Goodbye New York, for now.

I'm trying to determine the best way to recap about my experience. Because I know that after I start Business Insider tomorrow (!!!), I'll have little time. This will end up being disorganized rambling.

My last day was on Wednesday, the 11th. As tends to happen on all last days, I did little work. I went out to lunch with a friend, a fact checker at the mag who helped me land the internship (eternally grateful), and spent the rest finishing up a few things and saying goodbye to people. I first walked to the office of Chris Bonanos, a senior editor who I worked with briefly towards the end--first for research I conducted for Jerry Saltz's piece about Damien Hirst, and second for help I gave a writer whose work will appear in the next issue. (Aside: Must say Jerry Saltz is one of my favorite people who I've met at the magazine. He hardly ever came to the office but I met him briefly during Hirst research time. So friendly, so funny, so interesting. Easy to talk to! Not at all like I imagined him to be after watching a few episodes of Work of Art. He got excited when I told him I wanted to write about people. I don't know, he was great.). I hadn't spoken to Chris much and dropped by to tell him it was my last day and I wouldn't be able to help the second writer anymore. Then we talked about Hirst, since he edited it. And then of his book about Polaroid, slated to come out in the fall, which I'm really excited about. So great to talk to someone who is really passionate about what they do. I learned so much in just the 40 minutes I spent in his office. I do wish I got to talk to more of the people on staff in that way, find out more of who they were, their interests, how they came to New York. Many are young. Most are men (which genuinely surprised me considering my magazine program was probably 97% women).

I'll remember random things like John Homans (the editorial assistant and interns sat outside of his office) shouting "What the fuck!" every so often, or answering the phone with a "What the fuck is going on?" or, the other day, a "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" (I don't think he's French). Introduced myself to Adam Moss once and hardly talked to him after but he was friendly enough to smile every time I did see him. Which reminds me. I forgot to say goodbye to two people: David, research editor, and Ann, managing editor. Damn me. Two really friendly people. Oh, I forced myself to attend an ideas meeting one Tuesday. Love brainstorming sessions. Always fun to see how people bounce ideas off each other. How they react to those ideas. When you put a group of writers & editors in a room together, hilarious comments and situations always ensue. (Happened at Money too).

My major projects can sort of be divided by month. The first month I spent nearly all of my time working on the Global Urban design issue with the design editor. On my first day they had a meeting to discuss a new approach (issue was slated to come out mid October), so they let me join. And though my work consisted mostly of administrative tasks (researching firms and projects worldwide, creating lists, contacting architects and scheduling interviews), I interviewed one architect. Seems silly to point out now, but was bummed I didn't get credit for this piece because I conducted the interview and more or less wrote it. Still, I thought the issue turned out really great. That was September. In October, I spent nearly all of my time helping Steve Fishman with his Mark Kelly/Gabby Giffords story. Fishman latched on to me in the beginning because I was the only intern there my first day. He's a character. I'd stop by his cubicle every so often just to chat because he was always great to talk to. He's relentless and tenacious in his reporting, sometimes to the point of annoyance (one time he requested I track Gabby Giffords's mom by calling several hotels in an area where Gabby was receiving treatment. I hated that. And I never found her, though he did eventually). But he's an investigative reporter. November I spent most of it researching the reusable bags story. December was a slower month because of the holidays so it was filled with tasks I did during the in-betweens of the other months. Research. Transcribe interviews (did tons of those for the writers. Sometimes fun and interesting. Other times, not so much). We compiled the neighborhood news! Some time in September, a few days after Occupy Wall Street started in Zucotti Park, interns went down to hand out a few surveys. I wasn't impressed. Here, the results. And nice to see your work manifest itself in some other ways--like tracking down the congressional testimony that Frank Rich used for the annotations of his class warfare piece. Or spending a couple of hours at the library at CUNY John Jay school researching the origins of pepper spray and having a statistic you found be used for a gadget in the Intelligencer section. I liked who I worked with. I liked the other interns.

I hope I can make time to freelance or cover events or write store listings (another thing I did) because I don't want to lose the connection I have with the mag.

I know I'm forgetting stuff and might just come back to add every once in a while as I think of more. Overall, it was great. It looks great. I think I got the most that I possibly could out of it. So, I feel good.

I'm nervous about tomorrow at Business Insider because it will be so different than anything I've done before. I don't know if I can. I'm scared I'm not cut out for it. I've never worked for a website and had to plug out several posts daily. I don't write well under pressure. I don't do things well under pressure, period. But this will be so challenging and new and dammit, I just hope I'm good at it.