Wednesday, August 5th

Yesterday at work was a very long day. I arrived at 8:30am and was ready for work. As usual, I started off by checking my work email to see if I was sent any assignments that I was supposed to complete before the bosses came in. Looking through it, I realized that there weren't any. So I resumed back into my daily ritual which is to check all the voicemails in the department. I started out with our two phone lines that are designated for the promotions department assistants. After taking down these voicemails, I began to take down Donyshia's then Taneka's. When I finished taking these countless numbers of messages, I went into handling the issues that the callers were concerned about. Some of them called because they wanted to the know the stations hours and locations, others called because they either wanted to know if their tickets were ready for pick up or if they can have a street team appearance at their next event. Usually with booking a street team appearance, they would have to fax over an event flyer, a proposal and a copy of their 501C3 tax form a month prior to their event. Then we would decide if we will be participating in their event a week before the event.

After completing this task, I went on to calling the winners of the events that was taking place this week. These people were the winners of the BET Blaze The Stage contest and for tickets to the Funk Master Flex Birthday Party Bask hosted by Fabolous. Others were picking up their tickets to the Sean Paul Concert that will be taking place next week at the Highline theater. There were not a lot of people coming into picking up there tickets until late afternoon. They all came in at once and since most of the interns were at lunch, I had to tackle them all on my own. It wasn't that bad, I just had to make sure I worked with everyone in order of arrival into the station. This was to make sure that everyone was treated properly and accordingly.

When I finished that, I went to the radio studio to interview one of the most prominent DJ's of all time, DJ Mister Cee for my research paper. I went back to the studio a little early because he said I could come observe him while he was mixing live and on-air. It was a great experience because he is a person who is very focused on his craft. He zones in and blocks out all of the noise from the lobby and the other radio show booths. After he finished his show, he allowed me to conduct an exclusive interview with him. While doing the interview I was petrified. This is because he has such a hardcore exterior. When we started, he was very uneasy but allowed me to proceed with the interview. During the interview he allowed me to ask him fifteen questions and to record it. I asked him information on when he started, how he likes Hot 97, What's his greatest experience, How did he get started and etc. Of course before I interviewed him I did some research on him. However, during the interview, I learned so much about him that wasn't in any books or websites. He is a man who is dedicated to his craft and takes it serious. Also, he doesn't get excited about his own accomplishments. What excites him is by watching other people at the station grow and become known. One thing that I learned about Mister Cee is that he is an asset to the company. People around the station call him a walking musical thesaurus because he knows everything about the topic. Also, that he does not prepare songs that he is going to mix, it just comes spontaneous when he is mixing. This is beneficial to Hot 97 because he is person that represents the station. Which is Hip Hop and R&B but overall, he represents music.

After doing this, it was 4pm and I was supposed to leave and go to my street team event. This event was a Metro Plus event at the Cherry Lounge from 6pm-8pm. This was a club that was advertising health issues and insurance. However, when I started to get ready to leave for this event, I was told to stay and ask the other intern to replace me on this event because they wanted me to stay behind and enter in text messaging contest and add prizes onto our official web page. I was also told to stay because Friday one of the promotions assistants would not be there and I would also be taking a half of day and they wanted to act on her duties in her absence. We were both going to Florida (coincidentally) on Friday. However, her flight was earlier than mine so I had to still work that day but allowed to leave early.

When 5pm hit, I was assigned to entering all of the movies prizes and ticket giveaways onto the website. In doing this, I had to go on a special site called base.com and enter in the information, synopsis of the movie, characters and etc. This took about two hours because I made sure that I was very precise and accurate. I wanted to make sure their wasn't any errors. Especially since this was something that was going to be on the website for all to see.

Since that took so long, I was told to enter in the upcoming weeks works of text messaging contest for Friday to do. I ended up leaving the station at 7pm and went out with the rest of the interns. This internship has me feeling like I am really in the workforce because I work long days and then go out to Happy hour after work with the rest of the interns to discuss our day and to relax.