Hi, my name is Gretchen Unico, and I’m one of the new summer interns in the web department at WPXI.  I’m twenty years old and a rising junior at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.  Denison, in case you were wondering, is a very small liberal arts college that nobody has ever heard of.  However, we have good creative writing and communication programs, which is great because those are my majors.  We also have two Division II teams at our DIII school.  One is the squash team, which I don’t actually understand, and the other is the women’s rugby team, on which I am a prop.  Essentially, being a prop means I push people back with my shoulders and tackle a lot.  My other favorite sport besides rugby is hockey.  I’m a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, but I root for a lot of different teams on the side, and I love to watch a game at any level whenever I can.  I would probably play hockey myself if I could skate backwards, but I’m planning to marry an NHL player who will teach me how to do that. 

My other major interest besides hockey is music.  I’m a huge classic rock nerd, especially regarding 60s and 70s stuff, but I’m open to trying most any kind of music from any era.  I even play guitar in the Bluegrass Ensemble at school, so my musical taste really does reach into some interesting genres.  I’m also a DJ with my own two-hour show at Denison’s campus radio station.  I love discovering music, making playlists, and advertising my show through social media, so DJ-ing is one of my favorite things in the world.  Ultimately, I’d like to have a career as a DJ or a member of the music programming department at a radio station. 

This goal of breaking into radio brings me back to why I’m working at WPXI this summer.  I applied for this internship because I love writing, using the internet, taking pictures and attending fun events, all of which are part of the web program.  Plus, I know that any experience in media is good experience and will be useful to me in the media field, whether or not I specifically end up in radio.  I also realize that the future of radio, and really any form of media, could be more on the internet than the airwaves.  So, working in the web department is not only cool, but something that my potential employers will me to be able to do.

So far, I think both the fun and the value aspects of this internship are coming through.  I’ve already learned a lot about web design, video, photography and reporting in only my first two days of interning, all while attending a fashion show, exploring Pittsburgh on the T and going to Kennywood.  I now know how to make an online slideshow, caption and title pictures, use a fancy, expensive camera, set up and use a video camera for different kinds of shots, and I’ve even become a bit more outgoing about finding and talking to people, and asking them for names and pictures.  I’ve already gotten a fair amount of experience dealing with some pretty diverse and even regrettably difficult personalities. 

Yet even with the glitches and obstacles, like trying to talk to people in a loud club and getting separated from my supervisor when the subway doors closed in my face, my assignments have made me even more excited about the rest of my internship.  I’m eager to help out with the Pittsburgh’s best wings contest and photograph the Helping Hounds Carnival, and I’m especially excited to cover some concerts since I’m such a big music fan.  Moreover, I’m looking forward to writing news segments and blurbs for the website.  I really appreciate the diversity of the projects we do in this internship program, and I love how new opportunities can pop up at any time.  I’m expecting a lot of surprises in the next few months that will allow me to continue learning and to have even more fun along the way.