My Internship = Brilliant!

Where in the world does Jenny now spend 4 days of her week??? At my internship.

Sounds boring in comparison to Florence and Prague...but it's not! I am LOVING my internship so far!

In my study abroad program, we take classes 4 days a week for 5 weeks. After finals, we have a 5-day spring break (woo Italy!). For the rest of the semester, we intern somewhere four days a week and take a class one day a week. Hence, we are now in the internship phase of the program.

The company EUSA received our resumes months ago and was responsible for finding us an internship in London. However, always the proactive one, I basically landed my internship on my own and just asked EUSA to approve it :)

I am working in the Media Relations office (Monday-Wednesday) and the Development office (Thursday) at the Royal College of Art! As a public relations major with a passion for the arts, this job is right up my alley. The RCA is a post-graduate school specializing in art and design with a plethora of departments from women's footwear to vehicle design to photography. They have tons of well-known graduates, and they are constantly in the news. For example, current RCA students are designing the podia and costumes for the London 2012 Olympics, and just yesterday two RCA graduates were picked to design the Olympic torch.

There are three women and one man who work in the Media Relations office, plus another student intern from my program, which is where I spend the majority of my work week. They are all extremely nice, and I think I'm starting to adopt their British lingo: dodgy, mates, brilliant, rubbish...

Right off the bat, my internship was full of excitement. The RCA is situated right next to Hyde Park (so it is only a 15-minute walk from my dorm! Yay for not having to ride the tube!), and my office has a great view from my window. On my first day of work, there was a huge exhibition of sorts going on in the park. Turns out Burberry was hosting their London Fashion Week showing right there!

After lunch, my supervisor Sue and I went outside and watched as the guests arrived. Thinking that nothing photo-worthy would be happening at work, I didn't have my camera with me. I'm kicking myself for that because I saw Kate Bosworth, Anna Wintour, Hamish Bowles, Alexa Chung, Prime Minister David Cameron's wife Samantha, Kate Moss' current and ex-boyfriend (but sadly Kate was a no-show), British pop singer Ellie Goulding, high-profile models, and other famous British people that my boss had to identify for me.

I found this picture online of the Burberry showing. Imagine me standing right outside!

We had such a great view of the action (although unfortunately no ticket that would let us go inside and see the actual runway show). Anticipating the celebrity arrivals gave me a huge adrenaline rush. I've now seen all those celebrities, plus Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. If I can just run into Hugh Grant, I'll be happy :)

While I'm on the subject of fashion, one of my internship projects is to promote the RCA's upcoming fashion design show in Milan. Sue thought it would be a good idea for me to get a feel for student design shows, so she got me a special invitation to the F.A.D. Competition Show for London Fashion Week. This event showcases top designs by several UK students, supplying the winners with financial prizes and placements with leading design companies.

Since the show started at 8 and I get off work at 5, Sue took me out to dinner before the fashion show. It was really nice getting to spend this extra time with boss, just chatting about everything from public relations to art to reality TV shows to London hotspots.

When we showed up at the venue, we got into the long queue of people waiting outside. However, an usher walking by noticed a special marking on our invitations; before I knew it we were being hurried past all of the people and straight into the runway room, where we snagged seats in the second row.

The queue we got to skip!

My VIP invitation

Second row seat

Not gonna lie, I was embarrassingly giddy to be at my first fashion show, even though it was just student designers being featured. But hey, these could be the big whig designers of the future! I got some okay shots of the models, plus a video clip:

The winning designer with her models

My time in the office has been just as awesome. There are definitely slow moments when I'm doing rather mundane PR tasks--filing press clippings, updating contact lists--but for the most part I enjoy the projects I'm given.

For example, yesterday I was told to write a press release about a women's footwear design scholarship awarded to two RCA students. Sue asked me to get quotes from the students, so I rang them up and soon found myself in the footwear design studio on the 7th floor (which has a fantastic view of the city).

I walked past mannequins and scraps of fabric, feeling rather intimidated squeezing between all the concentrated designers and their distinguished tutors. First I talked to Victoria, a skinny blond with a pixie style haircut and multiple ear piercings. Then I interviewed Sang Min, who apologized for her broken English as she showed me her winning shoe design: a muted tan piece with soft leather that had been twisted to a point to form a heel and an extra pocket of flexible material that would allow the toe to bend.

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to speak directly with students. After all, these individuals surely have successful careers in the fashion world ahead of them. The winner of the 2008 Footwear scholarship, Chau Har Lee, now has a successful line of shoes selling at Selfridges, and was recognized by the Manolo Blahnik as RCA's 2009 Footwear Designer of the year. Check out her designs, pretty inventive eh?

Chau Har Lee's shoe designs

For a last interesting tidbit about my internship, today I got stuck at my desk. The BBC was filming a segment about the RCA, and decided to do so in the gallery space right outside my office. I tried to sneak out to use the bathroom, and was immediately chastised by a producer for ruining the take. Maybe I just wanted to make my TV debut, GOSH.

I'm sure I'll continue to have more blog-worthy stories about my internship. I've talked to other people on my program who are not really enjoying their placements, so I feel lucky that I am so happy with mine. Plus, I think your attitude and work ethic can make or break a work experience. I'm pretty good about always walking into the office with a smile :-) (Not hard to do when your co-worker brings in a box of chocolates for everyone to share.)