When I Was an Intern…
A series by full-time Praytellers who began as interns. Meet Maggie, a full-time Creative Producer who started as an intern in our Brooklyn office.
Name: Maggie Lee
Internship Period: May — December 2014
Location: Brooklyn
Current Role: Creative Producer, Video
I applied to Praytell by…
Searching for small agencies, finding Praytell through The Muse, and emailing Grace (who, at the time, was a strategist, copywriter, account lead and Praytell’s only form of HR all at once) several times with the intro “Hello Ms. Kang,” because I considered myself a child and her an adult. This is hilarious to me now, as she has now possessed on her phone for a few years a selfie video I once sent her of myself drunkenly eating a 2am burrito. Anyway, back in 2014, she eventually answered my emails and I had a phone interview with her. I remember not really being able to hear anything — service was bad. But I got a phone interview with Andy after that. It lasted about 5 minutes, during which he told me he’d looked at my Twitter and thought I had a good, weird voice, then asked me what music I liked. I said “LCD Soundsystem… and like, Beyoncé…” and he said that’d work.
My first day was surprising because…
I dressed up and realized that was very unnecessary when Jon Chew showed up on his bike in a loose tank top. Also got sent on a massive wine run for the office and Andy’s card was declined — an occurrence which quickly lost its surprise factor.
I knew I was in the office too long when…
Andy asked me to please leave because they were paying me by the hour and we weren’t rolling in holding company buyout funds at that point yet.
I was (and still am) addicted to this Slack channel…
We didn’t have Slack when I was an intern, I think! Or maybe we got it right at the tailend of my internship. We had something called IDoneThis, which no one really used, but I made sure to put in some kind of joke about what I’d “done” at the end of each day to try to make people laugh. I was still pretty quiet and shy at the time so that was my coming out to the company as A Hilarious Person You Should Be Friends With And Also Hire Full Time.
The most underrated office snack was…
This doesn’t really answer the question correctly, but my answer is Snack Bowl. It’s when you put a bunch of different snacks that don’t go well together into a bowl and then eat it at your desk for lunch. Also called Budgeting.
The #1 overrated office snack was…
Beef jerky. Boys are gross! Jk I know anyone of any gender can and does eat this. But boys are still gross, that stands.
I knew I wanted to work here full-time when…
I applied for the internship. It was a long con. I started full-time the day after I graduated from college, very strategically planned. Way to fall for it.
My advice to my past intern self would be…
Don’t go to that team bonding Spartan Race. You can make friends with your coworkers without running up a mountain and rolling in mud under barbed wire and scraping up your legs climbing over a wood wall.
