Here is the obligatory "first day of my internshIp" blog. Gentlemen such as Nick (Babylonian) and Ben (GlenTennis) have done a great job at letting you guys peak behind the curtain through videos, photos on Facebook, and plenty of blogs. My experience? Let me tell you a tale...
My internship was no secret. Even before day 1 of work, I got a voluminous amount of PMs asking about how getting an internship works. The most imperative skill isn't video skills or even giving the staff "favors", it's simply not being crazy and an active community member. Or at least that's the impression I got. Being able to fit in and contribute to the office environment is just as key as work ethic or talent. Ethan gave me the impression a plethora of individuals were interviewed for the position. What made me stand out, I probably couldn't tell you. I guess Ethan didn't think I was crazy or perhaps had the right kind of crazy in me.
How this job interferes with my military life is actually very surprising. One of our sister Infantry units (37th Combat Brigade Team) is deploying to Afghanistan at a time I'm not too sure I'm allowed to display publicly, yet. However, lets just say I'll be turning 21 out of country. My unit recently returned from Iraq. The current standard is all soldiers returning from combat cannot be forced to deploy within 15 months of returning home. My Commander was tasked with providing our sister unit with 5 Scouts (my job), all volunteers. I cannot simply leave duty for an entire summer without a good fucking reason.
Once Ethan green-lit my interview, I made a deal with my commander that I will volunteer for the deployment in return for the leave time. I thought he would tell me to fuck-off and call me a jackass for trying to "strike a deal" with an Officer. Surprisingly, he thought my commitment to my civilian goals was impressive and let me do my thing in return of 12 months in Afghanistan. Deploying is something I want to do and I'm excited for the career possibilities.
Finding a place to stay in San Francisco is virtually impossible. Despite Craigslist being littered with over 100 new room rental ads a day, I can't get any replies. I even moved beyond the point of reading people's ads and simply spam my generic letter of a room request to every Craigslist poster. I thought I would have to get at least one real response. That was a big fat negative. Since I got in the city, I have been staying with Whiskey Media King-Intern, Matt Kessler. I'm super appreciative of him letting a stranger in his home and he even gave guest passes to his gym. We've got along fantastically. He totally lives in a shady-ass section of San Francisco. There's a suspicious amount of Asian Massage Parlors open at 10:00pm. Kessler has my thumbs up.
This internship has given me the chance to learn a lot of the city of San Francisco itself. Most importantly, the ladies. Kessler and I agree that the ratio of attractive females vs. attractive males dramatically favors females. The majority of women in this city are beautiful. I might just stay. Another odd thing is the lack of gas stations. I literally have not seen one gas station in the duration of my stay thus far. During my typical day, I do cover several miles of city walking from Kessler's to the Whiskey Media office. The popular use of public transportation aside, there are still a lot of cars in the city. Where the hell do people get gas!?
My work day begins at 9am. The first half of the day I dedicate to Anime Vice, mostly. I post trailers, do community stuff, and create promos. The rest of my day mainly revolved around to editing high-priority Comic Vine wikis, then ended with running chat for Happy Hour. The office is surprisingly quit. The bulk of the staff is glued to the monitor and our video team is constantly running back and forth with cables. Will Smith was building some sort of contraption. I think it was an Atom Bomb. The intern's job is to do wiki-related work, create quests, answer the phone, and general odds and ends. The atmosphere is greater than any other workplace I have ever been in. I really enjoyed my time and look forward to continuing my work.
If you have any questions, simply post below. Now I'm going to do change all the images on Anime Vice to characters from Dragon Ball Z. For those of you who think Anime Vice is the neglected step-child of Whiskey Media, let me tell you that I will do everything in my power to transform that site into Dragon Ball Z-Vice. My intern name is apparently CQC-Steve to separate me from Internet-Steve (Lemon).
P.S. If you or someone you know is renting a room out, let me know.
Love,
Steve
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