New Places! New Faces! New York!

To begin with the notion that the NYC Gray Group’s first day in the Big Apple was eventful would be an understatement. Fourteen Harpeth Hall girls along with two brave chaperones arrived in New York late Wednesday afternoon ready to conquer the world; however, our arrival was shortly upstaged by the arrival of what The New York Times is calling the “bomb cyclone”. You could say we brought the cold with us, or that the city wanted to give us a proper welcome. Either way, mother nature was never going to let us get away with the simple first day we had anticipated.

Despite the brutal wind gusts and constant downpour of snow, I made my way into Athlon Media to meet my host, Janet Mowat, at 9:00 am Thursday morning. I, along with Helen Rieke and Rachel Brown, staked out on our own for the first time, all on a mission to successfully start our next adventure as interns. As I made my way up to the 8th floor of my building, appropriately named One Grand Central Place, I stopped to reflect on what I was embarking on: the chance to do what I love in an incredible city surrounded by amazing people that are all supporting me... something anyone would be jealous of, am I right? This is the chance of a lifetime, and I was not going to let anything stop me from making the most of every minute.

Once I found my office, I was greeted by, surprisingly, a familiar face at the front desk. It took me less than a second to realize that the young woman who was there to greet me and teach me the ropes was in fact my counselor from the summer camp, Camp Merri-Mac, that I had gone to when I was younger. Merit, or “Kitty” as I knew her, gave me a tour of the office and introduced me to the writers, editors, and design managers that I would be working under for the next few weeks.

With the first introductions under my belt, I settled into my desk to get started on my first task, reading through and taking notes on about fifteen different magazines that Athlon writes, designs, and edits. I know that to most this sounds dreadful, but I was beyond excited to dig in. Once I had seen what their average publication entails, I had three large pieces of paper set on the end of my desk and was told that these were some of the final drafts of the summer edition of our Homes and Gardens magazine, which will be shipped out to printing next Friday. This was followed by the fact that it was my job to do the final editing on the first 3 pages. Although 4 people, all of whom do this for a living, had already proofread these pages, I was thrilled to be doing a job that felt of importance.

As I worked, I stumbled upon what seemed to be a double space after a period, a big no-no in the publishing world. I was afraid to say anything for fear of being wrong, but then I thought back to my mini pep-talk and moment of reflection on the elevator. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from making the most of every moment, and I was certainly not about to let fear be the factor that puts my journey on pause. This is what Winterim is for. We are here to try, and more importantly we are here to fail, because from our successes we will grow in confidence, and from our failures grow in knowledge. If I was wrong, I simply learned a new formatting style, and if I was right, I had done something useful with my time. Either way, I needed to try. With that in mind, I walked to the desk of my host and asked her to have a look, and to her delight I had found an error that would be fixed immediately.

Although simply finding and an extra space to most seems insignificant, to me it was as big as the city I am in. And perhaps it wasn’t the error in itself, but the actions that I had to take following that error that meant so much. I was able to overcome my fear of being wrong to help my host. For the first time I didn’t let fear of failure stop me from trying. The moment that I realized that I need to trust myself, and more importantly I need to trust that everything will be ok even if I am wrong was a moment I will never forget. And I have come to learn that this is what Winterim is truly about, realizing what you are capable of, learning from the moments where you try something you aren’t yet ready for, and taking risks without the fear of failure.

- Kate Pittman '19