Sure, it's the first day- and I'm not quite naive enough to believe that it will be like this for the next seven weeks- but it was an amazing start to what (hopefully) will be a memorable experience.
Let's begin at 6:17 AM. I don't know why, but I seem to always set my alarm at random, non-round numbers. I mean, I could have set it at 6:15 or 6:20, but 6:17 just felt --right--. In the weeks past, everyone I talk to about commuting to RIT has been feeding me horror stories about the traffic along my particular route, especially during rush hour. Not wanting to be late on my first day of work, I left the house at 7:30, giving me an hour and fifteen minutes to commute what normal people can travel in 30 minutes. I arrived at RIT at 8:04. Our meeting was set for 8:45. Yay for people with a completely disillusioned sense of time.
Getting to work 41 minutes early wasn't my biggest problem though. Yesterday night, I carefully planned my entire "i'm-SO-ready-for-work" ensemble. Thats referring to my conservative long, black, skinny jeans and semi-dressy top (despite the revoltingly hot temperature this week), the "I'm-wearing-makeup-but-you-can't-tell-because-Google-told-me-that-this-is-a-good-look-for-work" makeup (which promptly melted off my face during our activity) and the black flats that I chose to wear- to prove that I can coordinate my clothes with my shoes (I'm a bit style-challenged) and that I paid attention during the orientation and didn't wear heels because Joe said we would be doing "some" walking on the first day.
Some. I couldn't have ever fathomed that what Joe and Bob had planned for us on the first day.
A scavenger hunt.
Yeah, pretty bizarre, right?
We (the interns) were split into three teams and given a packet of over 40 images. These images were of people, places, and things around campus. When I say "things," I mean quite literally "things." The corner of the field house building...a book on the lowest shelf of the oversize section on the fourth floor of the library...an engraved plaque of some dead dude that was in a locked lab in the color science building...and other things of that sort. Despite the torturous weather (and my torturous clothes), it was the most fun I've had since summer started (how pathetic does that sound?). I got to know the interns in my group, explore the campus, burn off some calories (regained by the coke and pizza we had for lunch...YAY free food!), and find out firsthand how friendly everyone on campus is. Not a single person turned us away or called us creepers, even though we were dashing around like crazy people that clearly did not belong at RIT.
We ended up finding the most "things," and we made a pretty impressive dvd- complete with a soundtrack, title screen/menu, and video effects. The huge downside to the video part of the project was the iMacs. Out of all of the interns, only one of us used Macs on a daily basis (thank goodness he was on my team!). All three teams had a lot of trouble getting iMovie to work- to the point where some people gave up due to technical difficulties, but we ended up tweaking some settings around, restarting some programs, and figuring it out! I still think the Macs were the biggest challenge of the day though...
So going along with the theme in my first sentence, this is my first blog post on the first day of my first job EVER. Browsing through the blogs of past interns, I couldn't find a definitive structure for these posts, so I thought I'd just post the way I normally do (I've kept a personal blog for a pretty long time!). Hopefully if I'm doing this wrong, someone will tell me- since this IS part of my job description :)
This internship also doubles as my senior project, a graduation requirement at my school. I'll discuss that in more detail later, since it's 11 o'clock (on the dot as I'm typing this) and I want to finish a book I've been reading before I go to bed.
I might do this at the end of every post, but here's a couple things (off the top of my head) that I've learned as a result of this internship so far:
1) Never wear black skinny jeans and flats on days where the high is 97 degrees and you have to run outside for couple hours
2) Food is good. Free food is amazing.
3) Macs aren't as great as I thought they were
4) RIT people aren't easily creeped out
5) When an old black man smoking a cigarette (who is a self-proclaimed king) gives you sketchy directions, listen to him. The guy knows what he's talking about.
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