Looking Back: What I've Learned as an OLL Intern

We asked long-time intern Candace to share a few thoughts on her—sob—last day in the office. (But first we plied her with lots of delicious brunch food, as seen above.)

When I began interning for the Office of Letters and Light in September 2007, I had just started my freshman year at UC Berkeley. I was a two-time NaNoWriMo winner at that point, and I jumped at the opportunity to support an organization that had already helped me produce 100,000 words of questionable prose and my first attempt at a stage play.

A lot has happened since then—but four years, 330,000 more words of questionable prose, and 2.5 scripts later, I'm still in love with what we do, and more than a little sad to have to leave. In less than two weeks, I will graduate from Berkeley with a BA in English and move back home to Southern California for the summer. In the fall, I'll be heading to New York to start a PhD in English at Columbia University.

I'm obviously excited about taking this next step, but I'm not quite ready to move forward without taking a moment to look backward at the things I learned as an intern here, and the things I'm going to miss.*

If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right.

After having worked here for three years, I feel like this is an unspoken office philosophy. It shows up in the events we run—which, the way I see them, are all about letting yourself have fun with writing in a way you might never have done before—but it's also present in the day-to-day goings-on within the office. Helped along by important office traditions like pie days and Friday Jams, and encouraged by mascots like Tom Selleck and Blobby the Dinosaur, we do our best to make work fun. Even entering data into a spreadsheet is exciting when accompanied by the melodious strains of Toto's "Africa"—and I speak from experience.

Insanity is better with company.

And I'm convinced the company here is the best. It's not just that the staff is friendly. After enough time working together in the same office, everyone really is friends. Sometimes, we have to do real work—and as an intern I've engaged in my fair share of menial labor—but even during the craziness that accompanies October and November in particular, it's comforting to know that we're all rooting for each other, coming together in a team effort to get this done.

If this, what else?

Working here has ultimately taught me to believe in the power of a group of creative, motivated people to do whatever they set out to do, and more. If we can do this, think of all of the other amazing things that people can do. If I can be part of something like this, what else can I go on to accomplish? (In case you're wondering, the answer is "anything.")

*I initially considered making a second list of the things I'll miss, but decided that "everything except for assembling teacher kits" probably covers it.