Carpe Diwrongaddress

I left 15 minutes earlier than I needed to this morning, just to ensure that I would get there on time. When my alarm sounded earlier, my eyes opened immediately and I was incredibly alert and aware of what lay ahead of me.

Today was the day, and I was going to seize it.

Running through the directions one last time with Nanette, I collected my things and left the house silently and slipped into the dawny twilight to begin the drive. I was cautious, I was careful - I paid attention to details. In the more metro areas of southern Arizona (aka Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, etc), the freeways are a good deal congested in the mornings and evenings due to rush hour - and more so, claim my mother and father, than Salt Lake's. I was surprised at the ease of my commute and how quickly I was able to find the exit my dad had Google mapped for me.

Pretty soon I found myself driving down an upper-class business park drive, surrounded by morning commuters driving cars on the high end of the auto-spectrum. When I pulled up to the address that Google maps claims was my "final destination", I was in awe at the liquid appeal of the glass panels that made up the building. It was beautiful, brand new and modern but classy.

Fast forward a little bit and I am in an elevator heading up to one of the top floors, where suite 300 is (and where my dad says is the main office of the design company I'll be interning for). I step off the elevator and see that it is about fifteen minutes until the time that I told my supervisor I would be there - I am lovin' that I am early. I find the suite, but notice that the office behind the doors is completely... empty. Nobody in the cubicles, nothing on the desks.

I wander around the floor checking other doors and hoping to find someone who can help me. I see nobody and none of the doors open, so I call my dad. It is now ten minutes to when I am supposed to be there and on the outside I am keeping my cool but internally I am freaking out just a little.

My dad goes onto the website and double checks the address, and realizes that it is in a completely different city - a whole 30-45 minutes more commute time from where I was standing. This is the type of thing that happens in comedies right? You find the person's misfortune amusing and you laugh and everything turns out alright in the end. But no, this is real life - and I am going to be late to my first day of my internship. This is not funny.

But who am I kidding? It was hilarious - and I definitely laughed. I laughed to myself as I called the company's phone number to notify them that I would be late and I laughed on the freeway back across town. At least it happened the very first day and not in the second week, right? The lost newbie is much more understandable than the lost semi-newbie that's been to work 5 times already.

I made it in a little under a half an hour (great time for being rush hour!) and settled into my workspace. I have my own cubicle to work in just like everyone else in the company (minus the couple of big bosses who have larger workspaces of course), complete with my own computer chock full of design programs, a desk and the coveted rolling office chair. :) It was a long and hard day, but I still loved it. I worked on matching color chips to some posters that we are redesigning (to acquire a color scheme to build on for the next color scheme), played around with some of the design programs, and did some filing of invoices for the company. Then I watched the main boss work on some draftwork for some design displays and went out to lunch with two of the partners (there are three at this location). I also did a lot of observation today, watching how designs were being made or adjusted and took notes during a company meeting with a client as well. (Something I learned from the meeting: it takes 90 seconds to decide, when you walk into an environment, whether you like it or not - 60% of whether or not you enjoy the environment is based on color. Who knew?)

I worked 10 hours today and went home exhausted, but felt fairly satisfied for how bumpy the first day had started out. I'm excited to really get my hands on some projects in the future. I think the color chips booklets are going to be a new favorite of mine... :)