Consider that my first marketing shill for my brand new employer–the Consumer Electronics Association!

It goes without saying (well, I’m saying it, really) that any and all entries, tweets, and other social media buzzing coming from me do not represent the views of my employer.

Now that that’s out of that way… I’m thrilled! Tomorrow I begin my marketing internship with the Consumer Electronics Association (thanks so much to @jp1113 for letting me know about the opportunity!). I’m not entirely sure what to expect, but I’m excited for the opportunity to work in a slightly different field (in other words, not PR) and I know my experiences in the past will help me out a lot as I take on new challenges and responsibilities.

As many of you know, I’ve already begun my duties as the Social Media Director for TechChange, and we’ll be launching our social media presence soon (and rest assured you’ll hear plenty about us). I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be a busy summer! But I’m excited about everything I’ve got going on and think I’ll have some opportunities to do some amazing work.

Speaking of work and interning, be sure you check out the AU Intern Blog, where I’ll be blogging periodically throughout the summer. I might also have a few other guest blogging appearances–I’ll let you know more about them as I find out more in the next few weeks!

So I’ll be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to say, but it’s been such a long and stressful day that I thought a little writing before bed might do me some good. It’s been a productive day, though, I’ll say that much. Hell, in the past 24 hours I’ve been to over seven hours of class (in five classes), had two meetings, written a paper, put together a PowerPoint presentation, held office hours, read two chapters of a book for Thursday, read two newspapers, kept up-to-date with Twitter and the news, cleaned through my inbox… and now written a blog post.

Oh, and in about five minutes I’ll be getting another badge on Foursquare. Because by golly it’s after 3am on a school night and I want that school night badge. Yes, I am a hopeless social media addict.

One thing I noticed today was that, in the light of South by Southwest (#sxsw) I’ve found myself saying “I’m jealous” a lot of people attending the conference–and even people not attending. People who aren’t as busy as I am. People who had a chance to see Avatar. People who have more time to watch their favorite TV shows. People who have nice weather. People who have awesome jobs.

I really need to stop it. I have no reason to be jealous. Honestly, life is pretty great right now. Do I have a lot going on? Sure. Is it stressful? Yea, a little bit. Is it totally fun and worth it? Absolutely.

I’m learning more in school right now than I ever have. My internship has already taught me more about traditional and nontraditional communication strategy than I thought I’d learn all semester. I have some of the best friends around–in real life, on Twitter, and all over the world (thanks y’all, you rock). And I feel that sense of opportunity… always. There’s so much to learn, so much out there to experience, and so many doors just waiting to be opened. Or kicked down.

Anyway, enough for now, but that’s my message for the night: be productive, don’t be jealous, appreciate every opportunity.

Well, maybe not entirely shameless self-promotion, but I did write it so I suppose it deserves a little disclaimer. This weekend will hopefully be a great one for productivity. With the incoming D.C. #snomgasm / #snowpocalypse2 / #snom (my personal favorite) / any number of other crazy hashtags, I’m hoping maybe it’ll give me a good excuse to lock myself indoors with a blanket, food, notes, a laptop and maybe a good book, if I manage to get a lot of work, writing and studying done.

Anyway, this is a quickie. Just wanted to point out that from now on I will be writing for not only this blog, but also two other blogs! First, I’ll be contributing to the brand spanking new Shamable.com, written as a guide for public relations and communications professionals, with a more serious, realistic take to the industry than some other blogs that may or may not have been spoofed for the title. The people contributing to this blog are top-notch, triple-A professionals with fantastic ideas and brilliant track-records.

I’m honored to be a part of their site and I hope I can provide some valuable input from my student perspective! Be sure to check out my first entry on the blog (more to come this week), about teaching social media (professors, pay attention to that one).

Secondly, I will now be writing for the AU Intern Blog for the American University Career Center. There I’ll be reflecting on my internship experience this semester at MS&L Worldwide as well as some other random internship-related thoughts that might be bumping around in my head. I’ve actually written two posts for it just tonight, you can see my introduction here and my comments on the TechCrunch intern “scandal” here.

I’ll do my best to note on here when I’ve made some significant contributions to the other two blogs, but please add them to your RSS reader (and me, for that matter!) and keep your eyes peeled for new updates from me and my fellow contributors. Thanks, as always, for reading. Tomorrow evening I’ll have a recap of the fantastic panel event I attended this morning as well as some thoughts on what may be in store, in the near term, for my future (might be a bit vague!).

[Shamable]
[AU Intern Blog]

The Washington Post had a great little article today titled “Homework and persistence can open up a world of internships”. It’s very true.

A few key quotes (links are mine):

Finding and landing an internship is a lot like finding a job; it requires a lot of research, persistence and networking. “The earlier you start, the better — the more choices you have,” said Mary Ryan, president of the Washington Internship Institute, which runs area internship programs for smaller universities.

Students, start at your college or university career center to identify resources and key dates. “If you’re on the career services director’s radar,” you’re at the forefront when opportunities open up, said Yazad Dalal…

Looking for internships in DC creates sort of a love/hate relationship between the student and the process. One one hand, there are a lot of internships to be found here in the District. Every single department of the government has them, along with every nonprofit, lawyer, lobbyist, public relations agency and financial firm in town. But it is competitive, make no mistake.

Last Spring I applied for over 40 internships. I heard back from three of them. That’s about the kind of response rate you can expect, generally (unless you’re just really lucky). Thankfully, all the internships I have landed have been absolutely amazing, but I’m probably considered one of the lucky ones.

But the article is right, too–just keep working hard and hunting them down, and you’ll get it. It’s really more a matter of effort than luck. For what it’s worth, I’ve posted the resources The Washington Post referenced in their article below (since they didn’t bother linking to them on their online version of the article), as well as a few resources I personally recommend (which I think are better, too). Good luck internship-hunting!

First off, no this isn’t any of the posts I was planning on writing tonight. Unfortunately, it looks more and more like those will have to wait for the weekend (I’m so sorry SocialJusticeCampDC! I promise it’ll be a good one when it’s up). Today’s been a long and crazy day, but a very, very good one.

Work today was good. I won’t delve into that much more because before too long I’m going to be writing blog posts for the American University Career Center about my internship experience, which I’ll crosspost here. After work, I attended my very first ever Social Media Club DC event, and it was fantastic! The event was held at the Consumer Electronics Association headquarters in Arlington and featured two speakers from the CEA, Megan Pollock and Joe Gizzi, as well as Frank Gruber, entrepreneur and co-founder of TECHcocktail, shinyheart and thankfulfor, among others.

But enough links and name-dropping–what did they talk about? Well, fresh back from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, they talked about tech of course! And, naturally, how it all fits in with social media. Joe Gizzi, especially, had some really interesting things to say about the CEA’s social media strategy to build buzz and deal with attendee complaints/suggestions at the conference. He talked about software they use (namely, CoTweet) as well as how they keep track of much of their dizzying analytics (mostly Google Analytics and CoTweet). For the next few days, you can see some of the livestream from the event here on Twitter. Needless to say, it was enlightening and fun, and I’m already looking forward to the next SMC-DC event (which just so happens to be a Social Media Breakfast next Monday morning!).

Anyway, one last thing I’ll leave you with–an entry from One Day At A Time In Al-Anon. No, I’m not crazy. I just picked it up for free at the Social Justice Camp last weekend (they were giving out free books–all in the name of literacy!) because it looked like a fun thing to have on my bookshelf. It provides some inspirational little passages for each and every day of the year, and today’s seemed particularly relevant given my hectic schedule as of late. Here it is:

No matter what the problems are that we’re trying to cope with, a major source of frustration is trying to encompass too much at once. We forget that we need to deal with only one day at a time, and try to crowd too much into the waking hours of that day–or we even extend it beyond the point of weariness. We can get more out of each hour–and accomplish more–if we try to cope with only as much as is possible in that one day.

Appropriate, no? Always learning.