11-9-17 With a few days of rest from boxes (and by rest I mean I had class), I was greeted with, more boxes! But this time they were filled with paper, mainly the tons of duplicate papers and unnecessary papers WPC had. This meant a trip to the paper recycling plant. With the same volunteer that does food pickup, a few other volunteers and I filled his car up with paper and drove a short distance to the recycling place. We unloaded the paper on top of another pile of paper and watched one of those big trick things scoop up the paper and chuck it someplace else. Pretty neat honestly. After that the next task was metal recycling which meant trying to fit old filing cabinets into a van into a metal scrap yard. The group dropped of the cabinets near a spot and once it was clear we saw the power of magnetism at work. A giant metal skill crane looking thing presses onto the cabinets, lifts it, then throws it in the back. Don’t know why but there’s something cathartic about things being broken. This seems to be the highlight of the internship so far.

11-10-17 We return packing stuff in boxes. And that’s pretty much the entire day. Also some more card stuff since the film event is drawing nearer.

11-11-17- Probably more of the same stuff. Can’t remember after the previous high of watching metal get destroyed everything else seems a bit dull now. Shortest yet longest work week.

2nd book reading: Another class, another in class book reading. This time, the stuff here was more common sense to me. Biggest thing that confused me was the double check for errors and correct names, recipients and spelling. Apparently a lot of people aren’t double checking their emails, so maybe I have a leg up on most people. A lot of this stuff feels like a condensed version of my English writing in the work place class. Since it’s being brought up again at least I know that workplace writing is crucial now. I will say that I found the bit about humor a bit useful, which mostly means to avoid it since nobody can take a joke these days.

10-30-17- Another Monday morning and it looks like were doing a complete 180. Instead of working as hard as possible to get sponsors, our pictures and articles ready for the next magazine, we are getting are stuff and getting out, within approximately 30 days that is. The good news is the landlord is easy-going and doesn’t have a tenant available ready so taking longer than 30 days isn’t a problem. The bad news is, we are now focusing on packing their numerous files, boxes, and various papers… Not exactly what I had in mind for an internship but at least its better than getting some jerk coffee. Anyways I’ve been needing some sort of thing to do that gets me moving, this can’t be that bad. I’m secretly hoping that most of the heavy lifting is done on the days I’m not there.

10-31-17: Networking Event

In the evening on Halloween, I attended a networking event at the Parsons School of Design located at 2 West 13th St. A group of other designers and I entered the building, were directed to a room and were introduced to the Speaker Maya Edelmen. Edelmen showed us her various works and inspirations that she has collected over time ranging from the bizarre to the inspirational. Her slides mostly had themes of waste (or decadence) and death 2 things that can easily be associated with the U.S. I guess the brief mention about her being part of the U.S.S.R makes a bit more sense.

One of her notable creations was something about the DNA of plants of animals. This was done with traditional cell animation and it revolved around a trip to fire island. She was inspired by the wildlife and various colorful plants that are there. What I felt was most unique about this was that the animation looked like a sluggish sequence of images put together rather than a smooth animation. Regardless it looked interesting and was the least odd from her creations and inspirations.

11-2-17- Being a press collective I’d imagine there would be tons of paper and much to my dismay, the statement was true. Boxes upon boxes filled with various magazines, flyers, and brochures filled the conference room. Our goal for today was to organize these mountains of paper, by organization and making sure we don’t have any duplicates. Sounds fairly simple until I realized the organizations they receive flyers from have similar names! Eastern Service Workers Association, Eastern Farmers Workers Association, Western Service Workers Association and several more! Would it have killed these the organizations to create slightly more unique names for their organizations? Oh and we had to separate them by county/borough too. I suppose this was better than trying to lift something like the metal presses. Lot of nitpicking here but the work wasn’t that hard as much as it was tedious.

11-3-17- More of the same from the previous day with slightly less nitpicking. Only interesting thing to note was that some of the flyers from the organizations are exact copies with the only difference being the year the flyer had. This only makes finding duplicates that much more annoying.

11-4-17 A bit more of the same work but know we had to pack these piles of papers into boxes. Nothing really unique here besides the conference room looking like warehouse.

Class reading:

The class read a few pages of a book today about business etiquette and it was quite informative. First was info on business cards and what goes on it, but the interesting part was regarding the “sins” for workers. First one that struck me was lack of initiative, I know I’m a lazy guy and often don’t things unless I’m told to, but even when I’m ready to work I just do what is asked of me, never did anything else that was needed to be done. I thought just showing up on time and doing the work while being friendly was enough but it just goes to show people want more out of their workers. Another was not connecting. Socializing is hard for me and even if its just simple small talk between people I feel a bit nervous and desperately find something normal to talk about or just ends with awkward silence. I’m always willing to listen and its not hard to force a smile though. Last thing was posture. I can’t deny it, I have poor posture, always a bit hunched over and usually with my arms crossed. Not sure what a hunched over posture indicates but crossed arms generally indicate defensiveness,nervousness and negativity. My brother has always mentioned this and its a bad habit of mine, he tells me that there is no reason a big guy like me should look so nervous. Overall its some common sense stuff that I should be using more often.

10-23-17 Finally set a schedule for my internship, and my first day ( Or I guess second) is on a Monday. I came in at 9 am and my first task was to sort through index cards. Not exactly what I had in mind but I was still willing to help. The large lists of cards are actually contacts that the WPC has maintained for several years. My goal was to sort these cards with people that can help WPC via graphic design, illustration, communications, anything related to media or graphic arts. Simple enough, there was just a lot of cards to go through. Fortunately for me I have experience sorting stuff since I worked at the post office so I was able to sort through the cards in an effective and timely manner and without the feeling of going postal.

Unfortunately for me, after completing the cards we needed people to contact that contacts on those cards and since there weren’t that many people in, I was phoning duty along with another volunteer named Allen. While I was willing to assist in the back of my mind I was thinking “Why me?”. Speaking is a bit hard for me, you don’t get the same leeway like with writing where you can reply several hours after a message with a eloquently crafted response with next to no spelling or grammatical errors. On the bright side all I had to do was read a script, which eventually became a cake-walk since nobody answers the phone. The time was mostly spent reading the part labeled “Answering machine”. In the end I got worked up for nothing.

10-26-17 I arrive at 9 am again and there seems to be a new agenda today. It seems today we will be doing something called canvasing, where we go around a selected location and going door to door to ask local businesses to see if they can sponsor or help us. So basically more tolerable versions of Mormons. After some time we depart with Lisa, 2 others who’s names I can’t remember and I to the selected location, and area near Williamsburg, hipster central. I mentioned before that speaking is a bit hard for me and that nervousness was only going to get worse since I have to look as professional and pleasant as possible or they’ll turn us down for sure.

After taking almost an hour to find a parking spot, we set off to go to local businesses and ask for sponsorship’s. Out of the handful that we visited the most notable ones I remember were the A/D/O building, a space and restaurant where people can be creative design wise (also full of hipsters). A metal scraping place with a very outspoken owner named Allen who donated a few boxes of dog tags, the Williamsburg hotel while not able to sponsor, was able to offer free rooms for volunteers coming from another country , and an Irish bar with well informed bartender and passionate. Never would I have ever thought I’d meet such interesting characters out in the streets. I honestly expected the worst, Thought they would just shut the door in our face, or forcibly escort us but no, they were genuinely interested or at least polite about not being able to help us. I was even able to collect a few business cards for inspiration. All in all, a pretty good day.

10-27-17- With a list of contacts successfully acquired we now began calling and emailing (mostly calling) specific businesses that seemed interested in helping and sponsoring WPC. A few phone calls are done and we continued searching through index cards to find people related in media to invite to the film event coming up.

10-28-17- Don’t remember much what I did this morning but the most interesting thing about the day was that I was on food pick up duty. Another volunteer with a car, another volunteer and I got into a car drove a short distance to a restaurant and entered through the back. They seem to know the routine and let us through no problem as we pack several Tupperware containers worth of food containing chicken, their delicious mashed potatoes, rice, soups, bagels, and more chicken as quickly as possible. I felt like we were stealing their food and planning a swift get-a-way.

Wednesday 10/18-17- After struggling to obtain an internship for several weeks I got a lead from a friend that a non-profit organization was looking for interns to help them out. This was the half-way point of the semester, so if I couldn’t get this one, I would be forced to drop the class. After building up the courage to make the phone call, I was told to call back in a bit. This is usually a sign that they want no interest and my heart sank but I called back hoping for the best and whatever I was hoping for happened.

Over the phone, I was speaking with the coordinator named Lisa. She explained what exactly the organization was, what they do, and their history and to her credit, it was kinda interesting to hear. They are the Women’s Press Collective (WPC) an independent press that voice the concerns of the community and other important things going on that is often overlooked in mainstream media. I was on board with this, not only because it was my last and only option but I was curious to see how an organization can stay independent and have an impact. I was scheduled for orientation on Saturday October 21st at 10:30.

Saturday 10-21-17- I arrive at the location just in time, I would of been there much earlier if I didn’t spend over 20 minutes circling the location trying to find their door. Regardless, I made it in and I was greeted by Lisa and was asked to fill in some information and then we headed to the conference room along with a few others for a more detailed version of their history and what they do.  Afterwords, there was a tour around their office. Most interesting thing from the tour were the old printing presses. Supposedly these mechanical fossils were from the 50’s and 60’s, and considering these people have been around for over 30 years, they must be reliable (and incredibly heavy.)

After that there was free lunch that was donated to us by a nearby restaurant which was the highlight of this day. Containers of food packed with chicken, soup, spaghetti, and some of the greatest mashed potatoes I have tasted.  Lastly, we concluded the day with a staff meeting where we discussed upcoming events and whatever is on the agenda. The most prominent one being a film screening they called “War in the Newsroom”, where they want to discuss the ongoing issues regarding journalism. They want to have people phoning contacts they have collected and invite them to the event which seems pretty self explanatory. I was just worried that I had to be the one doing it. It took me a good 10 minutes to calm myself and sound professional when I called Lisa. I cant imagine myself doing that.