So it was sort of an odd time because I had been hired, but my paperwork hadn't gone through. So I worked as an intern during the government shutdown, as an intern, but I already had a job.
I was hired at CNBC TV by a financial news anchor named Louis Rukeyser who had spent decades as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. He told me I could learn the craft on the job. That was my first paid gig. Before that I was an unpaid intern at CNN in Atlanta.
In 2007, I went to work in Beverly Hills as an intern at The Collective, a talent management agency. I'd been scouted for the job because of a blog I'd started in college and because the blogger-turned-author I worked for, Tucker Max, was producing a project with the company.
We did a variant of the intern thing. We hired people as consultants for a specific thing and then if they were good, offered them a job.
Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.
I, at almost 30 years old, became an intern at a local TV station in Tampa where I was practicing law. I'd do that during the day and then any nights or weekends or overnights I could work, I would go intern at the station.
I worked as an intern. I worked at a high school. I worked at a college newspaper while I was taking 18 credits while on the basketball team.
Communications is the number one major in America today. CNN had 25,000 applicants for five intern jobs this summer.
When I was a 21-year-old intern at CBS, I was told I had crossed eyes and shouldn't try to be on air. That's when I decided I was going to be behind the scenes.
My character had been in the chair for seven years. He had gone through his anger, depression, drug and alcohol abuse. He had gone through everything, now he was up, he was happy, he was filled with his dream.
It is an intern's job to go for coffee for anyone who asks, preferably delivering it scalding hot and cupped in your bare hands!
As has been reported, and is unmistakably evident to all but the most naïve, federal employees have been ordered to exploit this crisis, to make the government shutdown as uncomfortable as they can. The White House is actively soliciting complaints from the general public on 'how the government shutdown has affected you.' These testimonies are tools sought for the propaganda kit; the better to agitate with.
I had a group of Hispanic Americans come into my office in 1976 who worked in a Denver packing plant. They had just been fired by their employer who turned around and hired illegal aliens for a lot less money. That had a big impact on me.
During my stint in IT, I worked and used the free time to browse the net for research on cinema. In the evenings, I did theatre. Had I not been successful, I would have gone back to my IT job. It was my back up plan.
I had a lot of bad jobs but the one big internship I had is I interned for 'SNL' when I was 21 years old and that was the joke. You intern there and you think man, I'm going to be with the writers and the great comedians. Then you're getting everybody sandwiches and then the doors close and then all the great creatives are doing the work.
When I moved to London I couldn't afford to rent anywhere. So I housesat for a friend of my mum and dad's - and had to look after her sickly cat. That was the only way I could survive on a meagre intern wage.
I had spent four months in Cedar City, Utah, right after graduation as an intern at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. It's a town that has many people living the polygamous lifestyle.