Summer 2006:  A New View of a Nearby City

Last summer, I had the opportunity to spend two months living and studying 12,000 miles away from home. My summer study abroad experience in Southeast Asia included meeting college students from three different countries, sampling a greater variety of food than I had ever seen, taking a canopy walk through a Malaysian rain forest and riding an elephant through the ancient capital of Thailand. This summer, instead of exploring countries halfway across the world, I spent three months working full time as a feature writing and marketing intern at a newspaper whose office was located just 20 miles from my home.

While the chance to gain real world journalism experience and earn a little money didn’t sound like a bad way to spend the summer, when I began work I thought that there was no way interning in Winston-Salem, N.C., could compare to studying and sightseeing in places like China’s Yunnan Province, Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore. Fortunately, I soon found that, although Winston-Salem didn’t have rain forests or elephants or ornate palaces as those countries had, working there for the summer was almost as interesting as spending it on another continent.

My central task as an intern was writing City Guide, an annual magazine whose 90 pages were filled with articles about some of the unique places, organizations and events in Winston-Salem and surrounding cities. On the first day of the internship, instead of offering advice about what to write, my editor gave me a stack of old City Guides to read in order to create a “story budget” of 20-25 articles to include in the 2006-2007 version of the magazine. After spending a few days familiarizing myself with Winston-Salem’s offerings, brainstorming about what to investigate, and getting her approval for the budget, the real work of the internship began.

I spent the next 12 weeks finding my way around Winston-Salem (which, despite its proximity to my hometown, was still unfamiliar territory to me, except for the mall), setting up interviews, researching and writing. While my editor was always there to answer questions or address concerns, she also told me that she liked to give interns as much freedom as possible. Consequently, I had the opportunity to do all of my own investigating to find out which organizations and events would be best to profile and who I could talk with to learn more about these events and organizations.

This process of researching, interviewing and writing stories wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, research for an article involved simply sending a few e-mails or making a few phone calls to check facts that I had already gathered. However, many other times, it involved setting up interviews that were a 30 minute drive from the office and lasted hours. I managed to get lost on the way back and forth from such interviews more than a few times. Even on days when I made it to my destination without any wrong turns, writer’s block could arise and make it hard to write more than a few sentences that made any sense.

In addition to these obstacles, there was also construction and demolition work on the floor above my office, and the constant sounds of jackhammers made it difficult to concentrate on writing articles or on proofreading the department’s various special sections, which was another of my responsibilities as an intern. My coworkers often made jokes about the incessant noises echoing above us, which usually made the workday more bearable. However, some days, the noises were so loud that even their jokes couldn’t stop me from gritting my teeth and counting down the minutes until the day was over and I could escape to someplace quieter.

Despite such obstacles, when the last day of the internship arrived, I found myself reluctant to turn off my computer and leave the office, even though it meant I would no longer have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. and battle traffic on Interstate 40 every morning. Through the research and interviews that went into each story I wrote, I had the chance to see some unique sites that I had never known were located just a few miles from my house. I observed a yoga class held in a contemporary art studio, strolled through a replica of a historic Moravian village, participated in an evening of contra dancing (a great experience even for someone like me who can barely tell her right foot from left, much less do-si-do), watched as a Hispanic radio station made its afternoon broadcast, wandered through a farmers market located in the middle of a busy downtown street, and visited a children’s science center, where I got to experience physics firsthand with a quick ride four feet upwards on an air chair.

In addition to the places I explored, I also had the opportunity to meet a variety of people who gave me an appreciation for what it was like to work hard at a job you enjoy. Many of the individuals that I interviewed or set up photo assignments with went out of their way to provide detailed press kits or take me on tours of where they worked. One individual even gave me a full-length tour of the city’s Museum of American Art, which was housed in a restored 1917 mansion! Such helpful responses made me all the more determined to work hard at my internship and make this year’s City Guide as complete and accurate as possible.

The individuals who I met not only gave me the motivation to do my best to profile Winston-Salem’s unique offerings and the dedicated people who made these offerings possible; their excitement when they learned where I went to college also made me even more proud to be a Tar Heel.         

“Really? That’s a great school!” was a common response when I answered queries of “Where do you go to college?” during the small talk that usually followed or preceded interviews. “I bet you love it there!” many people would say.

“I do,” I would respond, their comments making me eager to return to Carolina at the end of such a great summer.