I'm Freaking Out

In late July of 2006, almost two years ago, I was an Account Management intern at Euro RSCG Chicago. I knew that I would be leaving for the VCU Adcenter in a few weeks. The next two years of my life, unless I failed out of school, were planned out for me. It seemed daunting, but not actually scary.

As an intern at Euro RSCG Chicago one of my tasks was to work with the other interns to form our own agency (we cleverly called ourselves INTERNational) and develop a recruitment campaign for the office that would appeal to junior and mid-level prospective employees. Overall, this was probably the best internship experience I've ever had. We were given a lot of guidance and help, but were also trusted to get it right without someone constantly shepherding us. Our four person agency worked to craft the strategy, create three creative concepts, flesh-out the winning concept, generate lots of background information, present to lots of people with VP and SVP in their title, and write POVs and other pieces of communication in order to continually keep moving forward both internally and with our client. We sometimes felt overwhelmed and we squabbled more often than necessary, but I've never learned more in such a short period of time.

Long story short, at the end of July we were weeks behind and about to lose one of our Art Directors, Devika, to a previously planned African safari trip with her family. She was devoted to her work and incredibly talented. As someone who didn't want to put anything less than her best foot forward, who had just graduated from college, and who was about to leave on Safari and had a week left to get everything done, she was a bit stressed out. In the middle of her last week, I found this post-it note on my computer screen:


Devika's note made me laugh, but it also made me try even harder to make the project come together. In the end, due to both internal and external problems, our project didn't get to the point we had hoped it would. Still, I left Euro feeling proud of our work and proud of how much we had all learned. And so instead of throwing away the post-it note, I kept it on the first page of my planner. Now, every time I open my planner I have a little reminder of the fantastic mix of love and stress and laughter (sprinkled with Saturday's spent working) that it takes to create something memorable.

Maybe I'm a bit weird, but as I go through my own Freak Out, scary as it may be, her post-it confession makes me smile. Looking at that simple statement, I can actually take a deep breath and move forward. After all, it worked out for Devika.