By Ezra Emerson
Oh summer. The time of year when people usually lay back from their usual schedule and unwind. Some have more sleep time, others sit around and watch tv, play video games, scroll on Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat, or go to their local pool or beach and just relax. Well, at least most of us do that. Others like to maintain some sort of schedule to their day plus get some of that dough (money) for the next year, so they sign up to work at the many camps and day camps. The last and least desired summer activity is an internship. According to the Cambridge English dictionary, an internship is “a period of time during which someone works for a company or organization in order to get experience of a particular type of work”. You wanna know the best part about it? Usually one does not get paid. What FUN!!! Anyways I did an internship, paid thank G-d, and here is both my experience and what I have learned about it.
I had the opportunity to work at the beautiful Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Memphis in Memphis Tennessee. This is the point where people are probably asking “hold on a sec, where is Memphis?” and the answer is on the bottom left point of tennessee and right next to the mississippi river, or “why get a Internship in Memphis Tennessee out of all places?” which can be answered right now. Long story short, I have a good chunk of family that lives in Memphis and they have a couple of connections with the hotel. I asked if there was anything I could do there since I needed a job for the summer, and they asked for me and sure enough I had a job.
The job was working a week at all the different departments they had in the hotel, and getting a feel for each of them. I started off with housekeeping, which I hated at first but came to appreciate what they do and how it’s done. I know for myself that the next time I stay at a hotel, I am gonna keep it as clean as I can since I have been on the other side before. Next up was the front desk, which was very interesting to work at and get a feel for that. By far the hardest part was calling people since I am more of an in person interaction type of guy than the phone most of the time, so answering them was definitely hard to get over. The next week after I went to the Accounting department, and with the stuff I was taught in accounting this past semester, I did great in that department. After that I went over to the sales and catering department, which was also excellent as well. Then I went over to the maintenance department, which was very interesting. I had to fix some sinks, some bathtubs, some toilets, and other stuff as well. It was definitely one of the hardest working weeks of my life, but I loved every moment of it. Then finally the one I was excited for, which was working at the restaurant in the hotel. I was the host and worked both the dinner shift a couple of days, and the breakfast shift for other days. Sometimes it was a little hard to get up early in the morning for the breakfast shift, but I made it work.
What I came out of this internship with was that you got to work with great people, it will go a long way. Everyone enjoy the new semester!!