On the 6th June, I took the step from full time student into the world of office work, commuting and surviving on Tesco meal deals and coffee. It is an understatement to say I was nervous about this change – you only have to have seen the first 10 minutes of The Devil Wears Prada to know that offices are scary, and filled with people who know what they’re doing and have no time for those who don’t.
Thankfully, it only took 5 minutes of walking into the Carcanet office – my future job for the next 3 months – to dispel all of the fears that I had.
Greeted with a hug, I was shown round the office and introduced to all 5 of my colleagues at the independent publishing house by the lovely woman who had interviewed me, Jazmine. The small nature of the organisation and the office meant that I got to know everyone almost immediately, and within a week it felt as though I had been working there for months already. My position is technically ‘Marketing and Sales Assistant’, which entails lots of social media scheduling, promoting new poetry books, emailing authors, writing a weekly newsletter and blog posts! This is a lot more time consuming than my small description suggests, as I learned on my first day when it took me over an hour to schedule one Facebook post – whoever said all millennials are technologically advanced was wrong. I have got better since then, and am actually quite amazed at the things I can do, and the skills I have that I never realised. For example, this week I used Adobe inDesign: a software that I know I can use, technically, but have never had to. Small things like this really do make a difference to your confidence levels, and enable you to say yes to opportunities and challenges that you maybe wouldn’t have in the past.
Due to the summertime period that we are in, pretty much everyone in the office will be/has been taking their holiday leave, and so I, as the intern, am learning a lot more than straightforward Sales and Marketing. Last week Foichl, the administration/financial assistant, took his holiday and so I took on the role of phone duties, front of house duties and leafing through hundreds of permission requests for poems. Permission requests are the process of granting the rights for companies/individuals/The World Bank (big deal) to use the poetries of the authors that Carcanet manages. Through my permission request journey, I learned how to invoice, and made a spreadsheet that is to date, the proudest achievements of my 20 years on this planet. This week – my second full working week – Alan, the Sales manager – is off on holiday. This has led to me making promotional materials on inDesign, and getting to fully express my creativity! Everyone who I tell that I’m working over summer, and moving through the office as well as doing my ongoing Sales and Marketing role seems to react cynically, and make varying snarky remarks about ‘that being the reason I’m a summer intern’ etc. While this may be technically true, the experience I am getting by moving through these various roles is invaluable, and most of all I’m enjoying it immensely.
I’m extremely grateful for Carcanet for being so inclusive and welcoming, and I’m thankful to have this opportunity and to be doing all of the things that I want to do, as well as learning so many other things along the way – next month, I’m helping to run a book launch in Manchester Cathedral which I’m sure will be so exciting – I never imagined that I would love a 9-5 job as much as I do, and it’s down to the creativity and atmosphere of this role. I’m eternally thankful to FASS for this opportunity, and I am positive that it will open doors in the future.
Becky is a second year English Literature and Politics student, working as the Sales and Marketing Assistant at Carcanet Press.
Becky Scott
You must be logged in to post a comment.