By Rachel Segrest,
Gabelli 2014
In February 2012, I began wondering how the heck I was going
to spend my summer. After settling on living
for three months in Manhattan, I began searching for internships. I’m a
business management major, but I didn’t want to work at some souped up company.
Wearing a suit and retrieving coffee were low on my priority list to say the
least. While scouring Fordham’s Career Services website, CareerLink, I came
across a listing for an intern at a small Ashtanga yoga studio in Harlem. I
couldn’t stop thinking about it. I imagined myself practicing yoga as I pleased
and becoming a Zen goddess. Part of that came true, no need to specify which
one.
After landing the internship at Land Yoga, I was welcomed right into the heart
of the business. I was also encouraged to participate in as many yoga classes
as I wanted. I knew next to nothing about yoga, but my boss and shala owner
(shala is the more correct name for studio), Lara, entrusted more
responsibility to me than I could’ve hoped for at a large corporation. My projects would surprisingly encompass a
variety of disciplines including marketing, PR, management, and IT.
I was in charge of many administrative tasks as well as a
few things that were not part of the initial job description – which is part of
the reason why I loved my internship. My first task as intern was to design and
order shirts for the studio. Once UPS finally delivered them neatly folded in
cardboard boxes, I secretly jumped for joy, reveling in my small success.
In addition to preparing orders, I also got to get out of
the studio. After designing some promotional material for our pre and postnatal
yoga classes, I mapped out all of the medical businesses that new moms
frequented around upper Manhattan. Once finalizing my route, I spent a few
workdays biking around and delivering the flyers I made. It was awesome. Wiping
sweat from my brow, I would jump off my bike and waltz into doctors’ offices,
negotiating whether or not I could post up the flyers. I learned a lot about
interacting with people on those bike trips. Before I could speak with one
Harlem doctor, I had to talk to three hardened nurses and then wait with some
veteran employees on their lunch break in a small break room. Helmet in hand, I
was considerably terrified by the time I was called in to speak with this
doctor (who for some reason had the unreachable status of a politician). Long
story short, the curtain closed with a genuine handshake, warm smiles, and my
flyer posted in the hospital’s maternity wing.
As the summer pressed on, the ‘intern’ in my title quickly
disappeared. I was the Operations Manager, and I could answer just about any
question relating to Land Yoga that you could come up with…and I did. I loved
interacting with the diverse people that frequented the studio. Many of them
did not fit the regular yoga student stereotype; they were comedians, DJs,
musicians, and business people. I even ended up with tickets to an Upper
Eastside comedy show and a Hudson River concert cruise.
Before moving on to study abroad for a year, Lara enlisted
me to create a manual to guide the future interns of Land Yoga. I really
enjoyed putting what I had learned while working at Land into a cohesive
guidebook for new employees to use. It was fun to anticipate the potential
questions that the interns might have and allay their possible concerns by
making a set of instructions for them. I trained a couple new interns before I
left, but this manual helped to ensure that my support continued even after I
was gone.
I took on the internship at Land Yoga because it was a young
company that could afford me more experience than a big business. However, I
still can’t believe how much I learned about owning and running a business
while working there. I got to see the humanity behind business management.
Overcoming obstacles, adapting to changes, and celebrating small triumphs were
intertwined with doing handy work, teaching my boss about technology, and
explaining the shala’s mission and offerings to potential students. Interning
at Land was never boring, and although I may occasionally fall short of a Zen
goddess, the experience I gained there has significantly aided my development
into a resourceful and self-motivated member of society.
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