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!
The Opera House
Saturday, October 25, 2014
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!
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