#Employed
Wow. That is surely the most stereotypical millennial title to anything I’ve ever written. If you’ve been keeping up with me, you know I’ve been searching for an internship for this upcoming summer. I began my search around October of last year, but I’ve been really focused on it since January. Thankfully, after weeks of interviews, cold emails and thank you notes, I finally accepted an offer to work at Buzzfeed as a Product Design Intern in New York City!
I’m beyond excited for this opportunity. Buzzfeed has a strong design team that is well-known in the community. It’s especially well-known for it’s VP of Design, Cap Watkins, who is somewhat of a design legend (16.1k Twitter followers!) and generally having a culture that’s great for developing in my career. Everyone I’ve interacted with from the team seems so nice and I can’t wait to meet them all.
More than anything else, I feel relieved. Ever since I decided that design was going to be my career path, I always had my doubts that I would be able to find a good job. Georgia Tech isn’t known as a design school and I would have to do the bulk of my career-relevant learning on my own. I decided on design after my freshman year of college, which meant that I had 3 school years and 2 summers to try and get the experience and knowledge that would be attractive to employers. Last year, when I was trying to find my first design internship, I applied to over 200 companies. I got less than 3 interviews and was convinced that I had made a mistake. I ended up getting an internship and it was a fantastic experience where I learned an enormous amount.
As I applied during this job search, my only hope was that it wouldn’t be like the last one (even though that ended well). After receiving several interviews and actually getting an offer from a great company, I felt like I was on the right track to becoming a great (and employable) designer for the first time in a while. The validation was immensely important for me since I’m not surrounded by that many designers and only see amazing portfolios and work online. It’s nice not to feel like an impostor sometimes.
I can’t wait to see what my internship holds. Until then, I’ll be trying to find housing, learn as much about NYC as I can and finishing up my semester. If you have any suggestions about NYC or anything else, let me know!
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Playlist
night vibes - I’ve been cleaning up my spotify playlists, and I combined about 3 different ones to make this one.
Longread
“Donald Glover Can’t Save You” by Tad Friend - amazing profile by the New Yorker about a massive creative inspiration of mine, Donald Glover. I’ve been following his career since Community and it’s great to see everything that he’s up to and how he thinks.
Short Film
“Growth” - interesting short film showing the passage of time, despite being one (seemingly) continuous shot
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:~)
Love,
Nikhil