My Summer as a Popstar Intern

Let me start off by saying that I did not think this was going to happen to me.

In fact, you can quote back to my exact tweet in April, when I was applying for every relevant internship that I could find, which read, “I’m addicted to applying to wildly ambitious internships that I’m never going to get,” distressed emoji face and all.

I couldn’t believe it when Popstar!, a magazine that I had once spent slumber parties reading cover to cover, called me as I walked out of my Environmental Issues & Choices class in Hartline.

Accepting the internship was almost a no-brainer, but although I had been working since I was a freshman in high school, I had become spoiled by 3 minutes or less commutes. Getting to my dream internship would be no easy feat, and I would be traveling across five of New Jersey’s busiest and most aggressive highways. To put this into perspective, note that I had once gotten lost on the way home from the mall- and to the internship interview for that matter. But I had discovered one pivotal factor in all of this; I wanted it more than I was afraid of it. Way more.

With that realization and my laptop in hand, I was thrilled to be sitting in my tween poster clad cubicle, at a desk covered in fan letters. Being a girl who had worshipped The Hills in high school, (and let’s be real- still stops dead in her TV Guide tracks whenever a rerun airs) I felt like the L.C. Teen Vogue equivalent.

I knew I wasn’t at Condé Nast exactly, but I was sure going to style my wardrobe as if I were. With a dress-for-success mindset, I was convinced that my best blog posts could only be written by wearing bubblegum pink cropped pants. It didn’t matter if a person in the cubicle next to me was wearing a t-shirt.

My first day was a whirlwind. The July issue was being completed and everyone in the office was working tirelessly to get it done. Somehow, the Editor-in-Chief made time to venture to my cubical and inquire if I knew who Hunter Hayes was and if I liked him. “Yes,” I replied, only assuming it had something to do with my next blog post. “Do you want to go to his sold out concert hosted by MTV for us?” she asked. One jaw drop later and I was being emailed the details. Okay, maybe now was when those L.C. instincts really started to kick in.

Before I knew it, I was blogging on a regular basis, collaborating with editors about pieces for the magazine, and in the backroom of the Piscataway Wal-Mart rubbing shoulders with Seventeen Magazine representatives, waiting to interview teen sensation, Little Mix.

I found myself picking up media tickets for the ninth row at a Big Time Rush concert and flashing my press pass at the Hunter Hayes show in NYC. I was no doubt living my mass comm major dream, and my name was in the masthead to prove it.

It wasn’t until logging into my school email that I realized how much the entire experience had actually affected me, Husky ID no longer meant identification. My mind translated One Direction.