There is one sure thing about the internship program, you never know what to expect before you get there or how the whole thing will turn out in the end. For the lucky ones, it could turn into a job opportunity doing something they love. For others it could involve days filled with fetching coffee, taking lunch orders and endless copies interspersed by periods of so-called “downtime.” Most experiences, however, will fall somewhere in the middle, as did mine.
I was interning for Advocacy Entertainment, a small startup based out of Los Angeles. AE is a cause entertainment agency, meaning that our goal was to create live music events featuring bands of athletes, celebrities, or other well known non-musical people all for the benefit of charity. It’s a good concept, and it has been proven to work by the success of Band From TV, a band of television stars such as Hugh Laurie, Greg Grunberg, and Jessie Spencer. I should stress the “small” part of our business description. The company is currently my supervisor, his business partner and me, the intern. I saw this as a good thing. Because I was the only intern, my duties went beyond the simple matters of coffee and lunch, though occasionally my fetching skills were put to good use. The bulk of my time was spent managing the Advocacy Entertainment website, attempting to build a company social media presence, and writing press releases that have yet to be released.