Monday, October 31st

I was sick on Friday, so I didn't get to go in to work. But today was a really fun day because it was Halloween. Not only did I get to leave the office really early at around 3:30 or 4, but we hardly did any work. I was so glad that Halloween fell on a Monday because it always sucks doing a lot of work on a Monday. The office was decorated with little Halloween things here and there and everyone was dressed in black and orange. Renata and pretty much every other assistant had candy on their desks for the guests and for the interns and other people that stopped by. We did a few Halloween inspired artist news stories. We did one on singers' past Halloween costumes and then we put up a poll of what people think our singers will dress like this year. Really the rest of the day was spent chatting to Renata and relaxing. It was hard to be productive because everyone was really excited to just get out of the office and celebrate the holiday. It's hard to write a blog about what I did today because…we didn't do hardly anything. I was grateful for the small break from work.

Today Renata gave me another big project to work on. After I was done archiving and opening mail, and doing all of the normal things, I had to start working on the website again. It's been a while since the website was updated by the web technician, so Mara and I had to go through the website and write down everything that needed to be updated or changed. We had to go through every artist again and figure out what singles were missing. So we had to go on to iTunes and write down every single for every artist. It wasn't hard work, it just took a long time. It will be a project that we work on over the next few days because we have to many artists. The rest of the day was pretty calm, I had to get tea and water for one of Monte's business partners, Matt. He was really nice and actually sat and talked with the interns for a while. Then once I got back to Renata's desk, she told me and Mara that we were going to start doing intern friday starting next week. Each department will take an hour every friday to sit down with all of the interns in the company and explain what their job is like and what they have to do on a day to day basis. I'm excited to start learning about different aspects of the industry that I don't really know anything about.

Wednesday, October 26th

There was a lot of energy in the office today. We found out early that Nelly was going to come in to the office to meet the team so everyone was really excited. For the first half of the day, I had to take down all of the pictures on the boards outside in the lobby and inside the office and replace everything with Nelly photos. Then I had to find some Nelly CDs that we could play over the speakers the whole day. This is just kind of the procedure that we go through whenever any artist comes in. I packed some fliers and CDs into mailing envelopes after that until Nelly came in at around 3. I was introduced to him and he was really nice. He was kind of shorter than I thought he would be, but he was very polite and said hi to everyone, even all the interns. After that I tried to focus and work on some artist news, but I was too excited that I just met Nelly. That, and Nelly and his team and Monte were blasting some of Nelly's new music from the lounge which my desk is right by. It was a pretty laid back day because of Nelly. After he left, Renata let me go early because we spent the whole day getting ready for him.

Tuesday, October 25th

Today neither of the other interns were in the office because they were sick, and Renata was in meetings with Monte for a large majority of the day so I had to do a three person job by myself. I was extremely stressed out today and had a million things to do. I had to do five different artist news articles and I had to create something new called “Breakout Artist of the Week” where we spot light a certain artist who is releasing their album that week. I had to monitor Renata’s phones all day because she was hardly at her desk, and they ran about every five minutes. I had to send out a few things in the mail, which obviously wasn’t very difficult. And then a few ladies came in from the Florence and the Machine management team and I had to get coffee, tea, etc. After the meeting was done in Monte’s office I had to archive a few things in Monte’s email and them I opened all of the actual mail and organized it. Then we got three packages of CD’s that I had to organize and put away. There was a lot of stuff to do on my own today, but luckily it was all easy stuff that I already knew how to do. It was exhausting, but kind of nice to work on my own for a day.

Monday, October 24th

It seems like Monte just got back to New York and he already left again. He went over to London today until Wednesday next week. No one ever really tells us why Monte is going where he is going, so the whole thing is kind of mysterious. When he left, the office got more relaxed again. I didn't have to order his lunch because he was already gone so I spent the day eating New York style pizza and researching our artists. Renata came over to our intern desks (what we call intern row) and just hung out for a while. It feels more and more everyday like I'm just hanging out with my friends. Actually today it didn't even feel like I was at work. I'm very lucky that my work consists of things that I do on my own anyway. In my free time outside of work, I like to stay up to date on entertainment and artist news, and now I get to do it for a job. In fact, a lot of times when I have to write an artist article, I hardly have to do any research because I already know what's going on. Renata called me over to her desk to do the call sheet. When you do the call sheet, you make a list of all of the people that called for Monte today and leave a memo of what they want. There is a certain process you go through on the computer to enter the callers. The first day it took me a while to get the hang of it, but now I can do it like it's second nature. I've only been at this internship for about a month but I already feel very comfortable and I'm more and more confident each day in the jobs that I have to do.

Friday, October 21st

Today was a pretty standard day. I did archiving and artist news and we chatted with Renata about some more interns for the Spring term. We have to set up the interviews soon for the two students that we liked. Then late in the afternoon, Renata sent Mara and I an email that asked if we wanted tickets to a concert for Saturday night. We went over to Renata's desk to talk about it and she said that Monte and his wife and Avery and his wife were going to go to the Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull concert, but now they weren't going to go. So Renata asked if we wanted the tickets, and of course we did. So tomorrow night, I get to go to Enrique for free, which is just another reason I love my job. After that, we had to redo one of the boards in the office and one in the lobby. When we have an artist or artist's team come in to the office, we have to change the boards around the office with picture of them. Today we changed them to Washington who came in again. It didn't take very long because we keep all of the photos on file and we just have to staple them up. I'm glad Mara was helping though, it would not have been a fun one person job. After that we helped one of the newer interns put up a new huge poster of Florence from Florence and the Machine. It was about 6 feet tall and was hard to keep it from sticking to literally everything. It was a three person job for a reason. I guess I was in an organizing mood because after we decorated a little bit, I just wanted to keep going. So I organized a lot of things around the office including Renata's desk, the CD cabinet and my work area.

Thursday, October 20th

Today Mara and I spent a lot of time at Renata's desk working with her. We got some resumes emailed to us for Spring interns who will fill our positions. We spent the day facebooking them and doing some background research. We read over there emails and gave our first impressions and then we broke down what we did and didn't like about each person. We made a list of pros and cons of all seven of the resumes and then kept narrowing it down from there. All of the resumes were sent in to us through an organization called Dream Careers, and it was kind of a turn off right away that these resumes were sent in by a teacher or an adviser of all of these students as opposed to them taking the time of finding us and sending in their resumes themselves. But we still went through and researched them. We narrowed down the seven applicants to two that we liked. Then in a few days, we'll set up a phone interview with them and me and Mara and then if we like them enough, we'll set up an interview with them and Renata. It was fun to see potential interns, but I'm not sure if any of them are the right fit.