Intern Diaries: Bridget at Gainesville

For some, summertime doesn’t mean downtime. It’s just another opportunity to travel, get an internship or otherwise move up in the world. But since you can’t do it all, INsite tracked down several students in places from Thailand to Miami, New York to Paris. Every week, we share their experiences with you. Last week, you read about Jillian in DC. This week, we bring you local intern Bridget at Gainesville Magazine.

Since May, I’ve listened to The Gainesville Sun interns chat away about their clips. Each day, there was a new newspaper and a new opportunity for them to be published. And each day, on the other side of the cubicle wall, I worked away on my own stories—the lone magazine intern with nothing to show for it.

But all that changed this week with the arrival of the glossy, 126-page, back-to-school issue of Gainesville Magazine. My editor plopped a copy on my desk, and Erin Andrews stared up at me from the cover.

Excitedly, I flipped through the pages to check for all five of my stories. I interviewed elementary school girls who ran and paleontologists who discovered some of the biggest animals to ever live. I toured the downtown library and the city of Winter Park. I even shopped for Gator gear. All of this made it into the pages of the August/September issue. Sweet!

I danced over to the other side of the wall to show the newspaper interns that I, too, worked hard all summer and finally had something to prove it.

“Look, there’s me in the staff photo!” I squealed. “And look, there’s my name—my name is everywhere!”

Not only has the internship been an awesome experience in magazine writing and production, it’s been a great excuse to explore Gainesville. I’ve even checked off a few things on my personal “Gainesville Bucket List.” I finally visited the Florida Museum of Natural History and the Harn Museum of Art. I shopped at farmers markets and dined at restaurants I had always wanted to try. And I finally got an Alachua County library card.

I can’t believe both the summer and the internship are coming to a close. It went by so quickly, and I’m just not ready for it to end. Of course, summer always goes by too fast. But I also think it’s the universal curse of internships: As soon as you feel comfortable, it’s over.

And of course, it won’t seem over until October when the next issue comes out and the rest of my stories are published. But it’ll totally be worth the wait.

—Bridget Higginbotham

In case you’ve missed any, here’s the complete series (as of yet).