A GameSkinny Internship: Sometimes You Need a Good Crack of the Whip

The beta phase for the GameSkinny internship is ending and I stand here wallowing in my small accomplishments. It's the little things.

“Are you watching porn?”

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“Porn? What? No. Not porn. Not at work. That’s bad. I’m watching a trailer. For a game. It’s about an assassin who is also a pirate which obviously means he needs some fine lady friends at every port and there’s some sort of backstory with a wife that he doesn’t get along so well with, which makes sense I guess, what says fine, functional, happy relationship like your man coming home smelling of whorehouse after months at sea, and anyway—”

“What you said just made absolutely no sense to me. I think I’d rather you were watching porn. I can’t yell at you when you’re being confusing.”

What, you think I’m lying? This is what happens when you intern at GameSkinny and your deadlines are such that you’re posting your articles while you’re still at work. And if you’re my boss and reading this… well, uh, it was on my lunch break. I swear.

If you’re a regular on GS, you’ll have noticed the influx. I am one of many. We are legion. We have our fair share of crazy, prolific, and some truly insightful stuff.

So what has it been like?

Being an intern at GameSkinny is like being an intern anywhere. It’s a long, hard, often frustrating slog doing stuff for free what other people get paid to do.

It’s confusing instructions, occasionally staggering workloads, and team members that sometimes just… disappear. It’s churning out content that you’ve had only a few hours to research, it’s refreshing frantic to make sure no one else has posted the same content, and it’s looking up and wondering how many of your friends hate you for spamming their Facebooks. (The answer is none: because you love me. Right? …Right? ;-;)

But is it worth it?

Well… yeah, actually.

Contrary to the above, it has also managed to be fun and rewarding. I started out with a team of four, that dribbled into three, that merged into seven, that turned into six, that finally slid down to five. (It’s a long story.) I like being able to write about stuff I like. I like counting my successes in steadily increasing numbers. I enjoy the random happy talk I have with Katy and my team members.

It has not been the experience I was expecting, nor the coasting session that I secretly wanted, but it’s turned out to be exactly what I needed. Experience. I can be a pretty lazy person by nature, but if I sign up for something, I am damned well going to do as good a job as I can. I’m drumming out content I wouldn’t ever have come out with of my own accord, have fine-tuned my researching and time-management abilities, and learned a thing or two about digital publishing and social media. That’s important to me.

I have found a program that is run by people who actually take into account what feedback you have to give, who acknowledge areas that aren’t perfect, and who actually try to make the appropriate changes. I think that on its own is pretty unique in and of itself.

Thinking of signing up?

Don’t let a challenge discourage you. It’s fun, and it’ll be fun. (And tiring, and stressful, and frustrating, and rewarding.) Besides, you never know what you’re capable of until you try.

I’ll be seeing you in the Bastion phase. Happy writing!


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Author
Stephanie Tang
Avid PC gamer, long-time console lover. I enjoy shooting things in the face and am dangerously addicted to pretty. I'm also a cat.