corporate etiquette, knowledge about network television and more specifically the business end of it. All the things that a text book or a professor unfortunately can not teach. Then, hopefully I can walk out ready to take my resume to other places and conquer the world.

My field is screenwriting for both television and film so while I will not be doing any creative writing and more specifically screenwriting for this internship, I will be working for one of the major television networks in this country. This internship will make be a better and more refined worker and I really look forward to the experience.