During the spring semester of 1991, I was fortunate enough to be chosen as an intern in the master control room of NBC at 30 Rockfeller Plaza in New York City. I turned down CBS news and MTV to accept this opportunity. I learned so much in that semester, more than I could ever learn in a classroom. The atmosphere was always exciting and I enjoyed every moment of my time there. I was sad to see it end, but thankful for the experience. Most of my time was spent watching all the feeds to look out for transmission errors or breaks. Watching 40 monitors simulanteousIy was mind boggling at first, but I got used it. I also had to go over the programming schedule with a fine tooth comb, looking for gaps between promos, commercials, shows, etc.  I did prevent us from going black a few times by spotting gaps in the programming, which was the ultimate goal of my job! I also remember the old noisy teletype machine spewing out the latest breaking news. I would retrieve the lastest news, which was usually a sentence or two at first report, eventually growing to a more fully developed story as more information was known. I can still remember retrieving the wire with a one sentence report-that Eric Clapton's four year old son fell to his death from a New York City building. 

Shortly after I started my internship, the Persian Gulf War broke out. Interrupting scheduled programming became the new norm, as were bomb theats. I never did take those bomb threats seriously, nobody in my department was leaving, so I stayed as well. It was a crazy time.

I did get to ride in an elevator twice with David Letterman. I often stopped by the Saturday Night Live studio and saw Lorne Michaels and Paul Schaffer. It wasn't uncommon to see Sue Simmons or Al Roker in the cafeteria and I would have long talks with Don Pardo, the announcer for SNL.

Not only did I get to have a unique experience in the master control room of a major television network, I got to learn so much about mass media (which was my minor), particularly television. Unfortunately, the job market wasn't good in 1991 and was similar to how it is now. I went on a couple of interviews for part time jobs as a page at NBC, but there were no positions in departments, like I had hoped. I still treasure the experience and realize it was the pinnacle of my undergraduate education.