I realised yesterday that summer is 3/4 of the way over. It's unbelievable how fast time flies when you're busy. I feel like I just started my internships yesterday, but I'm already looking ahead to fall internships and getting ready for classes. Now's the time to really attack my jobs with everything I have and hopefully leave the best possible impression with my supervisors before I leave.

LA INC: Recently I've been spending a lot of time in my supervisor's office watching him go about his daily duties, listening in on his conference calls, and offering input when needed. I've sat in on calls about everything from dineLA's Restaurant Week to While I appreciate the opportunity to learn, I also wish I could be doing more actual work. So You Think You Know LA (the project I've been working on since I started) is starting to take off. We've finished the website and sent the bookmarks out to be printed. I'm excited to start the field marketing part of the project. We're thinking about putting a street team together to hand out the bookmarks. If so, I would love to participate in that.

THR: After spending the past few weeks doing the same thing everyday, I decided to take initiative and speak to my supervisor about going out and doing some events coverage for our About Town section, something he had mentioned as a possibility during our initial interview. To my relief, he was very receptive and agreed to get me in touch with the woman in charge of About Time. Usually I shy away from making too many demands at my internships, but I'm glad I decided to step out of my shell in this case. Now that I'm on the email list, I'm going to try to take on an assignment or two. I want to get out there and start meeting people in the industry. Public relations is another area I'm interested in entering after college, and it'll be helpful to get a feel for press events right now.

I've also been talking to my supervisors about staying for the fall. They've all hinted that they would love for me to stay, as they need all the help I can get, but at this point I don't think I can continue an unpaid internship if there's no chance of me being hired after graduation. I also don't know if I want to work at THR -- it's a great place to build internship experience, but journalism isn't for me. I need a more dynamic, hands-on job. I like to see direct results, and working in a cubicle all day doesn't give me that.

University Link: I completely forgot to mention this last time. A few weeks ago, my former supervisor from Metromix contacted me and asked me if I'd like to freelance for University Link, the magazine she's now editor of. It's a paid (albeit not that much) job, so of course I agreed. I recently completed my first assignment, an interview with the Big Bang Theory actor Simon Helberg. It was the first time I've ever done any reporting, so I was pretty much terrified going into the interview, but everything worked out fine, and the article wasn't too difficult to write up. I have my next assignment -- a short piece about double majors -- due in a week. The job luckily isn't too demanding, and it's always good to get clips under my belt, so I'm definitely not complaining. This was also a great lesson in networking for me. Apparently it really does pay to intern and form connections.

Katsuya: I find myself enjoying my shifts more and more as I get more comfortable in the work environment. It's always off-putting how friendly everyone is, especially compared to my internships, where the workplace environment is pretty reserved. However, I still sense a difficulty to connect between me and the other workers who have been there for months (some even years). One of the other hostesses told me the other day that the best way to get over the awkwardness is to not go out of my way to talk to them. Instead, I should go about my own business until someone talks to me. I've never really thought about it that way, but I think I'll give that strategy a shot from now on. We've had the chance to serve some pretty important customers since I started, including Jennifer Aniston, David Spade, and Mark Sanchez. I was sent to another SBE restaurant, Gladstone's, a few nights ago. It was an eye-opening experience -- they have a completely different way of running their restaurant, and it made me very thankful that Katsuya is more organised.