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!

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.

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]

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!

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.

First, classes are still going well. My class this morning–Organizational Behavior (basically a management class)–looks like it’ll at least be useful, and the professor seems super-nice.

Second, I started my internship today and it’s fantastic! I’m interning for the PR agency MS&L Worldwide here in D.C. this semester and I’m thrilled about the opportunity. Today was pretty low-key, just getting set-up and the like, but the people are really great and I can already tell I’m going to learn a lot with this experience. It’s totally different from all the other internships I’ve had so far, but I’m excited about the challenge, too.

Finally, I ended up on the front page of AU’s Web site for a while today, in a story about the NYC trip last week. You can see the story–complete with pictures, a quote from right here in my blog and a link back to my Web site–right here.

As I’ve said many times before, Copenhagen was a wonderful experience, but I did miss Washington, D.C., and I missed my friends here more than anything. Today’s been a busy day of reuniting with many of those friends.

For lunch, I met up with several friends in Dupont Circle. We ate quickly, but we must’ve sat and talked for over an hour. Also today was our first chapter meeting of the semester (for my professional business fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi), and my first chapter meeting since last May, over eight months ago. It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I saw a lot of the familiar faces–including my little, who sometimes seems like she really could be related to me–as well as a lot of new ones. Since I’ve been gone there’s been an entirely new class of brothers to enter the fraternity and it’s great meeting them as well. Also, my little took a little of her own, making her my grandlittle, and it was amazing to finally meet her in person!

Finally, I spent a little time tonight just hanging out with some of my best friends from this past summer. Even playing Wii with them seems almost foreign, since it’s been almost six months since I’ve held a controller.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes and boy is it a busy first day for me. This semester I’m taking 18 credit hours–six classes worth–and I have five of those classes on Mondays. In some ways I’m dreading the work, but for the most part I’m kind of excited. The classes I have this semester seem interesting, and should make for some interesting lessons and reading. For what it’s worth, they include:

• Public Speaking (probably the one I’m the most excited about)
• Public Relations Writing
• Principles of Organizational Behavior and Management
• Intermediate Statistics (not dreading it, but I know it will probably require the most effort on my part)
• Competition in an Interdependent World (my last general education requirement!)
• Media and the American Mind (an honors colloquium–i.e. special topics–course, should be absolutely fascinating)

I start my internship on Tuesday. Expect a pretty decent blog post on that Tuesday night. I’ve held off talking about it too much just because, to be honest, I don’t really know what to expect. It’s a pretty prestigious internship and I’ve been incredibly lucky to receive this opportunity. I know it’s going to be a great experience, but I want to have some firsthand knowledge before I go into much detail here on the blog. Might need to add a little disclaimer, too–”none of the opinions expressed on this blog are representative of my employer nor it’s clients”.

It’s good to be back. Now time to get to work and kick this semester into gear.