Sunday, June 8, 2014

Alex Takes A Trip to... Atlanta (Week 1)

Hey, y'all!

This week has been a whirlwind of adventure, learning, socializing, and more broken Apple products (it never ends). Sorry for being so absent! I finally got my baby back (aka, my MacBook) on Wednesday, so I was waiting until the weekend to blog about the week's activities.

Ironically, I'm blogging from the Apple Store waiting on another repair. This time, it's my beautiful phone. Said damage can be seen here:

My other baby, in all her misery
Lesson learned: never cook and talk at the same time.

But, enough about the phone. This week was my first week at HLN, and it was pretty exciting! On day 1, I experimented with traveling by taking the train (aka MARTA) for the first time. It reminded me a lot of when I lived in New York as a kid and having to take the subway literally everywhere. However, when I was a kid, I never experienced a train breaking down in the middle of my commute... on the first day of work.

I was a mess.

I started calling my parents and boyfriend crying, checking the app to see if I would still make it to the CNN Center on time (I did, thank God).

After the mess that was my commute and after finally getting inside and through security (which is INTENSE, by the way), we had our intern orientation. We were all put into one giant conference room and went through the different company policies, human resources information, etc. I met a few people in orientation, seeing as I had to start making friends somewhere (there's over 60 of us this summer). After orientation, our hiring managers picked us up and escorted us to our respective offices.

The HLN offices look like your typical newsroom, only smaller. Everyone has a computer station with three screens, and everyone is working together, kind of like at school. On my left are the video editing and production people, to my right are the rest of the planning and programming crew (such as myself) as well as the online people, and behind and in front of me are the teams for the different programs, such as "Morning Express," "Weekend Express," and "Nancy Grace."

This week, I attended a LOT of meetings and got to sit in on and see the work that goes into planning a program or a specific event (this week included the CMA Festival in Nashville, Tennessee). I learned how to book guests for different programs and how to get them into hair and makeup and into the studio. I played with a lot of puppies this week, met a kid who publicly humiliated his ex-girlfriend, met the Georgia State Senator, and got to witness tons of live broadcasts. I also met a bunch of different anchors and made tons of new friends to do things with, including watching basketball games and going shopping (here's to you, Justin and Elisa).

Though this week has been kind of crazy with the commute and with things breaking down and with me also getting lost virtually everywhere, I'm looking forward to seeing what the next week is going to bring... including working with Kevin Hart this week :D

Until next time! :]

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