Internship 2009

:: After a summer long sabbatical from blogging, I'm finally happy to bring a few updates to the table. To start with, I got the audio studio internship at Evergreen! This is actually the main reason I've started posting again; my sponsor will be checking up on my progress every so often as I write about it. Hopefully, barring any humongous weekend projects that take all my time, I'll be updating this every Saturday or Sunday.

So, the internship itself. I'll be working under Zena, one of the Electronic Media department's technicians; I'll also be learning from Peter Randlette, head of Electronic Media. They'll both be giving me administrative tasks as well as teaching technical skills, which is what I plan to focus on this quarter. For the past two weeks I've been training for the daily operations of EM such as manning the front desk, setting up productions, and teaching workshops about audio spaces and equipment; learning about various documentation like signal flow diagrams, work order reservations, and "cheat sheets" to instruct other students on common procedures used in the studios; and establishing a fairly consistent schedule for the next ten weeks. Just in case I run into problems, or if I have an idea for a group project, I've also been meeting faculty, staff, and other interns to make valuable contacts.

UPDATE: The first week began before I could finish and post, and I didn't have time to get back to blogging, so I'm just going to include my first week experiences with my training weeks.

Now that I've been working at Evergreen for three weeks, I feel a lot more comfortable. I'm becoming familiar with the AV classrooms (rooms fitted with media equipment) and can troubleshoot fairly easily; I also feel a lot better about walking into a class full of strangers who all expect me to fix their technical issues. It's still a bit intimidating, but I definitely feel better equipped to do my job. I also got to do my first work order on Thursday. It was fairly simple and straightfoward; the faculty just wanted a wireless mic and a way to play a CD over a PA system. I worked with Zena and an EM student employee named Luke Hansen, and even though it was 7:30 in the morning, we still got along great and set up the equipment quickly enough to have time to hang out and shoot hoops before the class arrived.

I've still been learning a lot of administrative tasks. I was sick on Wednesday, so I missed some EM training, but I don't feel like I got set back too much from that. Zena went over how to process work orders with me; it's pretty simple as well, just time-consuming. One thing I think I'll have to work on is denying incorrectly filled reservations; I always want to help people, and I hate disappointing anyone. I'll just have to remind myself that I'm not doing anything wrong when someone doesn't follow the correct procedure to reserve things.

On an exciting note, a lot of my time in the coming week will be devoted to organizing the CD Project! I went with Ben English, Kris Geffen, and Luke Hansen to two the required three workshops to start the CD Project as a student organization, which will allow us to have a budget to purchase advertising supplies as well as cover CD pressing costs and any other expenses we'll have. This year, since the CD was typically distributed at Super Saturday, we are looking at alternative methods to get the album to students and other interested people. This should prove an interesting challenge for the whole group ::