Bridget O’Donnell

I know, I know. Given how frequently I blogged about “The Intern” at SNDBoston last October, you’d think I’d bother to write at least SOMETHING about New York City and my internship at the Times. Instead, it appears as though I vacated my blog.

But fear not, I return to blog with detailed, albiet long-delayed, updates.

(For more instant updates, make sure to check out my Twitterfeed for my, uh, “microblogging” of life in the city).

And now, without further adieu…

WEEK 1

Saturday, May 24: I arrived safely at LaGuardia airport, my parents accompanying me. We left the rest of the family behind because, well, let’s face it, who wants to take their entire family of 8 on an airplane? What if that family of 8 also included a restless 4 year old boy?

It’s kind of hard to pack your life belongings away to stow on an airplane; it’s even more difficult to do so with recent limits on the number of bags you can bring with you on a plane. Luckily, we were able to get my three, yes three, bags on the plane without incurring any of those nasty additional fees. I call it being crafty.

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Hotel above Grand Central Station, which instantly became #1 on my list of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed at. Even their workout room was amazing.

After a day of navigating the city and eating at some fancy restaurants, I watched a disappointing Eastern Conference Finals Game 3 while working out, and then went to bed.

(For the record, I’m a tad obsessed with the Detroit Pistons).

Sunday, May 25: Went running with my dad in Central Park before heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Mass. I guess I got spoiled when I went to Rome 8 years ago to see St. Peter’s, but I still thought the Cathedral was gorgeous. But tourists taking photos during the service were a little distracting.

(Above: A shot of St. Patrick’s from my Webshots account. Before you laugh at me for having a Webshots, know that it is from 2005, when I was still in high school. Webshots was way cooler than Flickr back then).

Then we went to the NYU dorms to start moving my luggage in. And let’s just say, after staying in the nicest hotel I think I’ve ever been to, walking into a not-yet-cleaned dorm room with trashbags from previous occupants was a little disheartening.

Eventually, staff members cleaned it for us, but the final result wasn’t much better.

(Welcome to New York!)

After I moved eveything in, we went to buy some groceries. Then we headed off Little Italy for our last dinner together.

And in the blink of an eye, I was by myself. All alone. In New York City.

Monday, May 26: Memorial Day was a pretty hot day for May, so of course I went running in Central Park in the middle of the afternoon. Smart move.

Only one of my suitemates — another Times intern — had moved in at this point, but she had errands to do, so I was all alone with lots of time to kill during the day. So I decided I would do a dry run of my daily commute to the Times.

And let me tell you, even from the outside, the building was beautiful. As I walked by, I saw a tourist taking a photo of the entrance. It took me a few seconds to realize that this woman was taking a photo of the place where I would be working this summer. Pretty neat, huh?

After taking it all in, I decided to explore some more. I had about an hour or so until sunset, so I went downtown. It couldn’t hurt to figure out the subway system, could it?

I wanted to see Wall Street, but the streets downtown got a little confusing, so instead, I headed towards Ground Zero. I had been there once before in 2005, so I wanted to see what progress had been made on the site.

From what little I could see of the area — most of it was fenced off — not much had changed, except for the placement of the victims’ names. In fact, they seemed nowhere to be found. However, construction had indeed begun on the Freedom Tower, as signs around the area seemed to indicate.

I took few minutes to sit down across the street from the site to reflect until it started to get a little dark. I walked around St. Paul’s Church before taking the subway back to my dorm to call it a night.

Tuesday, May 27: Well, this was it. My first day of work. Only one problem: I had no idea what time to come in.

Now before you tsk tsk me for being an irresponsible employee, I would like it to be known that I did try to contact someone about starting time, but couldn’t reach anyone. I later found out, of course, that they did try to email the interns on Friday about when to start, but experienced technological difficulties.

Regardless, I showed up to the Times at 8:00 AM, the standard working time*, just to make sure I wouldn’t miss out on anything.

*Fellow journalists, you can laugh at this since the standard starting work time is usually much later than 8 AM. I knew this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

The security guards had me wait in the cafeteria. But of course, I didn’t understand the elevator system and ended up on the completely wrong floor.

(For the record, at the Times you push button for the floor you want to go on BEFORE the elevator door opens. Easy concept, hard to remember).

As it would turn out, I was early, but not by much — we were supposed to arrive at 8:30.

Over a free (!) breakfast, I met 8 of the other interns starting that week — reporting interns for BizDay, Sports, Science and the Washington Bureau, the Video Intern, two Photography interns, and the other Design Intern. (She’s working primarily in news design while I’ll be over in features). Five Copy Editing interns, a Foreign Desk intern, and Graphics intern would be arriving the next week, while two Metro interns and a T-magazine intern would be arriving later in the summer. Also, another Graphics intern had already arrived before May 27.

Just to clear things up, that’s 20 interns.

Right before lunch, I got my super-neat NYTimes employee card. Apparently, I can get into any museum in the city for free with it. AND I can bring guests.

Along with the other design intern, I had lunch with two members of the Times News Art Department. We went to a restaurant across the street that also had a good view of the old Times building (which, of course, made for interesting conversation material). After lunch, we met some of the many members of the news and features design departments, before I met again with Ken, my assigned Times mentor (who also interviewed me at SNDBoston last October).

After the introductions, the interns were given a tour of the new building before heading home for the day.

After the tour, some of the other interns and I went to go get our NYU ID cards. We foolishly thought that coming in at 5:50 would mean shorter lines. (The office closes at 6). Boy, were we wrong. Basically, every other person interning in New York for the summer was there, business-casual clad and all. We didn’t finish until about 7.

When I finally came back to my new “home,” my new roomie had just arrived. She’s interning at Money magazine through a program run by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and there are about 20 of them on our floor. So you know what that means: our floor is FULL of journalists — Times and ASME interns, to be exact.

Finally, I went to a mandatory NYU hall meeting before going to bed.

Wednesday, May 28: My second day of orientation involved a lot of training sessions for the newsroom technology programs, including one for the dreaded CCI. Luckily, I learned that I would be primarily be working with InDesign CS3, which of course made me very happy.

At the end of our CCI training session, the visual interns were invited to sit in on a Page One Summary meeting. (The reporting interns had seen it the day before). Very exciting stuff. All of the top editors from each section were there, suggesting the top 5 or 6 stories that would run on the front page.

Thursday, May 29: The third day of orientation was long, but very interesting. We had hour-long sessions for each of the following topics:

• Times Traditions (which included a video with different movie clips in which the New York Times is mentioned)
• Ethics and Standards
• “Getting it Right” (a session on avoiding errors)
• Legal Issues

We were also briefed on a treasure hunt with the interns (!) that would take place the next day. We learned that we would be broken up into teams of two and would be traveling to various Burroughs to take photos of certain landmarks. Being a competitive bunch, many of us already started to figure out our subway routes, and even did some trash talking with the other groups.

After work, I had authentic New York pizza with some of the other interns.

Friday, May 30: Originally, I planned to wake up at 5:00 AM to go see Usher perform for Good Morning America. Instead, I took one look at the time when my alarm clock went off, and went back to sleep.

But, I woke up again in time to arrive to work for the fourth, and final, day of orientation.

We started out the day with a tour of the downtown area with a reporter who has been covering the Ground Zero recovery efforts since 9/11. I couldn’t have asked for a better tour guide. I took lots of photos, which will be on Flickr very soon (hopefully!)

At the end of the tour, we were off on our own to start the treasure hunt. We were also given money for lunch.

My partner, the Science intern, and I wanted very much to win, so we set off immediately. Our assigned photos included:

• The “Imagine” circle in Strawberry Fields (in Central Park)
• The Bronx Zoo entrance
• The Ghandi statue in Union Square
• Junior’s Cheesecake Restaurant in Brooklyn

We were so competitive that we didn’t even stop for lunch. Or Junior’s for that matter. We did stop to buy a cupcake near Strawberry Fields, but that was about it.

When we finally arrived back at the Times, we learned that we got second*. I was slightly disappointed, but I was relieved when I received a runners up prize — a mug.

*A week later, I learned that the first place duo was disqualified because they took a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge from the wrong side. Meaning…my team won!

The weekend, May 30 (evening)-June 1: Met Rudy Giuliani over dinner with some of the interns on my floor at an Italian restaurant in Chinatown…Watched the Pistons self-destruct against the Celtics to lose in 6 games…Discovered that the NYU dorms provide ESPN360 (a must for the TV-less NBA fan)…explored Union Square…Went shopping…Attended mass at St. Patrick’s for the second week in a row (and decided that it would become my weekly Church destination).

(Yep. That would be Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and once 2008 Presidential Candidate. Photos, such as this one, will be on Flickr as the summer goes on!)

This post is tagged internships, New York City, New York Times, summer