Summer. Every year, just when I’m ready to pull my hair out in the middle of finals week, I convince myself that this time, my summer will be soothing. Relaxing, even. And while, every year, this has yet to be the case, I’ve found I’m not minding the busyness during this summer in particular.  Because this summer, for the past two weeks and the next four to come, I’m interning at Cambridge University Press in New York.

Now, I’m going to be honest with you, the first day was not at all for what I’d hoped. After many collective hours pouring over city and bus maps, then subway schedules, I was sure I’d at least be able to find the AT&T Building (both where I am interning and from which Z100 broadcasts) with little to no trouble. However, after getting off at the wrong bus stop, I learned how to use the subway in about two minutes and managed to get into the building and up to the eighteenth floor right on time.

the AT&T Building

Tack on a few more dilemmas, including setting up my own cubicle and phone-line at the office, and discovering my car had been towed back in Parsippany, and I was just about ready to collapse by the time I staggered off the bus back in Jersey.

Thankfully, things have improved significantly since that first day. I can successfully navigate a number of different buses and subway trains, and discovered a small park just a block or two away from my building; recently, my fellow interns and I have been fleeing the filing and faxing of Cambridge to go sit in the park and have lunch together.

And the other interns, I should add, are all every bit as friendly, fun, and witty as I’d expected they might be. I take the subway out of the office every day with one girl, and have our big group lunches with all the other interns on our floor, seventeen. It’s also great to have people in the same boat as you, so when your eyes are crossing from filing for hours, you can take a wander to someone else’s cubicle just to take a breath.

Claire’s pic of Capsouto Park in Tribeca!

I should mention, it isn’t all filing. I’m working in the English Language Teaching department, in Adult Editing. Some days are busier for me than others, but one of the best things I’ve gotten to do so far is revise and edit a prototype lesson for a new textbook, then write the answer key with my own short answers and essays. It’s hard to believe my writing will end up in their textbook almost a year from now, when I’ll be long gone from this internship, but this experience has taught me, among other things, that publishing is a slow and delicate process.

Cambridge has already been an experience in and of itself, and navigating New York another, and learning the intricacies still another.  With the rest of the internship stretched before me, I can only say: write on.

~Claire Davanzo