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Mentorship July 6, 2018
"I know my potential and ENTITY helped me figure that out."
Seven weeks ago, I was sitting in my house back in Florida, watching hours of Netflix, basically letting the hours pass by. I had applied to at least 30 internships and didn’t hear back from the ones I truly wanted. Naturally, I thought my best bet was to go back to my college town, get a part-time job and work all summer.
Seven weeks ago, I also got an email in the late hours of the afternoon that stated “Congratulations! I am thrilled to…” and at this point, I stopped reading because I basically blacked out. My body was physically shaking. I couldn’t believe I had gotten accepted into my dream position – a summer internship at ENTITY Academy.
I remember being afraid to tell my parents about the news. I don’t come from a wealthy family, and the last thing I wanted was to put a financial burden on my parents’ shoulders. Traveling across the country, finding housing and living expenses is not necessarily easy. So, for a second, I really contemplated lying and telling them I hadn’t gotten in. Yet, I knew I owed it to myself and all the hard work I had done throughout college to at least say something!
Luckily, my parents were and have been incredibly supportive throughout this entire experience. They told me that my job as a student is to get good grades and get opportunities to better my career; they then said that their job as parents is to support my decisions. I honestly will never be able to thank them enough for sending me out here.
I’ve made the best friends I could’ve ever asked for. In my almost 21 years of living, I have never bonded with people as quickly as I have here, and I know for a fact that the group of friends I made will be along on the ride for the rest of my life. They’ll be my roommates when I move into my first adult apartment. They’ll be bridesmaids at my wedding. They’ll be the ones I FaceTime at three in the morning just to catch up. I never expected to develop these friendships so quickly, but the memories we made together will always hold a special place in my heart.
I’ll miss our late-night walks to get ice cream at Little Damage. I’ll miss the first night out when we went to Taste on Melrose and literally walked into the wrong restaurant that was clearly several hundreds of dollars out of our budgets. I’ll miss the time we went to an Aly and AJ concert on a work night, because why no? I’ll miss our incessant need to go to the Warner Brothers’ Tour more than once because we’re those people. I’ll miss the horrible, traffic-ridden drives to Santa Monica and Venice where we ate too much food and took way too many pictures. I’ll miss the late nights spent ordering food to the apartment and watching the O.C. together. Most of all, I’ll miss having my best friends live in the room right across from my own.
Beyond all the adventures we had together, I’ll miss having people I know I can count on. I can’t even put into words how thankful I am that we all went through this experience together, and how we’ll have this bond from here on out. It’s sad to think that when I go home and tell my friends about these seven weeks, they might not get it. They might think I’m exaggerating and need to “relax,” but an experience like this really does change a person.
My friends here lifted me up like no other, and it’s because all of the people at ENTITY Academy are truly there for the right reasons. I’ve never met a more empowering group of women (and three men). It’s one of the most incredibly uplifting experiences to have women helping women, supporting women and befriending women.
In my entire life, I had never received so much support from the people around me as I did during my summer internship at ENTITY Academy. There was not a day that I walked into the office where one of the other interns didn’t have something nice to say. Shout out to Chelsea Hylton, the true self-love queen – you’re amazing!
My friends here were never catty, and they made me feel more in tune with my own self-worth than I ever had. I have never been more confident and sure of who I am than I have been since I got here. I know that if anyone ever tries to question my worth and my decisions that I’ll be able to stand up for myself. I know my potential and ENTITY helped me figure that out.
