Day 1 at Designer and Designing

I went to work today.

Well, I am using the term "work" loosely...more specifically, I sat around for 5 hours on my computer, flipping through magazines and reading stuff online. When I met the chief editor yesterday, she didn't know who I was or what program I am coming from. (hmm Jian laoshi, how are you doing your job?...) She also clearly didn't know what work I should do and just told me to "participate". The other editors don't know what to do with me either, so they cleared a desk for me and told me to continue reading to familiarize myself with their magazine.

They had their workplace Chinese New Year lunch today. Free food that included cold kidneys and papaya steamed with frog ovaries. Surprisingly delicious? The boss passed out 红包 and I got one too, despite not having done any work yet.

But I found out how I got this internship. Turns out one of the old interns, Jessie, was once Jian laoshi's student in Shanghai, and she also did research at the same center an OSU flagship student did last semester. Jessie was the one who got me the position, because obviously the boss had nothing to do with it. And Jian laoshi then tried to sell me on how amazing being assistant editor to the magazine would be...hahaha. The employees today were talking about architectural magazines. Xiao Yu made the analogy of El Croquis being what a graduate student would read--and Designer and Designing what an elementary student would read.

Since there is nothing for me to do, I've set a few goals for myself. Learn how to use Adobe Flash and Dreamweaver. Redo the magazine's website (this may be a little ambitious, but I have 4 months). Start research for my honors thesis. Do a lot of reading on architecture.

Still, I really wish I was doing architecture work, even if it's just drafting, because I know at an architecture firm I would actually be useful and valued. Here I may just end up wasting table space.