Experience

The best paid internship I had was at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. I interned as a "Young Artist at Work" which meant I had to participate in art activism and attend workshops to rehearse any art I was creating. What made the job enjoyable was being able to work with youth my age and I got paid to attend contemporary art performances. I also learned a lot about what it means to work as a professional artist. The skills I took out of this experience were some very basic soft skills and learning about how to manage art events and gatherings. I learned a very important lesson while interning as well. When I first started the internship we were expected to be taught some filming workshops and participate in discussions with our head director, but what ended up happening was both the filming instructor and our head director got laid off and our dance teacher took on the role of head director. We were all really disappointed about what happened but we continued to show up and work anyway. So the lesson I learned throughout this internship is the show must go on even when plans greatly change. We did suffer from some inadequacies during the internship (due to lack of support) but I would always contribute to the team everyday I had to work.