Nineteen years later
I finally appreciate how cool my first name is. I'm a fan now.
[edit]
I guess i'll make it a little longer, because it's not like I have to finish a paper for tomorrow or anything....of course not.
well i guess I'll talk about this summer, which is something i'm totally stoked about--I pretty much got the internship of my dreams at Second City, which I'm also getting some (admittedly undeserved) Metcalf money for. While it's not a strict stage management internship, which is pretty much the only thing I was looking to do this summer, I'm still super excited. When I interviewed, I got so nervous that I showed up super early and had to spend an hour in the Starbucks downstairs mentally rehearsing my answers, ignoring my green tea Frappuccino and watching the minute hand on my watch creep closer and closer to 1:30 PM. When it was time, I walked up the stairs to Second City, checked in with the receptionist and sat on a bench that directly faced the theater and dozens of portraits of SC alums. I wanted to throw up, I was so fucking nervous.
Half an hour later, I had a great interview with some playful banter regarding the fact that we both lived in Hyde Park (ugh the #6!) and retelling my broken-neck story for approximately the 80 billionth time (I noted that the SC internship job description required people who was able to work at a "breakneck speed". I milked that for all it was worth on my application. When the first question my interviewer asked me was "So....um....how's your neck?" I knew it had worked.) However, at the end of the interview, she told me that if I was looking for stage management experience, I should look up any small theater in Chicago, because there's always a need for a stage manager. I nodded politely, choosing not to tell her that I had applied to about 6 different theaters and hadn't heard back from a single one of them--I didn't want her to get the idea that she shouldn't hire me because I might get a stage management internship instead. She said she'd let me know in a week. We shook hands, laughed about the beautiful day--unprecedented that season--and she directed me to the exit, which I spent about 2 minutes trying to decipher how to open--I tried pushing, I tried pulling, I tried every goddamn thing I could think of fervently wishing that no one would come by and see the intern applicant foiled by a fucking door. I made it out somehow, and as I was sitting at the Segdwick stop on the Brown Line, waiting for the southbound train, it dawned on me: those comments she made about finding a theater to stage manage for? They were meant to let me down easy. She was telling me to look for other work, because she wasn't going to hire me for this job. How embarrassing--she was practically begging me to look for a more appropriate internship during our interview. I became paralyzed, I was so sure of it.
That week I tried to put it out of my mind but as Wednesday rolled around again--the 7-day anniversary of my interview, I couldn't help but check my email every two minutes. I wasn't going to get it. I had applied to every theater internship I could think of and the one company that made any effort to contact me wasn't going to give me a job. I'd have to work at the Reg the whole summer. I hadn't felt this worthless since I applied to college and got rejection after rejection, waitlist after waitlist until the U of C and Lawrence finally came around. Getting waitlisted for a college is pretty much like interviewing for a job but not getting it--so close yet SO far. (I guess that simile is pretty weak and lame but at this point I really shouldn't be thinking too hard about them, considering the paper I have left to write.) Anyway, the less I tried to think about it, the more I inadvertendly ended up thinking about it until one day, sitting in front of the Grounds, I got an email congratulating me on my summer internship with the Second City.
HOLY
FUCKING
SHIT
I got an internship with the Second City.
But nothing made me happier than the response I got from Dan Stearns and Heidi Coleman when I emailed them the news:
"YOU ROCK! -Heidi" // "Hey, that's fantastic! Way to go, Ari! -Dan".
Later, when I found out that the internship had been offered as a Metcalf, I was pissed. The internship went from unpaid to $4000. But I figured I could try my chances with CAPS--maybe, out of the goodness of someone's heart, I could get them to give me the money even though I hadn't applied for the internship as a Metcalf fellow. I was obviously eligible for it, and I had the head of CAPS on my side, having made friends with her at one of their events months earlier. A few weeks later, I found that although they couldn't offer me the full scholarship (it went to David Brent, who actually did apply as a Metcalf fellow and also got an internship with SC), they could offer me half if I still agreed to work the full 400 hours. Even though I'll be literally working for peanuts ($5/hour), even peanuts are better than no peanuts. I accepted (the alternative was foregoing a summer internship for a fall part-time internship, something I was not interested in at all).
And that's basically the story of how I found out what I was doing this summer. I've finally run out of steam for this narrative, which is the cue for me to head back to my paper on the relationship between government policy and the invention of survey sampling as a widely-used statistical method. (I am loving my "Democracy and Statistics during the New Deal" class so much I switched my major from Anthropology to History. It's taught by a French man with the world's strongest and most adorable accent, and I help translate for him sometimes. There are three people in my class (including me) and every minute of the crop-reporting, structure of the USDA, and implementation of various survey methods is absolutely fascinating, and I am not being sarcastic. I dropped a class about Folktales to keep taking this class. It's hard but stimulating in the way I thought U of C classes were supposed to be. I don't understand the reading, get to class, and suddenly it all makes sense. I can actually feel my brain learning. It's brilliant. I'm having so much fun.)
ciao!
p.s. UT tech staff interview today went well. Dan commented on my awful bicycling tan (it's like I dipped my arms into the sun), and Tom Burch used to be a Rotary ambassador! Rotary is fucking everywhere. Also I found out why it's called "OUCH".
[edit]
I guess i'll make it a little longer, because it's not like I have to finish a paper for tomorrow or anything....of course not.
well i guess I'll talk about this summer, which is something i'm totally stoked about--I pretty much got the internship of my dreams at Second City, which I'm also getting some (admittedly undeserved) Metcalf money for. While it's not a strict stage management internship, which is pretty much the only thing I was looking to do this summer, I'm still super excited. When I interviewed, I got so nervous that I showed up super early and had to spend an hour in the Starbucks downstairs mentally rehearsing my answers, ignoring my green tea Frappuccino and watching the minute hand on my watch creep closer and closer to 1:30 PM. When it was time, I walked up the stairs to Second City, checked in with the receptionist and sat on a bench that directly faced the theater and dozens of portraits of SC alums. I wanted to throw up, I was so fucking nervous.
Half an hour later, I had a great interview with some playful banter regarding the fact that we both lived in Hyde Park (ugh the #6!) and retelling my broken-neck story for approximately the 80 billionth time (I noted that the SC internship job description required people who was able to work at a "breakneck speed". I milked that for all it was worth on my application. When the first question my interviewer asked me was "So....um....how's your neck?" I knew it had worked.) However, at the end of the interview, she told me that if I was looking for stage management experience, I should look up any small theater in Chicago, because there's always a need for a stage manager. I nodded politely, choosing not to tell her that I had applied to about 6 different theaters and hadn't heard back from a single one of them--I didn't want her to get the idea that she shouldn't hire me because I might get a stage management internship instead. She said she'd let me know in a week. We shook hands, laughed about the beautiful day--unprecedented that season--and she directed me to the exit, which I spent about 2 minutes trying to decipher how to open--I tried pushing, I tried pulling, I tried every goddamn thing I could think of fervently wishing that no one would come by and see the intern applicant foiled by a fucking door. I made it out somehow, and as I was sitting at the Segdwick stop on the Brown Line, waiting for the southbound train, it dawned on me: those comments she made about finding a theater to stage manage for? They were meant to let me down easy. She was telling me to look for other work, because she wasn't going to hire me for this job. How embarrassing--she was practically begging me to look for a more appropriate internship during our interview. I became paralyzed, I was so sure of it.
That week I tried to put it out of my mind but as Wednesday rolled around again--the 7-day anniversary of my interview, I couldn't help but check my email every two minutes. I wasn't going to get it. I had applied to every theater internship I could think of and the one company that made any effort to contact me wasn't going to give me a job. I'd have to work at the Reg the whole summer. I hadn't felt this worthless since I applied to college and got rejection after rejection, waitlist after waitlist until the U of C and Lawrence finally came around. Getting waitlisted for a college is pretty much like interviewing for a job but not getting it--so close yet SO far. (I guess that simile is pretty weak and lame but at this point I really shouldn't be thinking too hard about them, considering the paper I have left to write.) Anyway, the less I tried to think about it, the more I inadvertendly ended up thinking about it until one day, sitting in front of the Grounds, I got an email congratulating me on my summer internship with the Second City.
HOLY
FUCKING
SHIT
I got an internship with the Second City.
But nothing made me happier than the response I got from Dan Stearns and Heidi Coleman when I emailed them the news:
"YOU ROCK! -Heidi" // "Hey, that's fantastic! Way to go, Ari! -Dan".
Later, when I found out that the internship had been offered as a Metcalf, I was pissed. The internship went from unpaid to $4000. But I figured I could try my chances with CAPS--maybe, out of the goodness of someone's heart, I could get them to give me the money even though I hadn't applied for the internship as a Metcalf fellow. I was obviously eligible for it, and I had the head of CAPS on my side, having made friends with her at one of their events months earlier. A few weeks later, I found that although they couldn't offer me the full scholarship (it went to David Brent, who actually did apply as a Metcalf fellow and also got an internship with SC), they could offer me half if I still agreed to work the full 400 hours. Even though I'll be literally working for peanuts ($5/hour), even peanuts are better than no peanuts. I accepted (the alternative was foregoing a summer internship for a fall part-time internship, something I was not interested in at all).
And that's basically the story of how I found out what I was doing this summer. I've finally run out of steam for this narrative, which is the cue for me to head back to my paper on the relationship between government policy and the invention of survey sampling as a widely-used statistical method. (I am loving my "Democracy and Statistics during the New Deal" class so much I switched my major from Anthropology to History. It's taught by a French man with the world's strongest and most adorable accent, and I help translate for him sometimes. There are three people in my class (including me) and every minute of the crop-reporting, structure of the USDA, and implementation of various survey methods is absolutely fascinating, and I am not being sarcastic. I dropped a class about Folktales to keep taking this class. It's hard but stimulating in the way I thought U of C classes were supposed to be. I don't understand the reading, get to class, and suddenly it all makes sense. I can actually feel my brain learning. It's brilliant. I'm having so much fun.)
ciao!
p.s. UT tech staff interview today went well. Dan commented on my awful bicycling tan (it's like I dipped my arms into the sun), and Tom Burch used to be a Rotary ambassador! Rotary is fucking everywhere. Also I found out why it's called "OUCH".