Once I had a dream that I majored in engineering and got a full-time job offer right out of college. Then I woke up and realized
I was an English major with two quarters left of my undergraduate education and zero of the aforementioned job offers. Instead of resigning myself to a life on the street, I did what any young, intelligent and deluded student would do: I took a quarter off from school and moved to Los Angeles to be an intern, which is how I have now interned for the producers of “The Pursuit of Happyness,” served water to the likes of Natalie Portman and, yes, ended up swimming with Paul Rudd (though totally unrelated to my internship).
To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure what caused this sudden change of zip code. Oh wait, now I remember: the threat of begging strangers for change to feed my caffeine addiction. I realized that as an English major who didn’t want to be a teacher, there weren’t very many options that didn’t lead to sleeping on my parents’ couch. All I knew was that
I loved telling, watching and writing stories. I wasn’t going to dance around the fact that I wanted to be in the entertainment industry any longer. I also wasn’t going to deny that if I didn’t get any professional experience soon, it probably would never happen. So I wrote some cover letters, fixed up my résumé and went to some interviews. Before I knew it, I had three job offers, a place to live and didn’t want to waste any more of my time as an undergraduate.
My Hollywood life began in early September when I started my internship with Escape Artists, a production company on the Sony lot that produced “Pursuit” and the upcoming Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker film “The Great Debaters.” And because I wouldn’t be taking classes, I also accepted an internship with Fox-Walden, a new company that markets films for 20th Century Fox and Walden Media. Its most recent project is the film “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” which stars Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman.
Somehow I ended up working for some pretty important people in the industry: Steve Tisch, one of the three “Escape Artists” who won an Oscar for “Forrest Gump,” and Carey Granat, who is the CEO of Walden Media.
For a girl from Sacramento who went to college in San Luis Obispo, this new life of mine was pretty glamorous. Well, as glamorous as working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. without monetary compensation could be. Actually, as it turns out, I paid them every time I made copies, read a script about Mayan pigmies traveling through time (unfortunately true) or searched the net for the new Zac Efron (though, really, I would do that anyway). The total comes to about -$5 an hour, but who’s counting?
Aside from performing the typical tasks of an intern, I also got to sit in on creative meetings, connect calls between Bill Condon and Denzel Washington, and continue to be surprised when actors like Josh Duhamel and Rosario Dawson just stop by the office for a visit. You know, just the usual stuff. But even if all I did was read terrible Mayan pigmy scripts, it would still all be worth it.
Now before you give up your lease and quit school altogether (if Bill Gates can do it.), just remember that not all stories that begin with a dream, end up as such. I, for one, was extremely lucky to land an internship (at all) where the staff knows my name (Ashley’s close enough, right?) and actually want me to succeed in the business. But most internships are not all butterflies and celebrity sightings. Apparently there are a lot of internshit stories out there. One of my bosses was denied a chair (sounds like someone had a superiority complex) at her first internship and I heard about another where all the interns were literally locked in a room all day reading scripts. The point is, there will always be a risk involved.
In this industry, it’s sink or swim. While most of my time is spent feeling like I am partly drowning, I keep treading water because when the time comes for me to enter the workforce, I will be more prepared than most. I come to work knowing that somehow I will screw up – but also that I will learn how to correct my many mistakes.
Moving to Los Angeles, even just for four months, may have been the best decision I have ever made. Not only did I slightly increase my chances of post-graduate employment, I was able to work with some of the best minds in the industry. Sometimes the tasks I was given seemed mundane, but I would much rather make copies of film scripts than anything else in the world. It didn’t matter that I was at the bottom of the totem pole (and I mean the bottom) and it didn’t even matter that I was the smallest fish in a huge pond. I was just happy to be floating in the same water as some of the biggest fish in Hollywood.
If after all of this I still graduate jobless and end up sleeping on my parents’ couch, I can be proud of myself for working hard for my dreams. Regret is way harder to live with than my parents, anyway. But no matter what happens, I know I’ve learned more in the last two months that in all three years in college. At the end of the day, working tirelessly and sometimes endlessly toward some concrete goal (even for free) is more satisfying and rewarding than just writing papers and studying for midterms. But most importantly, I learned never to ignore my dreams – even the silly ones where I am an engineer (which is actually sort of a nightmare).
Sure, I can say that I’ve swam with Paul Rudd (he lives in my friend’s apartment complex) but I am much more excited to boast of my willingness to leave the safety zone of San Luis Obispo and pursue what I was meant to. Now that I am here I don’t want to leave, but I have been told that it is even harder to find a job without a degree. So return I must to safety, but with me I hope to bring a new context to my education, or at least a few recommendation letters.
Allison Baker is an English senior interning at Fox Walden and Sony Pictures studios in Hollywood this quarter.