Almost Deja Vu

Deja vu : something overly or unpleasantly familiar

I still remember the first day I started my first internship in TV News. It was an unpaid internship at a station here in Baltimore. It was surreal for me to work somewhere where the anchors and reporters were people I had grown up watching. It was surreal to have the opporuntity to work in journalism and learn from the professionals. The funny thing is my first day nearly never happened.

Back then as they sometimes do now, people call and notify you of job offers instead of e-mail or letters. So when the call came, somehow my mother got that I hadn't made the cut, when really I had. After she told me I didn't make it, I cursed the program for not realizing my potential, and I kept it moving.

It turns out I had been accepted and offered the spot. As I lay in my bed on a Saturday my future friends and colleagues were at the station. I got a call midmorning asking where I was. I still remmeber, "I'm at home, I didn't make it." The future lady told me otherwise and told me to get there a.s.a.p. It took a few hours to get someone from my family to take me to work, but I got there.

The rest is history, but history has a way of repeating itself.

Now as I've been plotting my return to TV news, radio is good and all, but I love TV. I have an offer for an unpaid intenrship from May to August.

There's a catch. When I didn't get notified a few weeks earlier, I thought that I didn't get the offer. I cursed the prorgam for not recognizing my talent, but more importantly my potential. And once again I kept it moving.

Turns out I got the offer, for a program which is competitive. I've checked out some alumni, thank you Google, and really would be a great opportunity to move my career forward.

The internship would take me away from home, and put me into unfamiliar territory. It's something mentors have told me I needed to do. To break free and accept the challenge of doing what I've done here, elsewhere. Even more importantly it would challenge me to work on-camera, but also behind the scenes. For this technophobe it might be a great challenge.

It is however an opportunity.

Then there's an interview for a paid non-journalism job, and I've always been told to make that money.

I went from not feeling as if I had any options for the summer, to multiple options.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

I'll keep you posted.