Hello from week two in Dublin! While I thought this week would be more on the chill side since most of my time would be spent at my internship, I can quite easily say that I have been proven wrong.

The first day of my internship was fun and simultaneously eventful and uneventful. Upon arrival, I was met with a friendly but small team. I knew before arrival that the team was small, but it was extra small this first day because some people were on vacation (holiday as they say here) or were leaving early for vacation. Further, my supervisor was one of those people. Despite this, the team was welcoming and did their best to get me mostly settled with a note that I would be officially trained starting the next day with the return of my supervisor.

I got to sit in on a team meeting and get a glimpse at the magazine’s daily process. With Gay Community News being a magazine by and for the queer community, and this month being Pride month, GCN is very busy! Everyone had different important and urgent tasks to do, so I was given some style guideline PDFs and sent off to pick a banked piece to work on. A banked piece is a piece that could be good for the magazine to have but isn’t as urgent as other pieces and thus doesn’t have a set deadline.

While I was nervous to be kind of thrown into the deep end, I reminded myself that I am capable and skilled in writing and deserved to be there. I researched my piece, which was on the interesting topic of an archive collective on Fire Island, and then got to work writing.

But then, a mishap occurred.

My laptop battery was getting low, but no fear! I packed my charger. I did not, however, pack my adapter, an item which would be essential for me to charge my US laptop with my US charger in Ireland.

Panicked, I tried to see if my portable charger could charge my laptop. It could not. I decided to see if my laptop could last the rest of the day. Come 2pm, my laptop battery was on the verge of death. I had no choice but to admit my mistake and ask for help.

My coworkers were very nice, offering me cords to try and use but none of them worked for a laptop. I had one final possible solution. Off into the streets of Dublin I went, trying to find a store that had a US to Ireland adapter. Three stores later, I finally found one.

I returned to the office with my hard sought for bounty in hand and my clothes damp (of course, it rained during my journey and I left my rain jacket at the office). I felt embarrassed and ashamed by my mishap, but also tried to give myself grace. This is my first internship in a different country and I made an honest mistake. It helped that my coworkers were very understanding and nice about the situation.

From there, I was able to charge my laptop and complete my piece. I also got to have some fun chit-chat with my coworkers about a plethora of things, including the differences between traveling in the US and traveling in Europe.

As a whole, my first day was good and successful, albeit a little stressful. Despite my mistake, I ended my day very optimistic about my time at GCN! 

The rest of the week flew by. My supervisor did return to Ireland on Wednesday, but due to having returned late the night prior, she worked from home. Thursday and Friday, she was too busy to train me because she had her own pieces to write that had deadlines, but has promised that I will be trained this coming week. I got to spend my week working on a handful of pieces that currently are just sitting in my Google Drive, but will hopefully soon be up on the GCN website! GCN also had their Pride print edition come in on Friday so I got to assist one of my coworkers with delivering some copies to nearby businesses. 

Managing my time at my internship is not too difficult as of yet, considering there’s only so much for me to do. At the start of the work day, we all check our feeds for about a half hour and then we have the team content meeting to decide what the daily pieces will be for that day. Then, we all get to work. Because I have not been trained, the only thing I can really do is pick a piece, research it, and then write it. I am mindful, however, that once I am trained, I will also be in charge of setting the article up in GCN’s wordpress site so it can be reviewed and then published. Depending on the extent and complexity of the piece, I have found that I can either do one or two pieces a day so far. I am hoping to get to a place where I can do two pieces a day easily. This may mean picking a topic the day before to be prepared to get right into researching and writing. I will also need to get more efficient with my research, as that has currently tended to take up a fair bit of my time. 

I have had a good first week in my internship and am very excited to see how my skills will grow during my time with GCN!

I ended my work week by getting a sweet treat at this cute restaurant with some friends!