Summer Internships Are Invitations to Adventure

It’s always difficult to take notes while you’re walking, but the speed of the protester’s pace made it even more difficult. I was scribbling down notes, and quotes, as he picketed a local supermarket, which he saw as insensitive to the plight of migrant farm workers who pick grapes.

It’s an issue familiar to Southland residents, but as a recent transplant from Florida, it was fairly new to me. I could tell that my battery of rather rudimentary questions had already left him wondering if I was making fun of him, or just stupid. A minute later, our exchange ended and he asked for a business card.

Sheepishly, I told him that I didn’t have any. His squint of contempt narrowed even more when I had to fumble through my notebook just to find the newsroom phone number.

“Say,” he said, “are you a real reporter or what? “

That embarrassing exchange happened my third day at the Los Angeles Times, my first out-of-the-office assignment. What I should have told the protester was that yes, I am a real journalist, but not your average garden variety reporter--I am a summer intern.

The Times picks summer interns each year from college campuses across the country. For the most part, we are young and eager to work for the nation’s largest metropolitan newspaper. For me, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Florida, the offer to work here was also an invitation to adventure, a chance to see this mysterious West Coast I had heard so much about.

But my time has ended, and by the time this is published I will be back in humid, swampy Florida trying to find gainful employment to earn tuition money for the spring semester. I learned a lot while I was here, but some stories I covered stand out above the rest:

* While covering a Cambodian art exhibit at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, I interviewed four Buddhist monks brought in to bless the show’s opening. The monks were all older, bald men, and none spoke English, but through an interpreter they told me of their war-torn homeland, and the ordeal they had gone through to escape.

Looking at their flowing orange robes, I was impressed by their gentle manner, their ideals and the overall air of solemn holiness they exuded.

* When a Garden Grove family and the Marines attempted to airlift a wounded horse trapped in a San Gorgonio mountain ravine, I tagged along with the ground team. Unfortunately, the daring rescue ended with the horse falling to its death as it was hoisted into the air by a Marine helicopter. Mortality of a less equine nature dominated my thoughts that day because getting to the ravine required a 30-minute ride up a treacherous mountain road, a lengthy hike over mountain terrain and a 400-foot rope climb down loose shale.

And, because I had never seen a mountain before (Floridian, remember?), the 5,000-foot elevation had me gasping for air all the way down. But I found my pace improved significantly when one of the group members pointed out some local wildlife, namely a bear meandering in the nearby trees. Although the same gentleman later claimed I was exaggerating, I can honestly say the beast was rabid and roughly the size of a Volkswagen.

* While interns are treated the same as any full-time staff writer, it is true that some of the assignments that come across our desks are not quite the stuff of which hard-hitting journalism is made. Still, it’s a challenge to do these lighter stories in a creative way and no doubt they have high readership.

At least that’s what I kept reciting in my mind when I spent a week covering the Orange County Fair, which this year revolved around the exciting theme of honey and bees. Sometimes it was hard, such as the time I interviewed a group of women with 3-foot high hair, all entrants in the beehive hairdo contest, and had to ask with a straight face how they picked the various chemicals encrusting their locks.

Then there was the aromatic day I looked for a feature around the stalls housing the fair’s various animal competitions; needless to say, after about an hour, I was considering buying some new shoes.

And then, best of all, there was Norm Gary, a man who covered his entire body with live bees to prove they were harmless. Really. I stood 3 feet from Gary while he played a clarinet and watched the little buggers coat his body, crawl into his mouth and sneak up his nose. After the interview was over, I stood there chuckling, trying not to swat any of his wayward pets that had landed on me.

And I wondered, is this how my career is going to be? Was this story an example of what journalism was really about? Needless to say, the story was a big hit.