My First internship: Week one!

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18th June 2018
London
10:00am - 18:00pm

I got my first internship as an editorial intern at a lifestyle magazine, which features the latest news and views about  fashion, beauty, wellness and lifestyle products!

Monday:

I was told that for the first day I will start at 9:00am to go through what I have to do, how their internships work and just making sure that I know how to use their software. I was advised by the loveliest person ever and she is a news & features assistant and the lead content coordinator at the magazine, who is also in charge of all the interns.

I met the other girls I am interning for and they are so lovely and nice, they helped me whenever I needed it and kept checking if I was okay, also one of the girls went out with me for lunch and showed me around town to get a feel of where everything is, just in case I needed to run some errands.  The way interns work is that the magazine always has 3 at a time, and every week someone new joins, which is the last week of someone else that leaves. The internship runs for 4 weeks and is unpaid but the experience is very valuable.

Their system is really well laid out and it is easy to contact everyone, through Gmail chat and emails, and all the interns share an account. They also have a shared document that sets out what you have to do for the day, they are very ahead of schedule and work a day or days ahead, therefore preparation is 10/10 for them. They also use Dropbox to store or their files which can be viewed by everyone in the office.

The general tasks that you are expected to do are links, images and copies. This requires you to look in the article folders for that day and choose a story. Once you have chosen a story you go to the to do list and paste your name into the link column next the the story, if it is a story where you can find links for the products. When you have finished the task you paste link in the to do list box where you put your name.

For links, you have to open a separate word document and save the document in the story's folder as links, you then go through each product and find the products on a website, writing down the brand name, name of product, price and link, if the website is an affiliate site you have to copy and paste the URL to get the affiliate link and paste it into the document. If it is not an affiliate site we just copy and paste the URL. Every first letter of a word has to be in capitals.

For images, you have to create a new article in Wordpress and upload the images. To upload the images you have to press formatted grid. And copy and paste the link into the URL box in the to do list.

As for copies, you get sent this towards the end of the day, they are the title, strap line, intro and main body of the article. If there are links in the copy you have to make sure to embed them into the text. The intro is always written in italics.

I also get 1 hour for lunch which I can take anytime between 12:00-14:00pm.

Tuesday:

Everyday we do the same tasks but different stories. On this day however, I got sent on my first errand for the office. My job was to go to Home base and get an extension cord with 4 plugs, to do this they gave me the companies card and pin number. So I went to Home base using Google maps and the walk was a pain, this was because the closest entrance to it was the customers car park, but I did not know if I could go through it and if it would take me to the right entrance so I walked all the way around the shop, around the corner to get to the entrance. I have never been in Home base before and I took a few steps past the sales lady and looked at how big the shop was, I then turned back around to the sales lady and asked her where the extension cords were because I did not have the time or energy to want to search through every aisle until I found it. Fast forwarding, when I found the item and bought it I came out and saw that on the left was the same customer car park sign I saw when walking up to Home base. I couldn't be bothered to walk the way I came so I took a chance to see if there was a path I could walk down to come out of the car park, and there was! I could of walked that way from the beginning. ( But yeah that was my Home base journey story!)

Wednesday:

Now I don't remember if this happened on Wednesday or Tuesday but I am just going to say it happened on this day. We got to go onto their show set! It honestly looked so cool, I know I should be used to it since I have a news set at university but it never does not make me excited seeing cameras, lights, the whole set, everything!!. It really made me want to operate it all because of my course, I had to contain my excitement. The reason we were brought to set was because they recently had a new camera and they wanted to test it out so we had to talk normally to each other while being filmed, and of course we talked about Love Island.

I also did my first transcript on this day, which is to watch a video and write down word for word what they say in between the times they give you. There is also a special format you have to follow, for example: whenever the person behind the camera asks a question you have to write it in italics. I found it quite fun but sometimes it was hard because the person in the video talks fast sometimes and some bits were cut and edited too close together that I had to listen to it more than once to understand what the person says.

Thursday:

On this day there was hardly any work to do, because we completed the work the day before and only had a little bit to do, including copies which were quick and easy. We literally just sat there waiting for things, it got to that point where we were asked if we had any ideas on any stories to do.

Friday:

This was one of the girl's last day and I also had a half day because I requested to have one due to wanting to attend my friends baby shower. The work was a bit busier but still very slow, overall the week has been slow. There is another task which is uploading recipes but I haven't done one yet and do not know how to do one, so I will see if I get one next week, but from what I have heard, they can be a pain and a bit long.

Overall, I had an amazing first week, I am so glad I got to do this, and hope to do more magazine internships in the future. This week has totally tired me out though and I am so glad for the weekend! The journey takes me like 1hour30mins and I am so slow in the morning so I get up at 6am which is extra early than I probably need to, because the hours are from 10am - 18:00pm. I have learn't a lot in my first week and I hope I can build up the courage to shadow the people who film the shows and see if I can help out!

Et voilà ! xo 

Always supporting and voting for you.

Josephine Beth-xx

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