May 22, 2013 - 2:55pm
Intrepid Interns: Last summer
BY JACQUELYN GOLDMAN
Arsenio Hall once complimented me on how quickly I retrieved him his Starbucks beverage. Mr. “Whoop Whoop Whoop” himself actually complimented me, an intern. This accolade meant a lot to me — it’s not every day your Starbucks run includes a venti iced caramel macchiato for someone like Arsenio.
Why was I honored with the task of delivering the winner of Celebrity Apprentice his afternoon dose of caffeine? I was one of four college interns at Octagon Entertainment in Los Angeles, an entertainment management company whose clients include Arsenio Hall, Piers Morgan, Erin Burnett, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Holly Robinson-Peete, Lance Bass, Pamela Anderson, Laura Ingraham and Heidi Montag. Currently, I am a rising junior majoring in English and Communication Studies. Born and raised in L.A., I have a place to live for free over the summer while I intern, this summer at MTV.
I began my internship in the middle of June. Since I wasn’t paid, the company required I receive course credit for my internship, which I did by enrolling in UC 225 in the fall (I highly recommend this for any Michigan student with an internship). On my first day, I was given a tour of the floor of the Pacific Design Center that Octagon Entertainment shared with a few PR firms and other factions of Octagon. Little did I know that the people who worked — not for Octagon — a couple of cubicles away from me had an affinity for shooting Nerf guns at a poster of the cast of Frasier (one time a bullet flew into my cubicle). I then spent the next eight weeks fetching coffee, filing, scanning, writing client bios, picking up deli platters that stunk up my car, researching on Internet Movie Database, giving feedback on a treatment of a show and learning about what it takes to be a successful entertainment manager.
Being in L.A. and working in the entertainment industry, the attire was what I like to call trendy business casual. I insert “trendy” because I associate business casual with ill-fitting khakis and unflattering button-down shirts. I could wear jeans, but the entire ensemble had to be appropriate for the workplace and look good. I almost always wore flats — not high heels. Although only 5’3”, I know I’m not the best at walking in heels. Inevitably, on the days that I didn’t wear flat shoes, I’d have two Starbucks trips, a few more trips to pick up lunch for some of the employees and it would be the day one of the other interns would want to venture somewhere far during our lunch break. So for my fellow female interns out there: leave a pair of flats in your purse or at your desk unless you are capable of running in heels without breaking an ankle or are 100 percent certain that all you will be doing is sitting at your desk all day.
Fortunately, due to my previous experience and my own caffeine addiction, I was already familiar with the language of Starbucks, which is a useful skill as an intern. Starbucks has a language, both written — the chicken scratch that looks like hieroglyphics — and spoken, and your life as an intern will be easier if you know it. I often had to walk about 10 minutes in the blazing sun across the rainbow-painted sidewalks — West Hollywood is the “gayborhood” of L.A. — to the nearest Starbucks with one of the other interns to retrieve the eight employees, sometimes my fellow interns and every once in a while a client, their daily caffeine. The task was not completed until we distributed the drinks to everyone once we returned to the office, when my skills at reading illegible handwriting and strange symbols were put to the test to ensure that everyone received the correct beverage to start off their day.
But being an intern is about more than filling people’s coffee orders. It’s about the random times I would pop into someone’s office and talk about exactly what they do, my studies at the University or about what I hope to do in the future. Even though I worked at a management company, I definitely don’t want to be a manager. Managers network 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I know I’m not enough of an extrovert for that. But I made a good intern, reorganizing files, systematizing résumés, making sure all the employees were fed the food exactly as they wanted it and conducting research on IMDB. Interning at Octagon served as a good step for me in learning more about and being exposed to the entertainment industry as a whole.
Jacquelyn Goldman can be reached at jpearlgo@umich.edu.
