Kennedy Ryan is interning at Shedoesthecity from now until Labour Day. Each week, she’ll fill you in on the #werk she does here and share what she’s learning through this #Intern#Life column. Welcome to the team, Kennedy. Help us learn Snapchat & we’ll grab you coffee.

Does starting a new job ever really lose its intimidation factor? Do C-Suite people get anxious the day before they become responsible for throwing huge amounts of money? I ponder this as I load Jen’s address in my phone for the third time that day and prepare to knock on her door for the first time. I’ve probably walked past this house before, but it never held any significance until now. Counting the porch steps as I climb them helps my pounding heart as I remind myself to breathe because it’s just one day out of many and life is long, right? It’s the longest thing any of us do.

I see Jen’s legs in patterned yoga pants bounding down the stairs, and I feel relief.

I, like you, spend a lot of my in-between moments worrying. I worry about whether or not keeping my degree curled up in a tube will prevent it from being flattened out one day when I move out and want to frame it. I worry about the rate at which we are extracting crude oil from the ground and turning it into plastic. I worry about whether or not the barista is having a bad day or if they’re as worried as I am. I’m trying to worry less, but it’s incredibly difficult to think about thinking without feeling like your brain is going to collapse in on itself. This worrying has been compounded by looking for jobs with my street-value Bachelor of Arts, which almost nobody cares about because well, sweetie – everyone’s got one of those.

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Jen started me out scheduling links to articles on TweetDeck, because even though a robot sends them – a human still has to copy and paste the link and write some text that encourages you, the reader, to click on them. It may seem like even your grandmother is getting in on the #content game these days, but it takes some time to get comfortable with parsing written text to find the bits that are relevant to the widest amount of people who will come across them. It’s my job to break through the wall of ballerina dog videos and from-above eggs benedict to get your attention. You guys are my real boss! Relish that for a sec while I grab your coffee order.

Here’s a list of things that I’ve done so far for #content:

  • Sampled twelve distinct eclair flavours
  • Designed my own pizza and ate it
  • Attended an upscale cannabis party

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The party at Tokyo Smoke was illuminating, and not just because of the clouds of vapour puffs. Guys! There is so much money in weed right now and so many people trying to grab it. The unnamed guest at the party was the death of the old stoner, the one who wears rainbow tie-dye shirts and treats Captain Crunch as a meal replacement. This brave new stoner asks for an artist statement before they purchase their handcrafted pipe.

There’s always something going on, and I am ready to document it – smartphone in hand. I can feel my excitement about this role grow as the summer stretches out before me, and I start to think about how I can help the team here do what it does best: capturing moments in time in the city we all love.

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