Here’s what I can’t put on LinkedIn.

1. No one cares about you… in the best way.

The people that I was working with this summer had spouses, children, rent payments. People would often leave work for doctor’s appointments or to pick up their children. There was no reason for me to be over analyzing the way I talked on the morning meeting or whether I need to use 👍🏽 or 🙌🏽 as a slack reaction. Come 5:00PM, no one cared about what the intern at work was doing that day. They were not going home and talking to their family about that.

2. Ask for what you want

One of my coworkers told me “make it known what you want.” And that stuck with me. Your current position might not be exactly where you want it to be, but if you let people know your interests, they can help you find opportunities that align. My fellowship program also liked to remind us that “closed mouths do not get fed.” I feel like this lesson really applies to many aspects of life: friendship, work, the seat on the NJ Transit train, etc.

3. Networking isn’t that scary

I was TERRIFIED to network at the beginning of the summer. With my fellowship program there was so much pressure and expectation to take advantage of all the connection opportunities. And within my chosen field, it’s pretty much a necessity. But it all felt superficial to me. I didn’t know how to pitch myself and I barely know where I want to be in 10 years, so how was I supposed to communicate that to someone else?

Over the summer, I became quite comfortable asking people for informational chats, and soon it became fun! I approached them like any other conversation and really tried to get to know the person and their position of work. I came into it curious, yet prepared, and soon I had those desired “connections” with people!

4. Nothing lasts forever

So, it usually takes me a 15-min voice memo to tell the whole story but I was slapped in the face with this lesson on Week 8 of my internship at 10am on a Thursday. Heartfelt messages flooded the slack chat as people exchanged phone numbers and kind words. My team had been cut in half by a layoff. My manager asked me to come into her office, she said “welcome to the media business!” and then proceeded to tear up like 3 sentences later.

Over the next few days I read articles about major layoffs at Paramount and A+E. It’s scary that this is reality for so many people. It’s a little scary that this is the industry I’m saying “yes” to with so much recent uncertainty and instability.

But alas, now that I’m done with my 10-week internship, and feeling a bit bittersweet about it, I am once again reminded, nothing lasts forever. And hopefully the (excess) craziness in the entertainment/media industry won’t either.

5. They are just people

The second half of the aforementioned 15-min voice memo would be about the lunch that I had with one of my coworkers who was laid off that morning. We spent 3 hours at a restaurant as I asked her questions about the company and her career. Suddenly I was having drinks and splitting a dessert with someone that I reported to less than 5 hours before. And one of the things she told me, as she proved her point, was that: “they’re just people.”

The CEO of every company has parents, maybe siblings, wakes up every morning and uses the bathroom, gets annoyed with their kids sometimes, and probably has spilled food on themselves more than once. Like lesson #1, people have lives and they’re really not all that scary once you realize that they were once like you too: young, excited, eager, scared, confused, etc. Which leads me into my last point…

(I also learned this point by finding the social media acc’s of my coworkers hehe)

6. People want to help you!

In this job market, it is insane trying to find a job without a connection. But let me tell you, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of times a person I had just met (one of the VPs at my company, or someone I simply was having a coffee chat with) said something along the lines of “oh, I can ask about ___ for you” or “I would be happy to write a recommendation letter” or “feel free to ask me about ___”. I feel like networking seemed really superficial to me because in my industry it CAN be, but the flip side of that is that EVERYONE needs a job and understands that. There are so many people who want to help other people get opportunities.

… And I’m so thankful to have met so many wonderful people at my internship this summer. Goodbye Hearst!