The Real World.

So far this internship has been a blur of new friends, frustration, boring activities, tedious job searches, hope for the future, and self-evaluation.

The first couple of weeks at CBS 2 have often been spent logging games or logging tapes that need to be described in the online database. Typical intern stuff - nothing entertaining, nothing difficult... mostly something that needs to be done. (And that nobody else wants to do).

So in trying to evaluate my own future in this business, I tend to multi-task on the job, which is equivalent to me saying that sometimes I procrastinate from tasks on the job so that I don't feel as if I'm wasting my time for 8 Emerson credits of education.

The other day, for instance, I joined TVjobs.com, which is a database of what one would assume it should be. The website, which asks for $50 of my former hard-earned-dollars and current savings, was enlightening in many ways.

The most intriguing part of my membership to the website, and ensuing job search was that I think I actually can get a job pretty quickly after school, if I take the right steps. It is probably possible for me to get an on-camera sports job... in the "middle-of-nowhere" Minnesota. So if I move 2,000 miles away from family and friends in New England, and I want to sacrifice any normalcy in my surroundings, and I only want to make $16,000 a year for two years in the middle of the country... the job is probably mine... if I can make the cut.

I went through a lot of self-evaluating this week. And a lot of internal questions.

Q. If I only make 16,000 dollars a year... is this really what I want to do with my life?

A. Yes.


Q. Come on, think that one through again. $16,000 is less than $1,400/month. Less than that after taxes. So I can do what I truly want to do with my life... for $350/week?

A. Yes?


To many extents, my career goals can't be about money and I knew that coming in to this situation. But at some point, I have to think about financing... and therein lies the problem.

Of course, it's best to be thinking about these questions now, I know. I'm three months before an actual career decision. And, as I well know, grad school looms for those unsure about entering the real world immediately. If nothing else, there's always that. The interesting thing through all of this is that what I value most has nothing to do with money or location or any of the aformentioned things. What matters most to me, I'm reaffirming, is family.

Being 3,000 miles away from everybody here in L.A. kind of puts that in perspective... My eldest sister is about to have a baby boy. The rest of all my family live in New England. My girlfriend's family all live in New England as well.

So, my concerns about the internship have moved beyond my tasks here specifically. I mean, I can't complain. I'm making friends, I'm slowly making contacts, and I think my tasks will gradually improve as the days move on. The real stress now comes from the decision after the internship... and after graduation... "where do I go from here?"

A common question for most college grads, I know... but one that I hadn't spent any time reflecting on. I remember upon graduating from high school, we talked about the real world... and that was an illusion. Bartending for easy cash, spending time with friends in a beautiful suite in downtown Boston, meeting the love of your life in the process... that was fun, but it wasn't the real world. The real world looms large starting in December. My time in California will be through, my internship finished, my undergraduate college career over. Time to find a job, time to move forward.

Welcome to the real world, Sports Intern.

The Sports Intern Goes Hollywood.

Two years removed.

It has been two years since my last internship - my first internship - at NECN in Boston. I'm more educated. I'm more experienced.

You could even say,
I'm well seasoned.

And yet, I'm sitting in a cubicle... all by myself... surfing the internet and waiting to log a game for CBS2/KCAL9. Never fear! The location has changed, but the sports intern is still here.

At the very least, I'm receiving academic credit this time. Which brings me to this blog. First off, I am impressed this thing still exists. It was a boring afternoon at NECN that spurred me to start preaching my thoughts to a collective audience that truthfully, never existed in the first place. Plus, I remembered my username. And my password. Who'd have thunk it?

Which brings me back to now. As this internship counts for credit, I'm required by Emerson College law to provide a final project which proves to some advisor who could care less about my being that, while here, I may have learned something. A reflective essay, perhaps. Or a portfolio of work. A video project was suggested to me by my intern supervisor.

So now, as I reflect on NECN, and I ponder how to spend my time here today, I think... what better way to bullshit my way through a final project than blogging?

Blogging is the best way to write, if for no other reason, because you don't have to be gramattically correct. Case in point - I had to look up how to spell "gramatticaly." I wasn't right the first time - there's only one 'l,' - but I'm not going to change it. This is a blog. Not a newspaper.

So a blog it is. I only posted 3 times at NECN, and perhaps that is an indication of how good I may or may not have had it. By the time I started posting blogs there, I was almost immediately moving on to bigger and better things to help out around the office. I was editing. I was writing. I was putting content on the air. All of these things are foreign to me at the moment. I am once again sitting at a computer, wasting my time, all so I can say I was an intern. A Sports Intern.

I will try and post as often as possible here. If nothing else, so I can use this as an excuse for a final project. I'm back to watching the Red Sox play for first place in the AL East. (Really, how have the Rays been on top for so long???) More to come soon.

- Sports Intern.