I learned the joys of making the people I work for happy. I decided to do my internship at Starland Music Center, which is where I take voice lessons. There I work with some very nice ladies named Aimee and Paula that brighten my day whenever we chat. When I did come into the store I mostly dusted and polished guitars. One day there was a dilemma with storage. The small wooden shed where they stored ukuleles, guitars and violins had been turned from organized to total chaos within two days of Aimee spending two hours cleaning it up again. With the way the storage area had been set up, every time they had sold a ukulele, replaced a guitar or rented out a violin, everything got mixed up and misplaced. Aimee was so tired of people messing up her system and she had no idea how to fix everything. Now who came to save the day? None other than yours truly, Nia Luana Francis Brown! I realized that the ukuleles should be under the already displayed ukuleles so they were easier to replace once sold. I separated the violins by size, so all the 1/4 and 1/2 sized violins went on the right-hand side of the space, while 3/4 and full-sized violins went on the left-hand side. Now the most ingenious part of this plan is that I used the guitars themselves as the dividers for the violins so they were easy to grab but not in the way of anything. Aimee was so happy with me that she bought me a macaroon, and I was so overjoyed that I was helpful that I almost ran around the store, but I realized with my past history of clumsiness and the thousands of dollars worth of fragile instruments, that I would just have to settle with jumping up and down giddily. Even though I had gone into the internship thinking it would be just about making music and cleaning, surprisingly, interning at a music store had less to do with music and more to do with friendship. Starland School of Music is where I intern and also take vocal lessons. Once a year Starland organizes an all-school recital. My job this year included setting up equipment, rearranging chairs and organizing certificates so they would correspond with the order of the performances. Even after all the hard work, I found the most rewarding parts of that experience where when everything came together to make a performance great. At one time during the recital, there was a little girl who sang “Let It Be” by the Beatles while accompanying herself on the piano. She sat down at the piano that my co-worker and I had set-up. Once her performance began, she sang into the mic while my supervisor controlled the light and sound boards. When she finished, I handed her a certificate that I help organize while she smiled and said, “thank you”. Her eyes in that moment shone with so much pride that I felt myself holding back a tear or two. Being part of something that could make this one little girl so happy was worth every hour of work.
Journals
Journal 1: 5/24/14
This was the first day I was at my internship and I had a lot of fun. Today I was shown where all the supplies are and also how to polish and organize guitars. I didn’t know how much work went into just making the store look nice and not even running the store itself. Paula taught me how to dust properly (top to bottom because it will just get dirty again if you go the opposite way). I know I won’t really be doing anything along these lines again but I’m glad I learned them
Journal 2: 11/23/14
Okay, that was insanely hard, like not even gonna pretend that was easy. 10 hours of just running up and down stairs and yelling for people to go different directions. Today was the all school recital and I can’t believe we got through it. Organizing and hearding over like....I don’t even know how many kids but there were probably over like 100 kids, it was crazy and insane but I learned that I can stay calm under pressure so... “win-win”. Next time I’m gonna wear more comfortable shoes and never again will I wear a jacket because it was 2 million degrees in that room I swear.
Journal 3: 5/31/15
I’m running on like 5 hours of sleep and can barely make logical/cohesive thoughts but the singing recital went off without a hitch. I organized the set list for the backing tracks and also helped the sound guy. I have no idea what wmas or mp3s are but at least I know how to convert one to the other. Melanie seemed happy with how it turned out so I’m happy by default as well.