Wednesday, December 10th, 2014
Start (pt. 1): 9:00am
End (pt. 1): 11:00am
Start (pt. 2): 11:45am
End (pt. 2): 7:00pm
Total: 9.25 hrs
I started today by going to school for a pit orchestra rehearsal which went really well! Today was the first time that our orchestra met as a whole and got to play all together. Along with me who comes at least once a month, there are also two professional trumpet players named Peter and Dave and a french horn player named Ian. Peter and Dave came to rehearsal early like I did so we were able to get to know each other well which was really nice. Dingus, my robot baby for health class, was a great conversation starter. I had to bring Dingus to school, but thank goodness I didn't have to bring him to the Met! Fortunately he didn't cry at all during rehearsal. The rehearsal itself was really good-- we got through about a quarter of the show, which has me feeling very confident and more and more excited as tech week approaches!
I got to the Met and got to talk to Jane and congratulate her on her wonderful recital! My mom and I went last Thursday and we both had such a good time, Jane is an incredible singer! She was really happy that I enjoyed it, and I told her about how nervous I am for tomorrow, which is when the Columbia Early Decision results come out! She wished me good luck, and I began to work, starting with inputting the data to my LAST survey, woohoo! Afterwards I set up the OLC with Kyle and put up the Aardvark signs.
We still brainstormed and further developed ideas for any 2015 campaigns during our social media meeting, and I think that it is coming along. At 1:30 we had a Community Engagement Meeting where we talked about in and out-of-house lectures, rentals, the volunteer party happening tomorrow, and final survey results for the data survey (the last survey I inputted was the last of the program surveys). According to Stuart, the results from the data were not particularly shocking.
I got back to my desk and cleared out all of the old wait list files on Tessitura. I also offered to help out Naomi by stapling and making booklets for Naomi and Stuart's Cos Club Boot Camp Class. One project that I started today but didn't get to finish was alphabetizing and cataloging the CD Library. I thought that it would be really boring but it's strangely fun to see all that the Guild has in terms of legendary recordings of truly immortal singers and orchestral players!
At 5:30 Kyle, Laura, and I headed over to the opera house to attend the MetTalk panel discussion about The Merry Widow. The Merry Widow is basically a hybrid opera-musical and it was SO cool to see Renee Fleming, one of the biggest stars of opera, with Kelli O'Hara, one of the biggest stars of Broadway! New York truly is an amazing place, and I had so much fun at the MetTalk!
The Opera House
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Week 12
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs.
Today was the first typical day in a while! When I came into the office, Jane wasn't there because her recital is tomorrow. Even last week she was restraining from talking to keep her vocal chords as undamaged as possible before her recital. Thank goodness I don't have to do that as a clarinetist! Nonetheless, I'm very excited to watch Jane's recital tomorrow, I'm sure it will be amazing.
Anyway, I came into the office and was assigned to finish up the DVD's from last week. Unfortunately, they were done last week, but the lecturer decided that he wanted more videos so that meant that I had to make new DVD's. Since the rendering and reformatting of the videos took a while, I had to sit at my desk with not much to do but wait for them to finish rendering but once that was over, Stuart checked all of the DVD's again and was happy with the end result.
I headed to a social media meeting at 1pm and it was honestly the usual. We talked about what we were planning on posting this week and we're trying to get some series started for 2015-- our ideas were Opera After Dark, Opera Haikus, and Met Guild History Fun Facts.
There was no formal Community Engagement Meeting afterwards, but a few of us did meet in the Quad (a small cubicle area in the back of the office) for a pow wow meeting for volunteer party next week. It was short, sweet, and very efficient. Sadly I won't be able to go to the volunteer party since it's on a Thursday but oh well, I'm sure that it'll go along very well!
After the meeting I had a short break then I got to go on a backstage tour! My tour guide's name was Lois and she was really nice. The tour itself was amazing and I learned a lot about the opera house! I'm really thankful for all of the opportunities I have here at this internship! And fun fact: at the end of the tour, Lois told us that it was a symbol of good luck to find a bent nail on the floor of the Met Carpentry room, and I found one and got to keep it!
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs.
Today was the first typical day in a while! When I came into the office, Jane wasn't there because her recital is tomorrow. Even last week she was restraining from talking to keep her vocal chords as undamaged as possible before her recital. Thank goodness I don't have to do that as a clarinetist! Nonetheless, I'm very excited to watch Jane's recital tomorrow, I'm sure it will be amazing.
Anyway, I came into the office and was assigned to finish up the DVD's from last week. Unfortunately, they were done last week, but the lecturer decided that he wanted more videos so that meant that I had to make new DVD's. Since the rendering and reformatting of the videos took a while, I had to sit at my desk with not much to do but wait for them to finish rendering but once that was over, Stuart checked all of the DVD's again and was happy with the end result.
I headed to a social media meeting at 1pm and it was honestly the usual. We talked about what we were planning on posting this week and we're trying to get some series started for 2015-- our ideas were Opera After Dark, Opera Haikus, and Met Guild History Fun Facts.
There was no formal Community Engagement Meeting afterwards, but a few of us did meet in the Quad (a small cubicle area in the back of the office) for a pow wow meeting for volunteer party next week. It was short, sweet, and very efficient. Sadly I won't be able to go to the volunteer party since it's on a Thursday but oh well, I'm sure that it'll go along very well!
After the meeting I had a short break then I got to go on a backstage tour! My tour guide's name was Lois and she was really nice. The tour itself was amazing and I learned a lot about the opera house! I'm really thankful for all of the opportunities I have here at this internship! And fun fact: at the end of the tour, Lois told us that it was a symbol of good luck to find a bent nail on the floor of the Met Carpentry room, and I found one and got to keep it!
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Week 10
Wednesday, November 19th, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Total: 7.25 hrs
Today was overall a pretty slow day in the office, but I've been pretty busy this week so it was nice to have a break. First I got to talk to Jane about her upcoming recital on December 4th, I promised her that I'd be there and I;m very excited to see it! After finishing some social media posts, I was assigned a new task to create DVD's for an upcoming lecture which is talking about the following composers: Puccini, Verdi, Strauss, and Massenet. To be honest, I'm not too sure what the lecture is about but I'm near positive that it's a series so maybe I'll be able to watch one of them! Puccini is the composer of my favorite opera, La Bohรจme, so I found listening to the Puccini excerpts especially nice. Kyle had already finished the Verdi one so I didn't need to worry about that. The Strauss and the Massenet excerpts were really cool to listen to, especially the Strauss ones since they were from his opera Salome. The arias sung in that opera are honestly just downright creepy, so it was really cool to feel so uneasy while listening to all of the excerpts. This did take a while, but that was the only assignment I had today.
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Total: 7.25 hrs
Today was overall a pretty slow day in the office, but I've been pretty busy this week so it was nice to have a break. First I got to talk to Jane about her upcoming recital on December 4th, I promised her that I'd be there and I;m very excited to see it! After finishing some social media posts, I was assigned a new task to create DVD's for an upcoming lecture which is talking about the following composers: Puccini, Verdi, Strauss, and Massenet. To be honest, I'm not too sure what the lecture is about but I'm near positive that it's a series so maybe I'll be able to watch one of them! Puccini is the composer of my favorite opera, La Bohรจme, so I found listening to the Puccini excerpts especially nice. Kyle had already finished the Verdi one so I didn't need to worry about that. The Strauss and the Massenet excerpts were really cool to listen to, especially the Strauss ones since they were from his opera Salome. The arias sung in that opera are honestly just downright creepy, so it was really cool to feel so uneasy while listening to all of the excerpts. This did take a while, but that was the only assignment I had today.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Week 9
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Start (pt. 1): 8:00am
End (pt. 1): 11:00am
Start (pt. 2): 11:45am
End (pt. 2): 5:00pm
Time: 8.25 hrs
Today was split into two parts because for the first part of the day I went to school to rehearse with the pit orchestra for the winter musical, Kiss Me Kate. Normally, seniors can't be part of pit orchestra since it's a Wednesday project but I was lucky enough to be able to do it this year (my fourth year now!) since the pit needed someone who could double on saxophone and clarinet. However, I'm not playing the soprano clarinet and alto/tenor sax that I'm used to regularly playing but instead I'm playing bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, which, as you can imagine, are really hard to set up and carry around. But nonetheless, I really enjoy it; not playing the melody the whole time has its own unique perks and I have a lot of fun playing my part. Once I got to play with the orchestra I realized just how much I missed playing in pit-- it's something that I really want to continue doing in college!
After the rehearsal, my mom picked me up from school and we went to Lincoln Center (I ate my lunch on the way there). Once I got to the Guild, there was a program survey that I had to input data from, which took me about an hour, which was when I had to go to the social media meeting. There, I was assigned to work on a few posts including one about the final dress rehearsal of The Barber of Seville, Rentals of the OLC, the Met Premiere of Hansel and Gretel, and the Met Premiere of Don Giovanni. When I got back from the meeting I started working on the Barber post, but soon after I attended the Community Engagement Meeting, where we talked about the usual things. The Community Engagement Department is having a volunteer party soon so that's the main thing on people's minds right now.
After all of the meetings, I had some time to work on the social media posts, which were a lot easier to put together than usual. Afterwards, Fred (the IT guy) set up a Tessitura account for me helped me log in. Tessitura is a program that organizes ticket sales and other data. Kyle came over then showed me what I had to do on Tessitura which was basically cancelling any wait list tickets of events that have already happened. This is going to take a while!
Start (pt. 1): 8:00am
End (pt. 1): 11:00am
Start (pt. 2): 11:45am
End (pt. 2): 5:00pm
Time: 8.25 hrs
Today was split into two parts because for the first part of the day I went to school to rehearse with the pit orchestra for the winter musical, Kiss Me Kate. Normally, seniors can't be part of pit orchestra since it's a Wednesday project but I was lucky enough to be able to do it this year (my fourth year now!) since the pit needed someone who could double on saxophone and clarinet. However, I'm not playing the soprano clarinet and alto/tenor sax that I'm used to regularly playing but instead I'm playing bass clarinet and baritone saxophone, which, as you can imagine, are really hard to set up and carry around. But nonetheless, I really enjoy it; not playing the melody the whole time has its own unique perks and I have a lot of fun playing my part. Once I got to play with the orchestra I realized just how much I missed playing in pit-- it's something that I really want to continue doing in college!
After the rehearsal, my mom picked me up from school and we went to Lincoln Center (I ate my lunch on the way there). Once I got to the Guild, there was a program survey that I had to input data from, which took me about an hour, which was when I had to go to the social media meeting. There, I was assigned to work on a few posts including one about the final dress rehearsal of The Barber of Seville, Rentals of the OLC, the Met Premiere of Hansel and Gretel, and the Met Premiere of Don Giovanni. When I got back from the meeting I started working on the Barber post, but soon after I attended the Community Engagement Meeting, where we talked about the usual things. The Community Engagement Department is having a volunteer party soon so that's the main thing on people's minds right now.
After all of the meetings, I had some time to work on the social media posts, which were a lot easier to put together than usual. Afterwards, Fred (the IT guy) set up a Tessitura account for me helped me log in. Tessitura is a program that organizes ticket sales and other data. Kyle came over then showed me what I had to do on Tessitura which was basically cancelling any wait list tickets of events that have already happened. This is going to take a while!
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Week 8
Thursday, November 6th, 2014
Start: 11:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 5.25 hrs.
Today I came in on a Thursday since I visited Brown University yesterday and couldn't come to my internship. Lucky for me I had today off because of the Teachers' Convention so I got to come to my internship today. I came in later than usual and Stuart had one data survey for me to enter into Excel. I was interrupted in between logging in the info when Kyle came and we went to the OLC to set up for Jane's lecture, the last of a three-part series about Verdi Baritones. After setting up I was able to go back to the office and finish up the survey before I had to go out to the main lobby to welcome the people who came for the lecture. I helped tear people's tickets and hand out surveys (a program survey this time). Afterwards, I got to watch Jane's lecture too! Even though this was the only lecture of the three that I was able to watch, I really enjoyed the lecture. And not only was it a lecture, but there was also a live performance by a Verdi baritone named Dong Kyu Oh and he was very, very good! I really enjoyed both the performance and the lecture. What I think I enjoyed most was the way the Jane gives her lectures. She's very expressive, as if she's singing (and she is a singer, by the way) and always knows when to throw a good joke in every once in a while. But most of all, she is passionate! I have a project coming up in Senior Music Seminar where I have to talk about Schumann, so I hope I can get a few tricks from her!
I had to rush out of the OLC after the lecture in order to collect everyone's surveys so once I got back to my desk, I was busy logging in another survey! Even though the program survey is much shorter than the data survey, the program survey is much more difficult to log because you have to check all of the questions that apply instead of only choosing one answer, so that took about an hour and a half to finish. I'm very curious to see what becomes of all of this data.
Start: 11:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 5.25 hrs.
Today I came in on a Thursday since I visited Brown University yesterday and couldn't come to my internship. Lucky for me I had today off because of the Teachers' Convention so I got to come to my internship today. I came in later than usual and Stuart had one data survey for me to enter into Excel. I was interrupted in between logging in the info when Kyle came and we went to the OLC to set up for Jane's lecture, the last of a three-part series about Verdi Baritones. After setting up I was able to go back to the office and finish up the survey before I had to go out to the main lobby to welcome the people who came for the lecture. I helped tear people's tickets and hand out surveys (a program survey this time). Afterwards, I got to watch Jane's lecture too! Even though this was the only lecture of the three that I was able to watch, I really enjoyed the lecture. And not only was it a lecture, but there was also a live performance by a Verdi baritone named Dong Kyu Oh and he was very, very good! I really enjoyed both the performance and the lecture. What I think I enjoyed most was the way the Jane gives her lectures. She's very expressive, as if she's singing (and she is a singer, by the way) and always knows when to throw a good joke in every once in a while. But most of all, she is passionate! I have a project coming up in Senior Music Seminar where I have to talk about Schumann, so I hope I can get a few tricks from her!
I had to rush out of the OLC after the lecture in order to collect everyone's surveys so once I got back to my desk, I was busy logging in another survey! Even though the program survey is much shorter than the data survey, the program survey is much more difficult to log because you have to check all of the questions that apply instead of only choosing one answer, so that took about an hour and a half to finish. I'm very curious to see what becomes of all of this data.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Week 7
October 29th, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs.
When I came in today, Stuart already had two sets of data surveys (the longer of the two surveys that we give out to the event goers) at my desk, adding up to about 150 surveys in total, so I worked on inputting the data from those surveys for the majority of my day. Before I go to work, however, I made sure to update Jane about my college application happenings. At around lunch time, Kyle and I arranged the OLC room for Aardvarks. Afterwards, I attended two meetings. The first one was a social media meeting, and everyone there was very happy about my feature on the Met Guild; apparently it got the most likes since a Pavarotti post (to think that I could be compared to Pavarotti even in something as small as this-- how cool!) Here is the Facebook post:
In addition to getting the last parts of National Opera Week organized, I was also assigned to create a post about Mozart's The Magic Flute and a promotional post about a 20th century opera course. If I weren't so busy because of school, I would have loved to attend this class! It talks about all of my favorite operas this season, Bluebeard's Castle, The Death of Klinghoffer, and The Rake's Progress!
At 2pm, I attended the Community Engagement Meeting and I was happy to report that after making a small edit to the survey that I suggested last week, the people responded much better! The issue with last week's surveys was that the question about income levels was on the front of the sheet, making it easy for people to see other people's answers. I suggested it to be on the inside and surprisingly many more people ended up answering the question because of that small edit, in fact 11.7% more people answered the question when it was on the inside! Stuart seemed very happy because of that, so I'm glad that I'm really making a difference here at the Guild!
I'm watching The Death of Klinghoffer this Saturday with a few friends from my precollege program at the Manhattan School of Music and I'm SO excited! I'll be sure to post some photos from that night in a future post.
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs.
When I came in today, Stuart already had two sets of data surveys (the longer of the two surveys that we give out to the event goers) at my desk, adding up to about 150 surveys in total, so I worked on inputting the data from those surveys for the majority of my day. Before I go to work, however, I made sure to update Jane about my college application happenings. At around lunch time, Kyle and I arranged the OLC room for Aardvarks. Afterwards, I attended two meetings. The first one was a social media meeting, and everyone there was very happy about my feature on the Met Guild; apparently it got the most likes since a Pavarotti post (to think that I could be compared to Pavarotti even in something as small as this-- how cool!) Here is the Facebook post:
At 2pm, I attended the Community Engagement Meeting and I was happy to report that after making a small edit to the survey that I suggested last week, the people responded much better! The issue with last week's surveys was that the question about income levels was on the front of the sheet, making it easy for people to see other people's answers. I suggested it to be on the inside and surprisingly many more people ended up answering the question because of that small edit, in fact 11.7% more people answered the question when it was on the inside! Stuart seemed very happy because of that, so I'm glad that I'm really making a difference here at the Guild!
I'm watching The Death of Klinghoffer this Saturday with a few friends from my precollege program at the Manhattan School of Music and I'm SO excited! I'll be sure to post some photos from that night in a future post.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Week 6
October 22nd, 2014
Start: 10:00am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7 hrs.
I usually like coming in a quarter hour early, but I was running on a tight schedule so I came in at 10. At first, there was no work for me then about an hour into my internship, I was stacked with work! But before I started all of this work, I got to have a really nice conversation with Jane about how my college application process is going, including my upcoming Columbia Interview! So the work I had to do was to input all of the data from this week's surveys. They were completed with pen and paper and not via any sort of online survey so I had to sort through over a hundred papers and collect all of the data on and Excel file. It was a pain, but I was honestly really curious about the survey results, so it was pretty fun! There are two different surveys: one is about what type of programs Guild members would like to see this season and next season and the other is just about statistics (gender, race, musical background, etc.)
I also had to attend a Social Media Meeting at 1pm and the Social Media had some cool news for me! Next week, I'm going to get featured on the Met Guild website for National Opera Week! Instead of highlighting all sorts of super famous singers/musicians, the Met Guild is highlighting people who volunteer and work behind-the-scenes at the Met for National Opera Week. I was really honored that they would ask me, I think it should be up Tuesday the 28th? When it comes up, I'll post it onto this blog. I had to write a short blurb for my feature which was only allowed to be two sentences. So I wrote about the first opera I watched and how it's crazy that I started high school not knowing anything about opera then would end it interning at the world's greatest opera house.
After the meeting, I had lunch in the office and had to write up a Facebook and Twitter post about a lecture that Jane was holding the following day about Verdi Baritones. Verdi Baritones are sorta what they sound like, the baritone parts written by Verdi. However, they are often very demanding and require the baritone to sing with a very wide range and having an overall smooth voice, hence they have their own subcategory of the Verdi Baritone. Busy day at the office, but really fun nonetheless!
Start: 10:00am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7 hrs.
I usually like coming in a quarter hour early, but I was running on a tight schedule so I came in at 10. At first, there was no work for me then about an hour into my internship, I was stacked with work! But before I started all of this work, I got to have a really nice conversation with Jane about how my college application process is going, including my upcoming Columbia Interview! So the work I had to do was to input all of the data from this week's surveys. They were completed with pen and paper and not via any sort of online survey so I had to sort through over a hundred papers and collect all of the data on and Excel file. It was a pain, but I was honestly really curious about the survey results, so it was pretty fun! There are two different surveys: one is about what type of programs Guild members would like to see this season and next season and the other is just about statistics (gender, race, musical background, etc.)
I also had to attend a Social Media Meeting at 1pm and the Social Media had some cool news for me! Next week, I'm going to get featured on the Met Guild website for National Opera Week! Instead of highlighting all sorts of super famous singers/musicians, the Met Guild is highlighting people who volunteer and work behind-the-scenes at the Met for National Opera Week. I was really honored that they would ask me, I think it should be up Tuesday the 28th? When it comes up, I'll post it onto this blog. I had to write a short blurb for my feature which was only allowed to be two sentences. So I wrote about the first opera I watched and how it's crazy that I started high school not knowing anything about opera then would end it interning at the world's greatest opera house.
After the meeting, I had lunch in the office and had to write up a Facebook and Twitter post about a lecture that Jane was holding the following day about Verdi Baritones. Verdi Baritones are sorta what they sound like, the baritone parts written by Verdi. However, they are often very demanding and require the baritone to sing with a very wide range and having an overall smooth voice, hence they have their own subcategory of the Verdi Baritone. Busy day at the office, but really fun nonetheless!
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Week 5
October 15th, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
This was my first week without Lacey so even though I don't have a mentor right now, I was able to ask around if people needed help and Stuart was one of the first people to assign me a project. The first of the two was really short: I just had to write down lyrics from a score. It had two verses and one chorus so it only took five minutes to do. Here's the song:
The lyrics sheets are going to be used during the High School Vocalist's Workshop which is starting on the 26th. It's pretty weird that high school students seem so young in a work setting like this and then I have to remind myself that I'm a high school student! Anyways, after that project, Stuart assigned me a longer one which took me until lunch time to complete. Backstage Tours started up again recently and there was a video of a Q&A session about what renovations the Met made backstage. However, some of the questions were hard to hear so I had to pause the video and replay the clips over and over again until I could make an educated guess of what the person was asking. After that I wrote the question down so that Stuart could edit the video and put the subtitles in when the question came up in the video. Some of them were tough to decipher, but Stuart seemed really happy with the results.
I had lunch at 1pm with Matt in the JCaf. We talked about college and our application processes seem so different since he's only applying to conservatories and I'm not applying to any. After lunch, I headed back up to the office and the Social Media meeting had just finished so I asked Rebecca whether there was anything I needed to do or not but she said there wasn't anything. Shortly afterwards, I went to the Community Engagement meeting and we talked about a lot of things from how we are planning on hiring a part-time worker to help balance out Lacey's responsibilities now that she's gone to our newest version of surveys. The data collecting itself hasn't started yet, but I know that once it does I'll be very busy since inputting and organizing all f the data is going to be my responsibility. But for now everything is really lax at the office. One thing that I found interesting (but perhaps not interesting in a good way) is that all Backstage Tours on the dates of The Death of Klinghoffer had to be cancelled because the NYPD said that only certified Met members were allowed in the Met on those show dates. Crazy to think how controversial this opera has become.
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
This was my first week without Lacey so even though I don't have a mentor right now, I was able to ask around if people needed help and Stuart was one of the first people to assign me a project. The first of the two was really short: I just had to write down lyrics from a score. It had two verses and one chorus so it only took five minutes to do. Here's the song:
The lyrics sheets are going to be used during the High School Vocalist's Workshop which is starting on the 26th. It's pretty weird that high school students seem so young in a work setting like this and then I have to remind myself that I'm a high school student! Anyways, after that project, Stuart assigned me a longer one which took me until lunch time to complete. Backstage Tours started up again recently and there was a video of a Q&A session about what renovations the Met made backstage. However, some of the questions were hard to hear so I had to pause the video and replay the clips over and over again until I could make an educated guess of what the person was asking. After that I wrote the question down so that Stuart could edit the video and put the subtitles in when the question came up in the video. Some of them were tough to decipher, but Stuart seemed really happy with the results.
I had lunch at 1pm with Matt in the JCaf. We talked about college and our application processes seem so different since he's only applying to conservatories and I'm not applying to any. After lunch, I headed back up to the office and the Social Media meeting had just finished so I asked Rebecca whether there was anything I needed to do or not but she said there wasn't anything. Shortly afterwards, I went to the Community Engagement meeting and we talked about a lot of things from how we are planning on hiring a part-time worker to help balance out Lacey's responsibilities now that she's gone to our newest version of surveys. The data collecting itself hasn't started yet, but I know that once it does I'll be very busy since inputting and organizing all f the data is going to be my responsibility. But for now everything is really lax at the office. One thing that I found interesting (but perhaps not interesting in a good way) is that all Backstage Tours on the dates of The Death of Klinghoffer had to be cancelled because the NYPD said that only certified Met members were allowed in the Met on those show dates. Crazy to think how controversial this opera has become.
Week 4
October 8th, 2014
Start: 11:45am
End: 7:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Since there was a lecture today at 6pm, I got to come in at noon and stayed until 7pm. After finishing up a few more synopses, an associate named Rebecca came up to me and introduced me to some social media projects. One of my new responsibilities at the Met is to work on and schedule posts onto the Met Guild Twitter and Facebook. In order to seamlessly multi-task between the two social media apps, Rebecca showed me this website called Hootsuite which is really easy to use. Rebecca also let me know that the social media team was going to have a meeting at 1pm and that I was free to sit in and listen so I attended and it was very short and sweet. The other people on the social media team are Amanda, Nick, and Kim who are all really nice. In the meeting, we talked about all of the posts that we had scheduled for the next month or so and it was great seeing how productive and on top of things people seemed. The format of the meeting was also different because no one in particular was leading the discussion so it seemed really communal, but I personally prefer the way that Stuart leads his meetings.
After the meeting, I was assigned two dates to post things on Facebook and Twitter for: today (the 8th) and the 10th. For the posts about the 8th, I had to write up a post about the lecture happening which I will talk more about later. The 10th was Verdi's birthday (if you don't know, Verdi is one of the most famous operatic composer to have ever lived) so I had to write a post about that. The Facebook ones were a lot easier to write than the Twitter ones because the Twitter posts had to be under 140 characters so I really had to think about what I wanted to say! Here are the two tweets I ended up with (I was quite flattered at how popular the Verdi tweet was):
After that our team started to set up for the lecture. I was responsible for setting up most of the chairs in the OLC and once I was done with that I helped Kyle and Rebecca greet people when they entered and helped collect their ticket stubs and register them in for the lecture. Then I got to attend the lecture and it was GREAT! Jane Marsh is such a great speaker and even though Macbeth isn't one of my favorites of the season, I left the lecture so sad that I wasn't able to watch it! I'm really looking forward to watching more of her lectures!
Start: 11:45am
End: 7:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Since there was a lecture today at 6pm, I got to come in at noon and stayed until 7pm. After finishing up a few more synopses, an associate named Rebecca came up to me and introduced me to some social media projects. One of my new responsibilities at the Met is to work on and schedule posts onto the Met Guild Twitter and Facebook. In order to seamlessly multi-task between the two social media apps, Rebecca showed me this website called Hootsuite which is really easy to use. Rebecca also let me know that the social media team was going to have a meeting at 1pm and that I was free to sit in and listen so I attended and it was very short and sweet. The other people on the social media team are Amanda, Nick, and Kim who are all really nice. In the meeting, we talked about all of the posts that we had scheduled for the next month or so and it was great seeing how productive and on top of things people seemed. The format of the meeting was also different because no one in particular was leading the discussion so it seemed really communal, but I personally prefer the way that Stuart leads his meetings.
After the meeting, I was assigned two dates to post things on Facebook and Twitter for: today (the 8th) and the 10th. For the posts about the 8th, I had to write up a post about the lecture happening which I will talk more about later. The 10th was Verdi's birthday (if you don't know, Verdi is one of the most famous operatic composer to have ever lived) so I had to write a post about that. The Facebook ones were a lot easier to write than the Twitter ones because the Twitter posts had to be under 140 characters so I really had to think about what I wanted to say! Here are the two tweets I ended up with (I was quite flattered at how popular the Verdi tweet was):
After that our team started to set up for the lecture. I was responsible for setting up most of the chairs in the OLC and once I was done with that I helped Kyle and Rebecca greet people when they entered and helped collect their ticket stubs and register them in for the lecture. Then I got to attend the lecture and it was GREAT! Jane Marsh is such a great speaker and even though Macbeth isn't one of my favorites of the season, I left the lecture so sad that I wasn't able to watch it! I'm really looking forward to watching more of her lectures!
Friday, October 3, 2014
Week 3
October 1st, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Before I talk about my day, I have to announce that I finally remembered to take a picture of my desk! Here it is:
I came in a little early and, after talking to Jane about how my recital on Sunday and recording sessions on Monday and Tuesday went, I finished up all of my work from last week, which was writing up the synopses for the lesser-known operas of this season (I only had one left, which was Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress) and inputting all of the Backstage Tour calendar dates onto the metopera.org website calendar. After that, Stuart assigned me to do a project which was making name cards for the Opera Boot Camp members and alphabetizing the list of members by last name. Opera Boot Camp is a program held on Thursdays where you sign up to both learn about and watch a lot of the operas during the Met Season. This was the Guild's first time trying out the name tag thing so when I finished that up Stuart seemed really happy with the product.
Afterwards, Kyle and I set up the OLC for Music for Aardvarks then put all the signs up accordingly. I was supposed to have lunch after that, but the staff meeting got moved from 2pm to 1pm so I ended up having to eat lunch pretty late. However, the staff meeting was fun! Everyone (besides me since I didn't have to) brought in their own surveys from two weeks ago and we looked over all of them while Stuart led the meeting. I'm learning a lot from watching how he leads meetings, hopefully I'll be able to emulate that outside of my internship!
I returned from my late lunch at around 3pm then was assigned to finish up the rest of the synopses, whether they were popular or not. I really love learning about all of the operas, and I'm glad that I've been given the opportunity to become so well-acquainted with them! I still haven't finished that yet, but I'm looking forward to finishing it next week! Next week is Lacey's last week since she'll be moving to Boston. :( Here's a picture (and selfie!) of me and her: we're in front of the Guild's CD library which has an endless variety of audio files from every opera this season, and which anyone on staff can borrow whenever they want!
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Before I talk about my day, I have to announce that I finally remembered to take a picture of my desk! Here it is:
I came in a little early and, after talking to Jane about how my recital on Sunday and recording sessions on Monday and Tuesday went, I finished up all of my work from last week, which was writing up the synopses for the lesser-known operas of this season (I only had one left, which was Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress) and inputting all of the Backstage Tour calendar dates onto the metopera.org website calendar. After that, Stuart assigned me to do a project which was making name cards for the Opera Boot Camp members and alphabetizing the list of members by last name. Opera Boot Camp is a program held on Thursdays where you sign up to both learn about and watch a lot of the operas during the Met Season. This was the Guild's first time trying out the name tag thing so when I finished that up Stuart seemed really happy with the product.
Afterwards, Kyle and I set up the OLC for Music for Aardvarks then put all the signs up accordingly. I was supposed to have lunch after that, but the staff meeting got moved from 2pm to 1pm so I ended up having to eat lunch pretty late. However, the staff meeting was fun! Everyone (besides me since I didn't have to) brought in their own surveys from two weeks ago and we looked over all of them while Stuart led the meeting. I'm learning a lot from watching how he leads meetings, hopefully I'll be able to emulate that outside of my internship!
I returned from my late lunch at around 3pm then was assigned to finish up the rest of the synopses, whether they were popular or not. I really love learning about all of the operas, and I'm glad that I've been given the opportunity to become so well-acquainted with them! I still haven't finished that yet, but I'm looking forward to finishing it next week! Next week is Lacey's last week since she'll be moving to Boston. :( Here's a picture (and selfie!) of me and her: we're in front of the Guild's CD library which has an endless variety of audio files from every opera this season, and which anyone on staff can borrow whenever they want!
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Week 2
September 24th, 2014
Start: 10:00am
End: 5:15pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Today was a bit slow around the office but that's ok. I came in and said hi to everyone in the office (I really love the vibe at the Guild, everyone is so positive and fun!). Before I got to work, I had a really nice conversation with Jane, my cubicle neighbor, about college and it was nice to hear her opinions, especially since she went to a music school (even though I'm not planning on attending a music school). I'm going to try to make it a point to talk to Jane each morning. As an administrative intern, I expected to do a little busy work so I guess today was the day since I spent most of the day inputting Score-Desk and Backstage Tour dates onto the metopera.org website. Score-Desk is when people buy special opera tickets so that when they go to the opera, they get their own desk where they can read But what's cool is that I'm making permanent changes to a world-renowned, often checked website! Inputting the data was a bit tedious, but it was nice to see the immediate results.
For lunch, my mom packed me a sandwich so I went to the Juilliard Cafeteria and ate with my friend Matt Gajda who has an internship nearby at the Kaufman School of Music. He said that he likes it, and I told him about my internship too-- we're actually doing a few similar things, so I'm looking forward to seeing how our internships will differ from each other at the end!
Fortunately, I was given a much more entertaining task for the afternoon: The Guild provides synopses of each opera for its members, so I was assigned to do some research on a handful of the operas to write synopses about them. Lacey assigned me the more "lesser-known" operas so at first I was a little intimidated by the task since I didn't know the plots, but after a while I was so glad that she assigned those operas to me because I learned so much! By the end of the day, I had detailed synopses written up about Die Meistersinger, The Death of Klinghoffer, Iolanta, Bluebeard's Castle, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk. Besides Die Meistersinger, this was actually the first time I learned anything about these operas, and now I really want to watch all of them! I'm really looking forward to learning as much as I can about opera during my internship.
Start: 10:00am
End: 5:15pm
Time: 7.25 hrs
Today was a bit slow around the office but that's ok. I came in and said hi to everyone in the office (I really love the vibe at the Guild, everyone is so positive and fun!). Before I got to work, I had a really nice conversation with Jane, my cubicle neighbor, about college and it was nice to hear her opinions, especially since she went to a music school (even though I'm not planning on attending a music school). I'm going to try to make it a point to talk to Jane each morning. As an administrative intern, I expected to do a little busy work so I guess today was the day since I spent most of the day inputting Score-Desk and Backstage Tour dates onto the metopera.org website. Score-Desk is when people buy special opera tickets so that when they go to the opera, they get their own desk where they can read But what's cool is that I'm making permanent changes to a world-renowned, often checked website! Inputting the data was a bit tedious, but it was nice to see the immediate results.
For lunch, my mom packed me a sandwich so I went to the Juilliard Cafeteria and ate with my friend Matt Gajda who has an internship nearby at the Kaufman School of Music. He said that he likes it, and I told him about my internship too-- we're actually doing a few similar things, so I'm looking forward to seeing how our internships will differ from each other at the end!
Fortunately, I was given a much more entertaining task for the afternoon: The Guild provides synopses of each opera for its members, so I was assigned to do some research on a handful of the operas to write synopses about them. Lacey assigned me the more "lesser-known" operas so at first I was a little intimidated by the task since I didn't know the plots, but after a while I was so glad that she assigned those operas to me because I learned so much! By the end of the day, I had detailed synopses written up about Die Meistersinger, The Death of Klinghoffer, Iolanta, Bluebeard's Castle, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk. Besides Die Meistersinger, this was actually the first time I learned anything about these operas, and now I really want to watch all of them! I'm really looking forward to learning as much as I can about opera during my internship.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Week 1
September 17th, 2014
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Hours: 7.25
I arrived at the Met Guild at 9:45am and after meeting up with my mentor Lacey and being introduced to a few other members of the Community Engagement Department, we all went to the Opera Learning Center (OLC) to go to the Tour Guide Volunteer's orientation. Even though I'm not a tour guide, they invited me to sit in and it was really interesting to see that each and every single thing about the tour was carefully looked at by Stuart, Lacey, and Elspeth, who are all in the Community Engagement Department with me. Afterwards, I got acclimated to my desk (I forgot to take a picture of it! Next week.) and Lacey went through all of my passwords and phone extension stuff. Then Kyle, one of the fellows at in the CE Department, gave me a tour of the office and we ended the tour at the OLC where we had to reorganize the furniture in the room for a program called Music for Aardvarks where this guy with a guitar comes in and sings to babies (below is a picture of the room reorganized).
Kyle is only about five years older than I am, so we got to talk a lot about college and he was really knowledgeable and kind. After we came back, Kyle and I printed out signs leading to the OLC and the Music for Aardvarks program and posted them accordingly. Lacey then let me look at the video archives that the Guild had and encouraged me to watch a lecture by a woman named Jane Marsh. I soon realized that Jane Marsh was my cubicle neighbor! And not only was she my cubicle partner, but, as I was to realize, she was also VERY knowledgeable in all things musicology and music history, and I really enjoyed her lecture! Even though she seemed a little busy, I made it a point to tap her on the shoulder and compliment her on the lecture of hers that I was watching, and she seemed very happy to hear that. My mom packed me lunch so I just ate in the Juilliard cafeteria.
After lunch, I was invited to sit in on one of the CE Department's meetings. At first I didn't say much because they were settling issues from their previous meeting so I didn't really get what was going on. Then they started talking about a new issue which was getting feedback from the Guild members about their lectures. Working on Student Council, we had a project like this last year where we sent out a survey to the student body about teachers and the flipped classroom. I was able to give the CE Department a lot of good advice and they all seemed to take whatever I had to say into consideration which I really appreciated. I also took good note of the way that Stuart led the meeting; he made sure that everyone participated so that he wasn't the only one talking and wasn't afraid to assign other people besides himself with assignments.
By the time the meeting was over, there was only about and hour and a half of my day left. Lacey assigned me a small task of inputting some information onto the Met Opera calendar. Because of this, I learned VERY basic HTML and got to input all of the dates of upcoming Score-Desk dates which is when people can buy tickets to sit at a desk during an opera and read from a score instead of watching the opera. It was a great first day, and I'm looking forward to next week!
Start: 9:45am
End: 5:00pm
Hours: 7.25
I arrived at the Met Guild at 9:45am and after meeting up with my mentor Lacey and being introduced to a few other members of the Community Engagement Department, we all went to the Opera Learning Center (OLC) to go to the Tour Guide Volunteer's orientation. Even though I'm not a tour guide, they invited me to sit in and it was really interesting to see that each and every single thing about the tour was carefully looked at by Stuart, Lacey, and Elspeth, who are all in the Community Engagement Department with me. Afterwards, I got acclimated to my desk (I forgot to take a picture of it! Next week.) and Lacey went through all of my passwords and phone extension stuff. Then Kyle, one of the fellows at in the CE Department, gave me a tour of the office and we ended the tour at the OLC where we had to reorganize the furniture in the room for a program called Music for Aardvarks where this guy with a guitar comes in and sings to babies (below is a picture of the room reorganized).
Kyle is only about five years older than I am, so we got to talk a lot about college and he was really knowledgeable and kind. After we came back, Kyle and I printed out signs leading to the OLC and the Music for Aardvarks program and posted them accordingly. Lacey then let me look at the video archives that the Guild had and encouraged me to watch a lecture by a woman named Jane Marsh. I soon realized that Jane Marsh was my cubicle neighbor! And not only was she my cubicle partner, but, as I was to realize, she was also VERY knowledgeable in all things musicology and music history, and I really enjoyed her lecture! Even though she seemed a little busy, I made it a point to tap her on the shoulder and compliment her on the lecture of hers that I was watching, and she seemed very happy to hear that. My mom packed me lunch so I just ate in the Juilliard cafeteria.
After lunch, I was invited to sit in on one of the CE Department's meetings. At first I didn't say much because they were settling issues from their previous meeting so I didn't really get what was going on. Then they started talking about a new issue which was getting feedback from the Guild members about their lectures. Working on Student Council, we had a project like this last year where we sent out a survey to the student body about teachers and the flipped classroom. I was able to give the CE Department a lot of good advice and they all seemed to take whatever I had to say into consideration which I really appreciated. I also took good note of the way that Stuart led the meeting; he made sure that everyone participated so that he wasn't the only one talking and wasn't afraid to assign other people besides himself with assignments.
By the time the meeting was over, there was only about and hour and a half of my day left. Lacey assigned me a small task of inputting some information onto the Met Opera calendar. Because of this, I learned VERY basic HTML and got to input all of the dates of upcoming Score-Desk dates which is when people can buy tickets to sit at a desk during an opera and read from a score instead of watching the opera. It was a great first day, and I'm looking forward to next week!
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