Interview

Interview with Chelsea: July 7, 2010

What types of challenges do you face?
When it comes to challenges, I’d say our only issue is that occasionally communication can get garbled. For example, with revisions to a print ad. One person might suggest one set of changes where another will want the opposite, so streamlining communication over the matter (rather than a constant back-and-forth) sometimes becomes my responsibility.

Do you enjoy working on group projects?
We don’t often have group projects in the traditional sense here because we’re such a small company.

What is your ideal work environment? As you’ve probably gathered from interning here the past few months, things at Metropolitan are very relaxed, which I would say is my “ideal work environment.” I think it’s the kind of environment promotes a higher level of respect among employees and their superiors – after all, no one wants to be yelled at every day at work!

How has your education and experience prepared you for your current job?
In terms of education and experience, I went to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, which is a small college within the larger university where you design your own concentration. My concentration was in music & entrepreneurship and my thesis focused on gender politics in the music industry. Because of the flexibility of my program I was able to pick the majority of my classes to cater to my concentration as opposed to having to fulfill a bunch of requirements. Gallatin also encourages spending a large majority of time outside of the traditional classroom setting, by taking on independent studies, participating in internships, and even creating your own classes with a small group of students with similar interests (we called them tutorials). I think the flexibility of my program – not to mention living in New York – prepared me well for the “working world;” unlike most students, I was exposed to it pretty early on (for example, internships in music, film production, marketing, & PR from my freshman year forward; I was also the president of the only student-run record label at NYU which taught me a lot about the DIY/indie world).

Have you reached out to mentors and has the mentorship system worked for you?
I don’t really have any specific mentors nor do I model my work behavior after anyone – instead I try to learn as much as I can from everyone that I work with and create my own path.