Introduction to #Boomerica: 110

Juggling Act

This summer has been great. It's also been difficult in more ways than I care to remember, but it's also been the best summer of my life.

With my job at the Schaumburg Boomers taking up so much of my time, I haven't had the chance to do much else other than work, and try to recover from the long days in my downtime. But that hasn't stopped life outside of this internship from happening, a life lesson that I would be wise to remember for the long term.

Outside of my sometimes 7am-Midnight job, I've been trying to prepare for this coming school year, which may see me take a greater leadership role than ever before. Hand-in-hand with that goes getting the school paper ready and trying to set up how things will work this year, along with setting a staff that is still incomplete.

But wait, there's more.

I'm also trying my hardest to get ready for my best friend's wedding, helping plan and coordinate as much as I'm needed there, all while trying to spend quality time with my lovely fiancee and her wonderful family.

Oh yeah, and starting to plan my own wedding.

Needless to say, there aren't enough hours in a day.

I wouldn't trade this summer for anything, and it has taught me so much about things far greater than how to be a sports PR writer, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been overly trying at times. Sometimes the lessons that we learn the most from come in the most difficult ways.

Right now, I hope to be doing three things:

1. Setting up a solid future. Paying my dues now to earn a better life later.

2. Solidifying relationships. All of them. Showing how much even a few minutes mean to me if I'm spending it with someone else.

3. Learning. Everything I possibly can.

This post may seem a bit redundant from my earlier musings, but that doesn't take away its place as possibly the biggest thing I'm learning now, and maybe forever.

Now on to more internshippy stuff:

This week The Onion was in the building to shoot a commercial. That was a really cool experience. And Andrew Luck is quite large.

I'm learning to be more independent, finding things to do when my supervisor is too busy to assign every task.

I've sold two luxury suites to clients in the past two weeks. Technically three, but two under my name. That's a pretty cool feeling.

The idea of my player feature piece in the program is quite exciting. And I'm not even done with it yet. I hope to spearhead an effort to get the piece online with pictures, video, and the full 900-word article.

The lost-and-found spreadsheet is working. We haven't returned anything in the last week, but everyone seems to know how it works and who to go to: me. I'll chalk that one up to Conference Services experience.

We're about to embark on eight games in seven days. Geesh. This is going to test everyone in every way.

I want to do one more big thing before my time is over (in less than a month). Not sure what that is yet, but I'll figure it out.

I get to be Coop three more times.

Let's do this.

Introduction to #Boomerica: 109

Writing the Ship

Until a couple weeks ago, I hadn't written a single feature piece during my time with the Boomers.

Dozens of bios? Yes.

Many, many game reports? Yes.

Countless promo pieces for games? Oh yes.

But I felt like something missing from my summer portfolio, and from the Boomers team entirely, was more of a behind-the-curtain look at some of the incredible players we have on our team. So I went to my boss and told him my idea, which another intern told me he shared: We wanted to write feature stories on two of the Boomers' most popular players, partially in hopes of drawing fans out to the ballpark to see who we think will be their new favorite players.

This reminded me of something that happened in school

I noticed a stark difference between journalism majors and writing majors my sophomore year when I took a writing major class with a couple of my journalism major friends (Shoutout to Molly, and also PR major Hannah). When coming up with story ideas, I felt like writing majors just blurted out every idea they thought of and stuck to it, while this can certainly be a good thing, it left the few journalism majors in the class wondering "That's a great idea, but what's the purpose?"

Journalism majors were all about the purpose, but in this summer's situation I felt like the tables had turned.

Now it was my boss who was asking "What's the purpose" of a feature article at a minor league baseball club?

My answer: It gets fans more invested in the team, and a bigger reason to come out and watch their favorite players instead of just the team as a whole.

Two days later I was sitting in the dugout with one of my personal favorite players on the team, Gerard, talking about his life experiencecs and what brought him to Schaumburg. Three days after that, I completed one of my own favorite things I've ever written, an article that gave me the excited feeling I so rarely get while typing.

A few quick hits from the experience:

It was great to get back to feature writing; telling stories like I love to do.

The newspaper/magazine business is totally different than sports PR. When I asked my boss for a word count, he said there wasn't one. Then we found out that 500 words would be stretching it based on how much I could fit in my print medium. Cue me cutting my 900-word story down to 450.

I also got the chance to make my own graphic for this story, which will be published in the Booomers' second half program. The illustration features Gerard running around the bases in an all black-and-white photo except for his signature orange shoes, with title on the side of the frame in white, except for the bottom word, which was a matching orange.

I was extremely humbled when the other intern, who was doing a feature piece on another player, asked me to edit his first draft. The whole time I was just thinking, 'I am not worthy.'

This experience changed my writing style a bit, including giving me the desire to use more colorful words more often.

Also, as a side note, I'm starting to really 'move in' to the cubicle I always use at work. That's a fun thing.

Introduction to #Boomerica: 108

Dress for success

I haven't written about my internship in a while, but that's OK. Seventy-hour work weeks will do that to ya.

My most recent experience that I'm excited to share is how I had the chance to make my debut as a professional mascot last week. I had already done some work in the community at events (Which, to the dismay of my boss, I like to call "Coopearances"), but this was my chance at the bigtime: Mascoting during a game.

My schedule was simple but hectic, go out 30 minutes before the game, interact with fans, make people smile, and fine them a good experience. Then, when the game starts, I have several stops to make, like the mascot race on the field at the end of the first inning, the boss toss out the sunroof of a car driving around the field, or the late-inning trip up to the luxury suites to make private visits to the highest-paying customers.

My favorite was doing the Gangnam Style dance on top of the dugout.

Aside from the unspeakable heat that comes with encapsulating yourself in a giant prairie chicken costume for four and a half hours, being a mascot is easy. Or maybe I just have the right personality for it.

Basically you get to run around acting crazy, dancing, and taking pictures with kids. I loved every second of it.

Of course, this isn't what I want to do with the rest of my life (although if money was no object I totally could), but I'm chalking it up as more great experiences and a chance to impress those above me with my willingness to do literally anything.

So that was a weekend of my life, including a day spent as glow stick salesperson walking up and down the stadium aisles. Again, not what I thought I'd be doing, but so unbelievably fun.

It was after a long and exhausting weekend of mascoting and glow stick selling that I realized no matter what I'm doing in life, I want to make people smile and have fun while I do it. That goes for writing, journalism, and my place else this crazy life may take me.

This world has tried vey hard, but it hasn't beaten the eternal optimist out of me yet. And if that doesn't happen this summer, I think it's a safe bet to say that I'll be this positive forever.

Introduction to #Boomerica: 107

Every Second Counts

My college class schedule for this fall is crazy because I don't have a single regular class time. Each one is at 4:30 p.m. or later, with the exception of a 7:50 a.m. time slot.

Lucky me.

My first frightening thought when I looked over this scary schedule was the realization that I would need to learn how to be productive before the p.m. Like most college students, I go about my classes in the day, eat dinner and relax in the evening, and save all that glorious homework for nighttime... if I ever get around to it.

So far this summer, I've been thrown into the fire with daytime (but also still nighttime) productivity, with the paradigm shift coming to its pinnacle yesterday on my rare day off.

I had things to do, people to call, blogs to write, research to... research, and errands to run. But I had gotten precious little sleep in the previous week. It would have been very easy to sleep in until noon, lie in bed and watch Gossip Girl Pretty Little Liars my very manly favorite TV show all day. But, despite my lack of energy, yesterday, and during several other days after work this summer, I brushed the tiredness away and tried my best to be productive and enjoy life outside of work.

This, like pretty much everything else I've been through this summer, has taught me a lot about life. During those tired moments, I've found myself longing for the sweet release of schoolwork, realizing now how much free time I'll have compared to working for the Boomers. So not only will I enjoy the free time I have more, but I'll make better use of all my time as well.

I'm blessed enough to have both a job (actually, all of my jobs qualify here) and a personal life that I love. As hard as it is sometimes to be away from one or the other, I think I'm learning to do a better job of balancing it this summer. And that might be the most valuable lesson I learn in this crazy class called Intro to #Boomerica.

Introduction to #Boomerica: 106

Extra Credit

When I signed on with the Boomers, I anticipated 90% of my duties would revolve around writing and social media. I was about 50% right. When I signed on with the Boomers, I thought I would be almost completely immersed in tasks that were directly related to my major and PR. When I signed on with the Boomers, I just wanted to hop on my typewriter and show everyone what I could do.

So then why am I so excited about spearheading our new lost and found policy?

Because about two weeks ago, I saw a need in our office. We had items being left in the stadium on an almost-nightly basis (that tends to happen when 4,000 people frequent one place) and we had people calling in looking for things they misplaced, but we had no real way to connect the two.

So I saw a need ad created an Excel Spreadsheet to make our system efficient and help our fans recover anything they leave at the stadium. Three days into the implementation, we already had five people matched to their item.

I felt like an eHarmony administrator.

Even though this little initiative had nothing to do with Journalism or Media Communications, it does have everything to do with being a good worker who takes... well... initiative at work. And that's another skill I want to get better at this summer.