Saturday, February 5, 2011

Missed opportunities

I'd like this blog to be full of project photos and finished products.  I don't want this to be a private journal, but I saw something today that I felt like I had to talk about here.

In 2008 I went to an interview for an internship in New York.  One of my very good friends made the trip with me.  I had nowhere to stay, a laptop bag with my computer and portfolio, and a suitcase with my interview clothes and shoes in it.  When I got there I felt like a bumpkin: frozen, red, wet and loaded with baggage, but on time for my interview.  The next day they hired me for the summer.

I was ecstatic.  I saw this designer in In Style magazine and tore out the page.  I pulled it for inspiration because I just liked the outfit, but I fell in love with her aesthetic.  I got to spend a summer working with her design team and felt like I was really accomplishing something... Until little by little I felt like I was fumbling my opportunities there.

I kept saying the wrong thing, I got confused by things I had missed because I worked every other day.  I stayed in four different places that summer so I was always moving.  I tried to be proactive and asked for more days, but I felt like the design director didn't like me.  I rarely saw the designer herself, she spent nearly all of her time working with the designers with vendors with the company that was looking to invest in her, and the one time I got to talk to her, she walked in and I was looking at a magazine.  I must have seemed like the lazy intern.

At the end of the internship, I was asked to go get some bleach and make patterns on a knit blend purple fabric out on the fire escape.  The director liked what I was doing so that became my 'job' for a couple of weeks.  I started to miss more announcements, I forgot things, I left early because I didn't know we had been asked to stay late.  What a horrible impression to make during such an important time.  But I had my little project, and every once in a while another intern was sent out to the loading dock with me to work on it too.

I left my internship, later asked for a reference and haven't heard from them since.

I beat myself up about the internship because I've never gone back to New York to get a job.  But today was worse, because I saw the print on a famous model today on a fashion blog that I read.  The designer I worked for is getting more and more successful, as I knew she would, but seeing her dresses on Oprah and the first lady never bothered me as much as seeing the print I worked on out at a red carpet event.

I keep thinking, should I be there?

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