Public Service and the City

When I was 21 I had my first internship in New York City. I worked in a boutique talent agency in the literature department. My job was to copy scripts and look over scripts that writers in hopes of getting them optioned had mailed in unsolicited, which is really all to say I read a bunch of bad scripts that summer. I wish I could remember the various plots now, but I remember picking up a book one day with no chapters and a bunch of run-on sentences about some guy’s salacious lifestyle. I don’t know whatever happened to that one.

Anyway, one day at this internship my boss’s colleague came up to me with a sheepish look in his eyes and said, “I feel really badly about this…. I hate to ask you this, but would you mind going to Starbucks for some of us?” I said yes for two reasons. One, any opportunity to wander around the city even if it is to a coffee shop I don’t like was fun. Two, I’m not beneath grabbing coffee. All jobs have their glorious moments as well as their less glorious moments, and you can only get to the glorious stuff after you do a lot of non-glorious stuff. And there will always be non-glorious stuff to do.

Today was day 2 of my wrap up with PCI-Media Impact, an organization that uses media in innovative ways to create social change. They’ve done projects all over the world and mine and Sarah’s work was specifically involved with climate change in the Caribbean. Yesterday they invited me to sit in on a meeting with Soul City who was presenting their latest endeavor in the field of entertainment education. The things I heard were amazing! I mean using reality TV in a way that transforms communities in South Africa just blew me away. There needs to be more shows like this.

Hearing about other EE organizations across the globe was just the beginning though. We sat down and looked through my deliverable; I gained some great feedback on how to improve the manual I’m drafting for their data collection method. The work continues!

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, no one at PCI asked me to grab them coffee, though I would have gladly. However, this morning I got off the metro and stumbled into a great little coffeeshop and grabbed myself some coffee. An iced capuccino. Yum.