coffee

What's the first thing that comes to mind when you say "intern responsibilities"? COFFEE! Today two gentlemen had a meeting with my boss, but when they arrived she was nowhere to be found. One of the Executives let them in, and sought me out to "handle them". I escorted them to a conference room. And then it happened: I asked if I could get them anything, water, coffee, tea, whatever. One asked for a glass of water and the other asked for coffee. I laughed at the irony of me getting coffee. Obviously, the intern makes coffee. But that has NEVER been one of my responsibilities, much like Jake Conley, who's position "is not running errands and getting coffee".

In fact, when I started at my old job, my boss had to actually show me how to brew a pot. One day, one of the employees asked me to make him a cup, and I quickly ran over to get it for him. When I returned, he had a huge grin on his face, and I realized that he was just joking.

The point is that I spend the majority of my time doing cool and interesting, or at the very least, advanced things, but it really brings me back to "being an intern" when I get coffee for someone.

All this talk of coffee, and I think I've just found a perfect "Joke of the Week" for next week:

A college senior was hired as an intern, and his first task was to go out and fetch coffee for the office staffers.

Eager to do well on his first day, he grabbed a large thermos and hurried to a nearby coffee shop. He held up the thermos and the coffee shop worker quickly came over to take the order.

The intern asked, "Is this big enough to hold six cups of coffee?"

The coffee shop worker looked at the thermos, hesitated a few seconds, then finally replied, "Yeah, it looks like about six cups to me."

"Oh good!" the intern sighed in relief. "Then give me two regular coffees, two black, and two decaf."

money makes the world go round

I'm going to be paid $12 instead of $10! Yay! (I know the picture is horrible, and it makes me look greedy, but it made me laugh so I had to post it.) This little piece of news makes everything okay: I'll deal with the three-sided cube and I won't be as sad that I'm not working at the old company anymore. Plus, I bet I'm the highest paid intern in the United States! Or, at least in my town. Today was good, workwise. I got a lot of contact info and sorted the information I had. Tomorrow, it's going to be an e-mail spree!

nervous

On Friday, around 5:30, when the office was pretty much empty, I realized that it was the perfect opportunity to approach my boss and ask about all the things that have been bothering me, which I wasn't going to bring up, but I just don't want to spend the rest of the summer wondering, "what if?".



1st Q: Is there an intranet?
A: No, we just used shared drives.

2nd Q: Is there a way to access my e-mail from home?
A: Yes, here's how...

(My boss had mentioned - twice - that she would have the IT guy change my monitor to a newer one.)
3rd Q: If my monitor is changed, is there any way that I could move over one cube so that I could have that fourth wall? It's really unnerving to be sitting there right in the middle of everything.
A: I know he has some cubes specifically set-up for traveling people, but since you are going to be here all summer, maybe he'll be able to switch them.

4th Q: My old company offered me $12 an hour. I really want to stay here because I think that this is a really good growing opportunity. Is that possible?
A: I'll check the budget and let you know on Tuesday.


So I'm really nervous about that last piece. I really hope they say yes. I wrote about my reasons in a post titled "feeling a bit uneasy". Check it out.

title upgrade

In my last post, I described my first assignment, and mentioned that I would be sending e-mails to a variety of people to try to get speaking and sponsor opportunities for my company. This immediately brought one concern: my e-mail signature (you know, the thing at the end of an e-mail, similar to the one below).




My e-mail signature has my name, my work title,, my work phone number, the fax number and a link to the company website. I pointed out to my boss that "marketing intern" might not look so impressive when trying to contact these people. (I was worried I wouldn't be taken seriously.) I asked if there was another title I could put instead and she answered simply, "just use Marketing Coordinator".

That's an easy enough solution, but as I wrote recently, there already is a Marketing Coordinator in our department. She's a college graduated (2003) who's been with the company for a year. I thought about it and, if I were in her position, I think I'd be pretty pissed off that some little intern was going to put the same title as mine in her e-mail.

My solution... and my new title: Assistant Marketing Coordinator.

I now realize that this will also be what I can put on my resume. A step up from Marketing Intern.

my assignment

My B2B (business-to-business) company sells hi-tech equipment to customers in a variety of different industries and is therefore looking for tradeshows to go to in order to get the company's name out and to show people the product. My assignment is to basically find out where and when the tradeshows are. This sounds much more simple than it actually is.

I am going to be focusing on three industries (at least for now...). I must research numerous different professional organizations, associations, and clubs within these industries. Most of these organizations operate at both a national and state (or "area") level. I must contact every chapter and determine whether they have a convention or tradeshow where my company can either send a speaker or be a sponsor. I will using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to keep track of chapters' and contacts' information, the number of events per year, whether we would be able to get involved, how much everything costs...

I'm a little nervous because this is the kind of thing that I could end up either doing really well or just really poorly. If it doesn't go well at first, or if I get overwhelmed, I can just see myself pushing it off and avoiding completing it. Which, I obviously can't do. My plan is to break up the assignment to make it less overwhelming and more enticing or else I'll end up looking like this:

I would have benefited from UCSD's Learn at Lunch lecture: "Just-in-Time Management: Instant Cure for Overwhelm" given by Nanci McGraw. The following describes my problems perfectly.

If you really “wanna,” says McGraw, you can avoid the dual pitfalls of perfectionism and procrastination that hold many people back. If everything’s got to be perfect before a task moves forward, for example, it might never get done. Sometimes, says McGraw, “pretty good is good enough,” especially if the alternative is inaction or lack of progress. Procrastination’s not always a bad thing, she says, again citing her father’s Western wisdom: “Some things deserve every amount of procrastination you can muster up, ‘cuz you hadn’t ought to be doin’ ‘em anyway.” (WOW!) But at work, putting things off now usually creates larger problems and more work later.

So, I guess when I'm trying to tackle this assignment, I'll remind myself that I just have to get it done. First place to avoid procrastination and perfectionism: drafting a really good letter to send to all these people.

boss confusion

Just like the newborn bird in "Are You My Mother?", I, too, am unsure of the chain of command. Let me explain... In the marketing department we have:

VP of Marketing
Director of Marketing
Marketing Coordinator
me

Now I know that both the Director of Marketing and Marketing Coordinator report to the VP of Marketing, and I think that the Marketing Coordinator reports to the Director of Marketing, but I'm not sure. I know that I report to the Director of Marketing, my "boss"(?), and that I work with both the Marketing Coordinator and the Director of Marketing, (and I've been working more closely with the Marketing Coordinator than the Director of Marketing), but I'm not sure if the Marketing Coordinator is actually considered my boss or not.

Try saying that three times fast! Props to you if you actually followed that confusing explanation.