Philip did not earn any money this past summer. But he did work. During his Spring Break from Hermes High School, he interviewed for a summer internship with an online advertising agency and was offered the position. As it turned out, the real value for Philip working as the lowest man on the proverbial totem pole was found in the simple day-to-day experience.
It started with his alarm clock going off in the morning and the need to be dressed and out of the house on time to catch the County Bus. His bus trip lasted more than forty-five minutes and included a layover at the County’s central bus station in both the morning and afternoon rides home.
Once at the office, Philip went to his cubicle a few feet away from the office where his boss worked. The cubicle included an office chair and desktop computer with an internet and network printer connection. There was also a phone at the desk, but it was never switched on. The only other item of note was a slightly used cork board. Philip’s primary job was to search the internet for information of interest and provide that information back to his boss or whoever requested the research.
The internet research was pure “intern” grunt work. But Philip’s boss also gave a more long-term and interesting assignment. His boss wanted Philip to create a blog on which Philip could place affiliate advertising. At first Philip had no idea what kind of blog to create. In fact, other than reading this blog, Philip had no absolutely no experience with blogs. As a result, Philip struggled. Unlike school, Philip’s summer internship had no teacher to show him how to do his assignment. But eventually Philip decided to blog on a topic he knew well: PC Games. There were plenty of PC Games out there and new games as well as updates were constantly being churned out. While he didn’t buy or even play many of them, he had access to no shortage of people who could give their opinion and provide Philip insight from their experience. With PC Games as a topic, Philip at least had a plan.
Probably the most interesting thing Philip did over the summer was renegotiate his hours. After four weeks of sitting at his desk from 8:30am to 5:00pm doing only three to five hours of research work, Philip decided that he would like to arrive at 9:30 or 10:00am and leave at 1:30pm unless there was specific work to perform. Philip wanted to visit the beach and enjoy his summer a little more. So after discussing the matter with me and Amelia, Philip brought up the subject with his boss. As one might expect, his boss was already aware that he and his colleagues were only able to hand so much work to Philip, so the new hours worked out for all parties. For half of July and his remaining weeks in August, Philip worked just a half day at the advertising agency.
At the end of August with the new school year close at hand, Philip had rough drafts for two blog posts but had not actually created his blog. At home with Amelia, Philip reviewed the rough drafts with his mother. I as a reasonably experienced blogger worked with Philip on issues like color, font and style. Philip decided on using the Hermes High School colors for his blog and selected a font that worked for him. With Amelia, he decided to keep his posts between five hundred and eight hundred words. On the Wednesday of his final week with the advertising agency, Philip published his first blog post. And on Thursday, he deployed Google’s key-word advertising service onto his blog. And thus, Philip completed his 1most interesting assignment.
Friday August 20th was the final day of Philip’s internship. He wrote his boss a kind good-bye note and provided a link to the newly deployed blog. His boss replied with an equally kind note and an offer to serve as a reference. While the internship was nothing particularly amazing, Philip gained a taste of the working world. As for his blog and future posts, only time will tell if Philip will stick with it, or end the blog after only a small number of posts. This blog, however, will continue with at least three posts per month for the foreseeable future.
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