About a month ago I got the news that I was offered an internship at
Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder, Colo. The call came when I was in the bathroom of a local restaurant, urinating 3 glasses of wine consumed to celebrate the Brandcenter’s pre-prom festivities. Coming back to our table, obviously I was thrilled, but I can admit now that part of me was a bit terrified. Even sad.
Thrilled, terrified and sad. An unlikely combo for someone who's just been told they've been granted 2 months of their lives to work at one of the best agencies on earth.
The sadness seems out of place, I know. But the reasoning is pretty straight-forward. I didn't expect to get an internship. I wanted to travel this summer. I envisioned myself letting loose and shelving anything ad-related while I went Darjeeling-Limited-style around India and Southeast Asia for 2 months. The idea is in line with an interesting point my roommate,
Jordan, made on his blog a while back:
“Do agencies want new people who already know how an agency operates and understands the social politics found there -OR- do agencies want people who have made a conscious effort to experience and observe life and humanity?”
In regards to the answer to this question, for a long time I was leaning towards the latter. Until I got the call that basically whispered softly in my ear: 'Opportunities like this come around a few times a lifetime... Only if you're lucky. Take it. You dipshit.'
I did.
The truth is, I’ve heard stories about Crispin. I’ve heard about the long nights, the intern-slave-driving, the nervous breakdowns that all interns are pretty much required to have, the 3AM I-can’t-fucking-take-this-place-anymore work sessions, the marathons lasting literally from sunup to sunup, and beyond.
But I am willing to overlook all that and instead concentrate on the immensely absurd gift I am being offered.
It didn’t really hit me until people started congratulating me. Until professors started looking at me differently, eyeing me up as if to say, ‘who the hell is this guy and what does that place want with
him?’
I’ve been told that a Crispin internship means nothing if you think of it as an internship. You have to make your own opportunity out of it. Seek out work. Seek challenges. Seek solutions. Seek more. And revel in the fact that you very well could be working in the Agency of The Decade, flat in the middle of that golden decade.
I leave for Colorado tomorrow night, start work on Tuesday morning, and plan to end 10 weeks later, bloody and bruised and cut like stone, on August 1st.
What happens between now and then I hope will determine a good chunk of my future. The strange thing is, I know that it can.
dubs. out.
Losers find themselves stuck in rush hour traffic. Winners drive home in the dark.
