First off, Market Week is approaching. For those of you in the industry, you already know your days in the office will be from 9am to as late as overnight, trying to perfect everything , meet deadlines, find the exact fabric for your designer, and the lists of tasks never seems to end. As the intern, I never knew what to expect for the day; I never did the same things as the say before. My duties ranged from grabbing coffee (yup) to making runs to midtown for fabric... needless to say it was a constant back and forth from the office to midtown. I've never taken the R train so much in my life. The blisters on the bottom of my toes are just little souvenirs from my delivery ventures this week.
The other morning I had to get pizza for a meeting that was happening later that hour. Online it said it was open, in person, they weren't opening for another half hour. Cool. That was the most ideal time to take a seat on an edge where a dog had taken a piss. Yup. I sat in old dog piss. No, I did not notice until I got up and realized I smelled homeless. Suddenly the Schnauzer next to me wasn't so cute anymore. For all I know, it was him. Pissed at the fact I sat in the piss, I walked into the little store next door. There was a giant pink neon sign in the outline of a naked woman and that urged me to walk in. The entire concept of "Bulletin," was that all the novelties in store were created by female entrepreneurs. It was all pretty cute. I passed by a dish of pins that read " Shitty Adult." I laughed to myself; it was basically me.
Mind you, I've done retail work my entire life. So my office skills to this point were as limited as could be. One of the designers asked me to make a copy of a duffel bag. Plot twist, copy machines are not just for making copies of paper. It took five failed attempts and the image that was six pages long, wasn't evening out to be the exact size of the actual bag, or straight enough for all the pages to align together. At this moment, I was the classic example of a shitty adult. I couldn't even make copies right.
It took a few days to get into the routine of things. My biggest and most important takeaways this week were:
- INVEST IN A GOOD PAIR OF SHOES. You never know how often you will be sent out. To avoid blisters, don't wear pointed booties or canvas sneakers.
- Pay attention to directives, or lack of. Ask questions and get it down to the specifics in order to avoid having to do the same thing twice or more.
- Take notes. Figuratively, literally, whatever... as long as you take notes. And take EXACT notes, don't skip any steps. You have to be quick and keep up. If you gotta sacrifice the neat handwriting for the peace of mind, do it. Leave the nice handwriting for when you have the time to write neat. The nice handwriting will always be with you, but the seconds between notes won't.
- Don't be too quick to ask for help. It can be easy to panic when you have to do something you've never done before. Try to figure it out on your own if possible. If that fails, then ask for help.
- Make sure to get enough sleep at night and stay hydrated. If these people can stay overnight, you can manage being there for 8 hours. Plus, you are younger than everyone else, it just looks bad if you're tired. BJ's has really good down pillows fyi.
- Be nice and approachable to everyone. Not just your supervisor. On an errand run, I greeted the man I was dropping off some materials to and introduced myself. We then had a little conversation and before I walked out, he gifted me a measuring tape and his business card. He said to call him when I was done with school so I could work with him. See how a small gesture went a long way?
- Always watch where you sit. Sitting in piss definitely wasn't the highlight of my week.
So here's all my useful tips to you. Use them wisely. I will be updating this list as my experience goes on, and of course, sharing it all with you. Also, I really will try to post as frequently as possible, but with classes starting tomorrow, this internship, and a job, I deff can't make any promises. Good luck to everyone in school this semester! Outfit deets: black bandeau from Brandy Melville, vintage reconstructed flannel from LF, and side zip shorts from Cotton On. Photo's by @royal.youths.
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