I'm Carson Blackwelder, a rising junior at UNC and your Special Projects Coordinator for the upcoming year! I'm spending this summer as an online intern at the Raleigh Downtowner and a blogger for Cliché Magazine. Basically I handle posting articles for a local magazine in Raleigh and write eight to nine blog posts a week for an online magazine based out of Los Angeles.
If there's one thing I've learned interning, it's that you should never be afraid to step up — even if things get crazy. Twice!
A few weeks ago when I was working in the offices for the Raleigh Downtowner, we experienced a power outage. This was in June, so it got really hot with the air conditioning out. We had also been in the middle of working on the computers, and, of course, they crashed. It took almost two hours for the power to come back on. Needless to say, it was a great test of damage control.
My boss was in the process of calling the power company, and I took it upon myself to initiate every intern's favorite pastime — sorting the mail.
Needless to say, the boss was very happy to see me (and my fellow intern) move right along to another task, making ourselves useful even in the chaotic, unsupervised time. I think it really made an impression on him that we just went ahead and tried to stay busy.
The other conundrum was a big online mess at Cliché.
I had literally just been offered a blogging opportunity at Cliché Magazine. When I met my editor to train online, we could not access Wordpress nor Cliché's website.
This was a situation that I could not help with, having had little online experience, especially when their site crashed and we lost tons of data. I did at least offer my help, which seemed to automatically put me in the good grace of all of the editors, including the editor-in-chief.
Long story short, everyone remembered my willingness to help, and it started my initial relationship with the editor-in-chief. Luckily, everything was solved by the next day.
It is always good to turn horrible situations into opportunities to shine. And trust me, people will remember it.
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