Finishing up

by Kate Wells

Tragically, this is my last blog. It’s my last week working as a Legislative Intern at the Committee on Publication. I know everyone says this every summer, but I cannot believe how fast it went. You should have seen me after the first day of this job. I liked it, but I was sure it was going to be a long summer. And now bam, its August.

So for the next two days, I’ll be trying to wrap things up here, juggling the sheer heft of new projects and the rapidly approaching deadlines of old ones, until Thursday at 6:00. Then I catch the train up to New Hampshire to try to squeeze a summers worth of physical and linguistic training into a few weeks. It’s my semi-panicked preparation for a fall semester spent backpacking through Peru.

It’s a good thing these last few days will be busy, though, because despite the incredible list of opportunities and experiences this summer has generated, I do have one regret: not being able to finish the editing and re-recording of some work I did with Sentinel Radio. The Monday afternoons spent there were easily among the highlights of this summer. It’s that unusual feeling when you find something so utterly frustrating and absorbing and you think, “I could do this all the time.” It’s a kind of innocent rush, that type of work satisfaction. In my case, you’re pretty sure your’e moving way too slowly and making innumerable mistakes and you can’t believe what an idiot you sound like on the recording, but you’re so happy that time just flies.

Every aspect of the radio interview process, from preparing the interview questions to creating a relationship with the interviewee to conducting a professional, semi-cohesive interview to editing that interview into something relevant, was more difficult, unglamorous, and frustratingly out of my grasp than I’d expected. I waltzed in absolutely positive I was going to be a natural. NPR could only be so many years away!

Now I’m on my way out and in the back of my mind I’m not worried about conjugating subjunctive Spanish verbs like I should be. I’m thinking about what will happen to my interview, stored away in that tiny Mac laptop, without some earnestly bumbling teenager pouring over it every Monday afternoon, trying desperately to shape it into something clear, something powerful, something good. Will its next editor understand the cuts I made and the five points I saw it hitting? Will he or she be kind, at least, and chop the parts where the mic-happy intern (me) just drools all over the place in something attempting adult conversation? There was so much more I meant to do!

All in all, it was a good nine weeks. Great people. Good experience-not just cubicles and copiers and shoes that hurt, but seeing different management styles, employee types, legal approaches. The kind of honest conversations and small, significant moments that are unusual. It opened me up. I’m grateful for it-and I’m sure I’ll be back.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 9:45 am and is filed under Anxiety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.