Monday, August 4, 2014

Life as an intern

By Molly Blaeser

Before I talk about my experience as the MCCL summer communications intern, I should share a little story.

Let's set the scene. It's the day we celebrated MCCL staff with a June or July birthday. Meaning: Jennifer, Paul and I.

Kris, who runs the front desk, brought in cake-pies (seriously, it's a thing) from Baker's Square, when Jennifer walked in with a German chocolate cake.

MCCL intern Molly Blaeser
"Molly once told me her favorite cake is German chocolate cake, so I made one," she said with a smile.

I was beyond touched. Jennifer and I talk about a million things when we carpool to and from work, and I'd forgotten I had even mentioned my favorite cake.

Clearly, she hadn't.

Which leads me to the best part about being an MCCL intern: The people here treat you like family.

Of course, not every day was spent eating cake. I did real work at MCCL, too.

To be brief, I designed buttons and memes, wrote some articles, filled county fair orders and proofread the Voter's Guide with Andrea. This week, I will be helping with the Dakota County Fair. Those are the highlights of my work here — the real list would be much longer!

For me, the best day at MCCL was when the new buttons arrived. Along with the other designs, eight of my own had been sent to the printer. I hadn't done much design work before and had definitely never had my design work actually used. Hence my eagerness to see how my designs had turned out.

Bill came to me with a smile on his face and said, "Molly, the new buttons are here."

I spent nearly a half-hour digging through a bag of 1,500 buttons to find each of my designs. I laid them out before me and smiled. They looked even better as buttons than as images on my monitor.

When I passed by Diane's desk, I just had to show her the designs I was so proud of. And the way she complimented each one and then bragged about them to Ruby, who also smiled over them … well, it just lifted my heart.

Thank you to the wonderful people at MCCL. You made this a great experience. You all have touched me with your dedication to the pro-life movement. But even more so, you all have made me feel like part of the family, for which I couldn't be more grateful.