The idea of working with NBC’s Golf Channel in Orlando, Florida isn’t something that immediately sticks out to current internship seekers and it may not be your first choice when considering production-focused opportunities. But if current Senior Rachel Tschwerisnki’s experience can’t convince you otherwise, then you’re probably not reading this.
I connected with Rachel recently after hearing that she had a lot to share about the Programming Intern experience but I was really interested when I heard that she had actually found the position from our office. Marketing opportunities is just part of my job — but it’s an important part when I hear about the success it leads to and it’s even a bit of a reward when I get to sit down with people like Rachel.
Rachel Tscherwinski
What was it that drew you to the position originally?
Rachel: “I’ve had a love-hate relationship with golf in my life. I come from a very white, ‘gotta go to this country club’ kind of family so golf has been a part of my life since I was born. My father played golf, my uncles played golf, and I played golf from a very young age up to high school.
I’m not a huge fan of playing it but I have a strong background in golf and I know a lot about playing it, so that definitely opened my eyes to the internship. For anyone who’s interested, you don’t have to know anything about golf coming into the internship but you’ll know all the top players by the end of it.
What were your day to day responsibilities like?
Rachel: “Every day we did something different so what I found helpful, especially as I was thinking ahead to future internship interviews, was write down each new task or skill I came across in my role. I have some of them in front of me, which included things like: timecoding, international research & data entry, supplier research, Rights research, archival footage editing, teleprompting…”
Rachel pauses at this one.
“I once did the teleprompting for the Japanese affiliate of the Golf Channel. That was definitely a challenge because I cannot speak the language and I just had to guess where the guy was reading while I went along…
We definitely got our hands on a lot of different things in a lot of different departments, which I think was awesome.”
Did you feel prepared for this internship?:
“They had you sit in for like a day or two with someone. They have a lot of contract workers who offer basic training for a lot of the tasks in the control room. Honestly, being a part of Emerson Channel and EIV definitely helped me out with that. It’s all the same stuff, including the technology.
You just have to be confident and definitely having a production background from Emerson takes you to the next level.”
Is there one memory that sticks out to you more than others?:
“I have to go with the scariest job they ever gave me. It was scary because I had the most responsibility out of any of the other jobs.
It was when they had their huge four or five tournaments going on — like the Masters and all of that. I forget which specific tournament it was, but what we had to do was sit down with an editor and go through scripts to find clips we could pull out. It was scary because the editor kind of already had an idea of what to do but I was coming to this with a new set of eyes.
It was a 21-year old telling a 50-something-year-old what to do, which was intimidating, to say the least.
But I just had to remind myself that this was my chance to see my work on television — to see my work as an intern. We got to see all the content that we asked the editor to create as a final product. Still, I was just so nervous I’d do something wrong but I’ll never forget how well everything came together and how relieving it was to see the final product.”
Any final words of advice?:
“I have more of a logistical piece of advice: A lot of people going to Emerson are from the Northeast and, for many of us, the hardest part with something like this is moving down to Florida and finding housing. I know a lot of people don’t have family down there and may need to find something outside of their comfort zone.
I was lucky enough to find Summer housing at the University of Central Florida and they actually put me in one of their campuses that was a seven-minute drive from the Golf Channel. It was definitely great to know about this ahead of time because it instantly answered my concerns about housing for the summer.”
