Intern #1's got nothing to do...

As I begin the last week of my summer internship, I find myself with fewer and fewer assignments. I have so much downtime, in fact, that I’ve resorted to stalking my editors via Google, talking to my friends via Facebook chat, and rummaging through the giveaway tables so I can get my grimy little intern hands on as much free stuff as possible. And, being the multi-tasker that I am, I even have time to write this blog entry while on the job…now that’s impressive.

I feel like I’m going full circle here—one of my first blog entries as an Ed intern was about how I had a lot of downtime at work—but as my internship comes to a close, so does the intern’s workload at my magazine. There’s no more researching to do since the articles have already been written, no more products to return since the photo shoots have already occurred, and no more fact-checking to do since the top editors have already finalized the stories.

The issue I spent all summer working on is going to press next week. The editors are now just putting a few finishing touches on it, like tweaking the layout, top-editing the final final versions, and making last-minute decisions on the cover headlines. So while the staff is extremely busy, making sure every minute detail is perfect before thousands of people read it, I, the intern, am left in my cubicle, staring at my computer screen and refreshing my email compulsively.

But I’m not going to lie…I kind of like the downtime this time around. I’m making myself useful by researching and pitching some feature ideas that I think may work for the next issue, and am brushing up on my magazine jargon so I know the lingo when I eventually start working in the biz. My chuckle of the day: learning that the word “slug” refers to a magazine’s column. Haha. That's somewhat amusing, right?

I’ve only got 2 days left here, and I really want to make the most of them. Here’s to hoping that my editors have got a whole lot of stimulating tasks for me for the rest of the week. I really need to tear myself away from this computer.

More Tk,
--Ed’s Intern #1