(via GIPHY) I love reading about suburban areas like the one described in My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick or even just experiencing life on a college campus.  There is a sense of community and belong-ness.  It's a place where everyone knows everyone else.  There is no such thing as a secret.  As I interned and typed away at the computer they provided, I thought back to how much I learned about my coworkers in such a short amount of time.  Things like what kind of food they like, what kind of books they like to read, what kind of TV they watch.  It was a sense of community and I was happy to be a part of it.  Every morning, just as if we were getting the mail from the outskirts of our picket fences, we would greet one another and get to work.  I don't know what a large office would look like since a small office is all I know.  I expect a large office to be similar to a high school cafeteria.

(via GIPHY) While I was in Korea, the professor of Cultural Anthropology did a lecture on personal space.  It was rather interesting, learning different cultures have different expectations of what constitutes as personal space.  The professor had gone on to demonstrate with a wary, blindfolded American at the front of the lecture hall that a person can tell even with their eyes closed that others are standing too close.  With Americans, the personal space bubble ranges from two to three feet varying upon level of acquaintance.  (However, the new Icebreakers commercial begs to differ.)  With Koreans, their bubble is smaller which makes sense since level of friendships are based on skinship (the more you hold hands, the more you drape your arm over their shoulder, the closer you are with them).  During rush hour, all of this psychology --these scientific experiments-- go out the window.  In Korea, during rush hour, there is no such thing as a personal bubble.  In subways, you are packed like sardines in each car.  I was surprised that the Americans' two to three feet circumference disappears as well.  However instead of packed sardines, New Yorkers still like their space of one or two inches.  Rush hour makes you believe that someone is invading personal space when they are not even touching you.  It brings me back to the days in Seoul, South Korea. (Yes, 아저씨, I am hurrying--please, remove your hand from my back.)

(via GIPHY) Everyone is familiar with the commercial where the girl babysits and is happy to be paid in gum.  Unpaid internships are--well, any internship is--fantastic.  They are paying you in experience which you will need to continue in your professional career.  Money is always nice, gum would be okay.  No, unfortunately money did not appear as part of this internship.  However, since I was working with books, reviewing and editing and building web pages for their sites, I got "paid" in books.  I seriously do not need anymore books.  Goodreads has tracked my owned-books somewhere in the low 1000s.  Still, as it is nice to get paid at an internship, it is very nice to get free books at an unpaid one.  Thank you.

(via GIPHY) Recently, I read an article on Career Girl Daily--which is a super cute website for any professional woman--about 8 Things We All Secretly Do in Our Lunch Breaks.  Out of all the eight things listed, I am sure most office people can admit to at least a few.  Lunch hour is the best--especially in the city.  Being in the city, this means free wifi and unlimited refreshing of your Pinterest feed.  Being in the city, this means delicious food, varying from a wide-span of different cultures. There is so much to be done during lunch hour and you still have to eat.  

(via GIPHY) Four years of college prepared me for the work world, except it didn't give me a step-by-step guide on how to actually step into the work world.  By trial and error and pure luck, my job search and previous experience brought me here.  An internship is required in most jobs today.  Whether or not you are returning to college after your BS degree or taking on those job search engines, fighting for a chance to win big (get the dream job), the act of searching for a job will always be a little scary.  Similar to what I feel when traveling to a place I've never been, diving into the unknown.  Searching for jobs is like searching for the future you've always dreamed about.  It seems like everything is on the line.  Despite the daunting side of job searching, you will find a job.  And that job will either be your dream job or the job that gets you one step closer to what you really want.

While interning at The Book Report Network, I learned so much.  My internship taught me so much about the publishing industry and the professional world, in general.  It certainly changed me and prepared me to take on the world.