By Megan R., Andrew S., and Louis L.
When we entered room 107, the journalism headquarters, for the first time as new interns, we all expected that we would come in and do our own individual projects; we did not understand what team work really was.
Little did we know we would learn an important lesson about group effort and work ethic. This lesson was not learned through appeasing one another, but by first antagonizing each other beyond belief.
One of the most memorable lessons of these situations was the result of yet another sarcastic battle between the three of us. We all had our own ways of handling it.
Louis chose to be silent, Megan tried to confront Andrew and Louis on the matter, and Andrew proceeded to laugh it off and throw in his favorite manipulation, “I love you.”
Unfortunately, we were not open to each others’ point of view and would learn that this is a dangerous situation to be in, especially in a working environment. Work wasn’t getting done, the boss was unhappy, and the overall atmosphere was tense.
As time went on, we slowly began to accept each others’ character defects and know each others’ limits. Louis became the technical guy. He knew how to edit pictures better than anyone in the class. He worked on room 107’s Mac computer to create the videos for the Awards Banquet. Andrew did the majority of the writing, covering the on-going “gas story,” as well as laying out the pages. Megan ran the whole show—making sure jobs got done and assignments were turned in on time.
We all got comfortable with our jobs, and were able to get things done quickly and efficiently. We worked together by checking our work with one another, offering help if one of us was backed up, and always put out a quality finished product.
Just when we thought the lessons of working as a team were finished, a new obstacle arose. Louis had to leave because of a family emergency and Megan and Andrew were left to take over his part of the job as well as their own.
Those of us left in journalism were frantic trying to get all of Louis’s jobs covered. We had always joked about Louis not doing any work, but during this time, we began to see all that he contributes.
We had become so used to our routine of working like a team, that we didn’t know how to handle the missing link.
We went through a lot of stress trying to teach ourselves Louis’s jobs.
Needless to say, Megan and Andrew were able to support one another and their fellow co-worker through this hard time, while getting the jobs done. It was stressful but undoubtedly helped us to value each other more than anything else.
Chris Stein, our publisher, boss, and friend, has developed our work ethic. Without his overview of our operation, most of the time nothing would have gotten done. Chris, you have been a great help to us and we feel that without you, we would not be as strong as we are today.
The experience of being the journalism interns has taught us to be hard-working and selfless. If a job needed to get done, we had to be there to do it, regardless of our feelings about the assignment.
Starting as distant co-workers, the three of us have developed a relationship more like that of best friends.
