Internship antics

Last Friday, I followed my dream of writing into what I thought would be the hardest hour of my life: the internship interview. I walked into the magazine's southern headquarters, name omitted to protect my pending application, clutching my portfolio, reviewing my resume, and confident in my pinstripes and Princeton refined handshake. I was ready.

Sitting in the leather chair, I smiled at the editors, ready to laugh at their jokes, ask the right questions, and nail all their inquiries. It began.

"How did you do your hair?" Silence. "Well, it's up. Yes, up. Bobby pins."

"And your shoes! Adorable..." The conversation eventually turned to the position. "Right, right. Well, it's like that e before i rule. You know, 'something something c?" Did I mention the pending position is in the journalism field? Specifically, an editorial position?

I sat back, trying to forget my Career Center advice, "Why yes, they're Nine West ... Yes Ma'am, e before i, I believe that's correct." My interviewer leaned forward, her smile now straightened into a serious line, "One more question, Ashley. What do you want to be when you grow up?"

I paused and suddenly I was no longer sitting in the interview, feet crossed at the ankles and hands on knees but rather back a few days before to my original spring break destination: California. I spent six days touring Hollywood, Venice Beach, and Disneyland with a roommate, stopping our whirlwind tour only long enough to catch the end of the Princess parade or gawk at the endless array of tattoo possibilities. We encountered street performers, rush hour traffic and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. But my favorite day was when we went back to Kindergarten.

My roommate's mother, a wonderful woman well-versed in patience and a wrangler of eighteen 5 year old Hispanic kids for seven hours a day, five days a week, invited us to be honored guests in her classroom one morning. Guests because we could already count past one hundred and honored because we brought the cookies. Walking in, we were greeted with a chorus of "Good Morning Ashley and Mariah" and promptly sized up by the tiny gang of lettering kids. Today was brought to us by the letter I.

The kids were instructed to individually read us a book. In exchange for the repeatedly stimulating four-page recitation, they would receive a s'mores cookie. Seemed like a good deal. All kids read right? I worked through the book with the first few kids, smiling as one raced through the page while the other slowly echoed my roommate's reader a few feet away. Since creatively rarely goes unrewarded, cookies were dispersed just the same.

Trouble came when one child sat down, confidently opened the book, and launched into the pages, speeding through the plot in under a minute. "In an of the is it," he said. Smiling me a toothy grin before shifting his focus to the cookie stack. "Edwardo," called out the teacher, "ella habla espanol." That was it. All cookies broke loose as each kid turned in their chairs. Suddenly several small voices began excitedly explaining insectos and galletas before I could clarify that though Princeton thought me fluent in Spanish, those who actually spoke it often felt otherwise. They were less than impressed with my grammatical skill and I could almost sense them feeling better knowing that if I was in a Spanish classroom, I might just be trying for the cookie as well.

A few puzzles later, we sang the goodbye song and started for the door. Lucia stood up, suddenly brave and yelled, "I have a cousin named Ashley!" Jose quickly yelled back, "My brother's thirteen!" Once upon a time, it really was that simple. I remember then, I wanted to be a Doctor, like my daddy and raise kids and keep everything in line, like my mom. I wanted to cook and play cards like my grandmas. I had dreams of being an astronaut, a pilot and eventually a writer.

Things changed. I lost my perfect vision to glasses and gave up the possibility of space flight. I moved on from Tom Cruise, leaving behind my MiGs and Maverick fantasies. But still, those days carefully lettering cards to family and friends remain, strengthened now by the possibility of one dream coming true.

I snapped back in the interview, "The dream? A column. The next Rick Reilly, but out of the sports venue." The lady laughed, "Well now, that's several years away. You've got so much to learn and experience before then."

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"True," I replied, "but it's all pretty basic: Listen when someone bigger than you speaks, write carefully and only on your own things, explore your surroundings, and regardless of how many words you have to make up, get the cookie." Smiling at my sophomoric naivety, she said, "You have a point; it seems pretty elementary."

Actually, it's kindergarten.

Ashley Johnson is a sophomore from Florence, Ala.