Earlier this month a professor of mine asked me to write about my internships, so I got busy and cranked some wordage. Now it’s on my school’s website. Follow the link below to read it there, or just scroll down.
Will Work for School Credit
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Television
I am a native Virginian as evidenced by many facts, not the least of which being that I play banjo in a bluegrass band. I have a strong connection to my home – I grew up in a small rural neighborhood in Northern Virginia in the very same house that my mother did. She and I graduated from the same high school, and yes, we even had some of the same teachers.
It was for a love of television that I left this behind to intern in New York City for a year. It was this same love of television that had me living in an apartment so small that I could put a pencil in each hand, spread my arms, and draw on opposite walls. There I was, this overwhelmed caricature of a guy from below the Mason-Dixon Line, thinking I belonged in a place dependent on subways, subleases, and substandard etiquette.
My Year of Working for Free began January 2, 2008 at the Late Show with David Letterman, immediately following the Writer’s Guild interim agreement with the show’s production company, Worldwide Pants. I was relieved to find out that they were expecting me. Up until the moment I was given an official ID with my name on it, I feared that it all could have been an elaborate prank or a dream I hadn’t woken up from yet. But it wasn’t - it was real and awesome. All at once, this goofy guy was interning at the only late night television show legally allowed to use its writers. I pinched myself a lot that first day, just to double check on reality.
I suppose the most clichéd of an intern’s duties are to make photocopies and to get coffee. There were innumerable opportunities to do each of these. I made more photocopies than I even care to discuss. It was a daily tree genocide – previous interviews with upcoming guests, a complete discography on visiting bands, expense reports, all of it. I was the Xerox Whisperer.
I’ll never forget having to get coffee for a rather important person and desperately trying to remember his 12-part order, a venti skim iced whipped yada yada something or other. I tried putting the order to a song. It worked, but I had to sing it to the barista.
But it wasn’t all work. Somewhere in between filing papers and dubbing videotapes, the other interns and I made time for extracurricular fun. We told jokes and shared stories from home. We even got Dave a Valentine’s Day card. I thought it was a great idea until I realized I had to write something on it. What do you write on a Valentine’s Day card for David Letterman? I panicked and went with:
Hey Dave.
Happy Thursday.
-Dylan
There was another occasion where we all went to a party and a strikingly beautiful woman appeared from nowhere and started talking to me, like some sort of gorgeous ninja. I didn’t even hear what she asked me because I was so blown away by who she was – Parker Posey, from movies like Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show. She even used to date Ryan Adams, and he wrote a song about her called “Hey Parker, It’s Christmas.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I asked if you had a knife or some scissors.”
I fished in my pockets and produced a Swiss Army knife. She continued: “My shoelaces are too long and they’ve been bothering me all day. Would you mind shortening them?”
“Sure,” I said. She handed me her shoe in the middle of the party. I removed a few inches from the laces and gave her shoe back.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile that made me understand Ryan Adams just a little bit more.
It didn’t take long for the other interns and I to develop an effective routine to get through each workday, and before we knew it, the internship was over. We had so much momentum behind us that when it was time to move on, it was almost physically jarring. I had spent ten hours a day for five days a week for five months in this building. In return, I had received two college credits and had appeared on television three times, once as a meowing cat. It was a surreal, happy, and educational experience that I’ll remember for a long time.
Now I had this incredible opportunity to be a script intern at Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I had already delayed graduation by a semester, so why not push it back a full year? Besides, I was no longer a stranger to New York City and no longer green to the television industry. Now I was more a shade of light chartreuse, and I was still hungry for experience.
Late Night operates in the famed 30 Rockefeller Plaza. If NBC were America, then 30 Rock is the White House. It’s the supremely glamorous building that I’ve been privileged enough to work in since August. The building itself is a living history of broadcasting, housing old radio theaters that have since been converted to television studios. The hallowed Saturday Night Live tapes there, and the Today Show does their silly Barry Manilow concerts right outside the door.
Late Night offered me a new pool of people to make photocopies and get coffee for (which I could now handle with grace and aplomb, rest assured). But it also impressed upon me the fact that two shows could operate in such dramatically different fashions and still generate the same finished product at the end of the day – 44 minutes of quality comedy. In my first week, there were new processes to learn, new names to memorize, and new bathrooms to find.
The layout of the show’s office and studio allowed a little bit more contact with the guests than the Late Show did. I took the elevator with Dr. Ruth. John Hodgman taught me the difference between alligators and crocodiles. And there was one particular encounter I’ll remember for a long time to come.
One of the employees (let’s call him Frank) had asked me to photocopy a large stack of papers, a task well within my abilities. I returned and handed him a finished stack of copies. Completely joking, Frank raised his voice and shouted, “These aren’t the papers I asked for!”
This was loud enough to get the attention of two people talking to each other on the other side of the hallway – Elvis Costello and Sarah Silverman. I watched Sarah excuse herself from Mr. Costello and tap Frank on the shoulder.
“Hey you,” she said. “Don’t talk to him that way.”
And that is the story of how Sarah Silverman defended my honor. And how she came to be my wife.
I’ll be the first to admit it – I’m completely hideous in social situations. I forget names, I ramble, and I’m endlessly uncomfortable. I knew that these bad habits could be very costly in the workplace, so I set decided to burn them out of me for good. At both internships I made a point of talking to strangers around the office, asking them what routes they had taken to end up with the jobs they have. Before long, I was not only a better communicator, but I was on friendly terms with lots of people. I think it stands as a great testament of what can be done when you get out of your comfort zone with a clear goal in mind.
If you have the opportunity to intern somewhere you’d like to work, take that opportunity and attack it with everything you can muster. Work out the details later. It will beat the fear out of you with a big heavy stick. It will make you into a more mature person. And probably most importantly, it will help make sure you belong where you think you want to belong. With a good head on your shoulders and a good heart behind your ribcage, the rest will fall into place.
I’ve been asked for advice on getting jobs and negotiating the treacherous after-college terrain. My response is always the same - I don’t feel that I’m in any position to dish out wisdom on scoring a great career. All I’ve figured out is how to work long hours without pay. And no, it doesn’t count as community service. I checked.
However, I have learned some great rules to go by, subtle things I’ve picked up from others over the course of this year. I’ll share them with you now.
First of all, don’t be an ass. It doesn’t matter how brilliant and talented you are or how well you do your job. If people can’t stand to work with you, they won’t. So check your self-loathing misanthropic tendencies at the door. You can have them back at the end of the workday, trust me.
Secondly, create as much opportunity for yourself as possible. Opportunity is the currency of life after graduation. In terms of snagging a job, few things matter more than what you’ve done in the past and what you’re able to do in the future.
Third, challenge yourself. It makes you interesting.
Now I find myself concluding this writing, and to be totally truthful, it’s a little frustrating. I usually pride myself on my ability to describe things, but there is simply no way to fully encompass my Year of Working for Free. The words don’t exist. Yeah, I can tell you what I did, maybe how I felt. But I can’t tell you what it was like, the excited nervous joy of it all. I can only encourage you to find out for yourself. So do.
-Dylan Love, 12/17/2008
