Italy and Retail Tours

It’s funny to me how in my last weeks here I’ve just found out that the majority of the people living in my building are here from different countries taking English classes and my main goal is to be an English as a Foreign Language/Second Language teacher. Needless to say, once I found this out I’ve been introducing myself and meeting some of the most interesting and friendly people, which is making me increasingly more sad to leave! I’ve been looking for internships to possibly consider for next summer abroad, and after meeting a bunch of the international students I’ve been really drawn to Italy (who wouldn’t be?). So I may or may not be spending parts of my day endlessly searching for places I might want to live and work teaching English. This summer isn’t over yet, so I’ll just focus on the amazing city of New York, and fret about how I’ll get to Italy another day.

Anyways this week at work has mostly been product research, organizing Power Points, and continuing on retail tours. A favorite part of this internship so far for me has been the retail tours. I recently spent a day down in Soho exploring the new stores, and one of the most interesting stores I walked into was the Samsung experience store. They sell nothing in the store. It’s solely an experience — meaning you walk into the store, they hand you tons of free products, you design your own t shirts, mugs, etc, get free coffee and food, along with a bunch of other things (I ended up winning $15 to starbucks in a trivia game!). While this store was awesome, the general theme across the stores I visited recently has been more about creating a store experience rather then selling products. Increasingly consumers expect more out of stores when they can just buy whatever product they want online. It’s much more valuable for stores to invest in making consumers experiences, learn, and love their brand in a physical space or expand the services offered in store beyond just retail products. An example being when I went to the first physical store of Birchbox, primarily an online service that delivers makeup samples to your door, they not only offered their products but a beauty salon downstairs and makeup lessons. Across the varying stores I visited it was increasingly common to encounter things like this, and it’s interesting to see how physical retail stores are changing — and also incredibly fun to tour them! Overall it’s been a fun week, and I’m looking forward to giving a presentation about all of the stores I’ve toured to my boss and her co-workers.

Fresh Air Fund

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At the beginning of the week, the entire group of 40 interns spent a day with the company volunteering as camp counselors for the Fresh Air Fund on Monday. Earlier this weekend I had taken a trip back up to State College, and needless to say I thought I would be exhausted on Monday running around with kids and was desperately hoping I would be up for it. Thankfully when I woke up at 7AM that Monday I felt fresh and awake, and excited to be able to spend time with kids.

It’s always strange for me to think that last summer I was teaching in Costa Rica, and now I’m in an office doing business in NYC. I really miss the life and joy of the little kids I had the opportunity to work with, and while I’m enjoying my internship here I can’t help but miss working with children. This volunteer day was a wonderful way for me to be able to reconnect to working with kids again, and it was a great refresher. I spent the majority of the day in the crafts section, no surprise here,making dream catchers and other objects with the campers. They were from a variety of ages and all spending around a week at this camp in order to get out of the city and experience a different environment.

I personally loved the experience, and it gave me insights into how I love that this company truly values community service. It’s a family company, and it’s values are embedded in its culture and activities. I’m lucky to have the opportunity to spend time in this company over the summer, and while I want to pursue a teacher career, I know that anyone who ends up working here would be very happy and making a positive impact in their daily work life because of all the opportunity The Estee Lauder Companies provide for their workers to reach out and help the local community around them.

Happy Feet

At first glance this might not seem like a related post about my internship experience in NYC, and that’s probably because it isn’t. I know I’m probably only supposed to blog about my direct experiences within the internship, but I’ve grown a lot this summer —  in different ways and from different experiences. And one of the main ways I’ve grown is through dance. I probably spend an equal, or very close, amount of time at dance classes and events as I do working at my internship. I get home everyday around 5:30, eat a quick meal, then run off to take 1 or 2 dance lessons until around 9, which then leads to some dance socials during the week that will go as late as 1am (Usually longer, but I make sure to get some sleep I promise!)

I can’t pinpoint when I became so passionate about dance, but this summer I finally decided to really pursue learning as much as I could about all different styles of dance. I did sports my entire life, but I’ve always been drawn to more arts related things. I’ve always been drawn to dancers because it’s one of the sincerest ways to express a passion for something and I’m captivated by each persons way of expressing themselves. I would watch endless videos of hip-hop dancers and contemporary pieces, only to think that it was too late to ever learn how to dance like that. Towards the end of freshmen year, salsa classes seemed pretty unintimidating for a person who had no dancing ability what-so-ever, and long story short I ended up falling in love with salsa. Salsa led to ballroom, which ended up leading to hip-hop, and now I’m curious to try any dance that comes my way. Example being Kizomba and Zouk, which are now some of my favorite dances that I previously thought were just made up words that someone was saying.

Yet my newness to the dance community, where so many people have been dancing for years and years, always brings insecurities. It brings me back to the place where I didn’t even want to start dancing because I knew I was late to the game, and I begin to feel so inadequate when dancing with all of the more experienced dancers. My ability to pick up certain types of movements was slower, I was used to being focused on being rigid and strong for defense positions in soccer – or being concerned with conditioning and running rather then flexibility (granted both are needed for sports, but the emphasis was stronger from my experiences on former). With time, I’ve found my ability to pick up choreography and different movements has picked up, and I am able to learn, retain, and commit more of the essentials of the dances to muscle memory with practice. But there is always someone better, someone who can pick up what I’ve been trying to learn in an hour in 5 minutes, someone who can feel the music better, or someone who can perform the dance flawlessly.

I know that in every aspect of life there will always be someone better, and don’t read that as me being pessimistic and depressing. Rather the opposite. I’ve found this freeing. I can stop trying to be the best dancer and have fun. I can focus on feeling the music and doing my best, not comparing my abilities to anyone else, but only myself. If I look at where I was a year ago, and compare it with how I am dancing today — its huge! I was just mastering the basic moves of salsa, the only dance I knew, and now it’s one of my best dances. Now I know multiple styles of dancing and can enjoy myself at all types of dance events from swing to ballroom. No, I cannot do 500 ballet spins or completely freestyle in a hip-hop cypher. But whose to say that next year I won’t be able to do a couple spins and learn to break my ballroom frame for hip-hop?

I’ve reoriented myself this summer in a more positive way to stop comparing myself to others. I will stop looking at incredible dancers and thinking I can never be like that, but rather be inspired by their passion and dedication to improve to my own abilities and levels. Dance is expressive, any emotion or experience can be communicated and worked through dance, and that has been especially freeing for me in so many ways. It doesn’t matter what ability level someone is at, dance will always be a way for people to let go, learn, express themselves, and connect with others. I’m incredibly passionate about dance, it has brought me into wonderful friendships with some of the best people I know and has brought me so much happiness. I can, and probably will, blog more about this later, but I’ll end with this quote that I’ve really connected with lately.

 

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms”

-Zen Shin

Halfway point!

5 weeks flew by.

I know that everyone says times flys when you’re having fun, and everyone always talks about how high school flew by, then how freshmen year, study abroad, college, internships, etc all fly by. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m appreciative of this opportunity to blog each week, albeit a bit late, to catch up with everything thats been happening.

It’s funny to think back on my first day coming in terrified, only to have that nervousness increased ten-fold when told I would be interning under corporate innovation — rather then some education or spanish related position. I didn’t think I had expectations of what this experience would be like, but this internship has exceeded those expectations tenfold. I can’t truly speak to the nature of what I’m doing, (no I’m not super interesting and working for the FBI or anything, but it’s corporate rules and I intend to not break those by blogging), but every project has allowed me to work with different people, research different areas of the beauty business, learn from others in different departments, and develop my professional skills.

This week I had a half-day on Thursday and Friday off for the fourth of july, and it was such a nice long weekend to break from the typical 9-5 pattern I was becoming accustomed too. I’m enjoying this internship and learning a lot, but I think there comes a point where even the most fun work can wear you down a bit. Side-note, just to mention how lovely my boss is again, she always makes sure I take my full hour lunch break outside. Even if there’s a meeting or something that we need to stay in and eat for — which I never complain, I actually love meetings around lunch time because they’re catered! — she insists that I go outside for a bit. She also signs her emails with xo, and sends me adorable smiley emojiis. That sounds really trivial, but it’s made me realize the importance of connecting with co-workers, especially in a high management position, because it makes me want to go above and beyond in my work for her because I know that she genuinely cares about me. Instead of just treating me like a temporary intern to help with some smaller projects, she wants to see me learn, develop, and also wants to know who I am as a person. She takes me out to lunch and we can talk about non-work related things easily. She’s a wonderful person and a great boss, (I’m starting to realize I use the word wonderful too much, forgive me!) and I’m learning from her example how to be a better leader in the future. I don’t think this internship will make me turn my back on a teaching career, but I truly believe to be an effective teacher I need to learn about other careers and subject areas to better understand and help my students who have different interests and passions. So in the mean time, I’m going to learn as much as I can while I’m here, absorb everything NYC has to offer, and hope that my experiences can help future students in my classroom one day.

I love New York

I’m going to stick with the New York state of mind and get right to the point, because everyone’s always running somewhere else – “time is money” – and a lot has happened this past week. (Although, forgive me again, these posts are coming a bit late. But I always promise to complete them!)

I gush about my boss all the time, but I’m going to do it again anyways because I’m learning so much from her. Corporate culture is nothing I could have ever understood by learning about it in college, and my boss has been guiding me in all the mannerisms of the hierarchies in approaching more senior members, or dealing with generational differences on projects — which is a huge part of group work that we don’t experience in college. To expand on that a bit, when I do group work at Penn State I’m almost always working with other millennials. Yet here, often my boss is working with people who, for example, don’t know how to incorporate or work with technology in the same capacity that she does. Or there will be very young members that completely grasp the importance of omni-channel shopping, social media’s role for consumers, and work styles interlaced with gadgets and apps — a huge contrast from senior executives from different generations whose main source of technology is Microsoft word.

I also love my boss for bringing me along to all of her miscellaneous meetings. I learn about what other departments are doing, what important things are occurring in the company, listen to other employees roles and opinions, and get a first hand look of what goes on in this type of career. One of my favorite parts of the meetings, besides the catered lunches which are always delicious, and hearing the senior executive members speak. This week one senior member had discussed how she learned from a past mistake and now doesn’t hire people with the same skill set as her. We are naturally attracted to those like us, and she mentioned that she had hired a wonderful worker, but had to ultimately let him go because he had the same skills, strengths, and weaknesses as her and couldn’t balance out where she fell short. It’s important to assemble a group of different people who can ultimately work together and communicate well, because everyones skills bring something to the table and having different skill sets on a team is esential to success.

On a side note, this week I took some kickboxing classes, went to a famous (and free!) standup comedy show, went salsa dancing with my dance partner from Penn State who surprise visited, had my Argentinian tango teach who barely speaks english say “I like” to one of my dance ochos — seriously best moment ever, went swing dancing with friends from church at a cute diner place, and had some friends from Penn State come up for the House Dance International Jam which (basically a dance competition). That sounds like a ton of dance when I write it all down, and it is, but I’ve also learned how to cook more! Which is incredible considering I normally just grab pb&j to go, but constantly eating easy to make food has worn down on me to the point where I am forcing myself to cook. So knock on wood for me that that skill improves!

Anyways, I completely understand why those cheesy tourist “I love NY” shirts are such a staple here — It’s because New York is basically this incredible Narnia-like Disneyland for adults, but real life, embodied into one incredible city. How am I going to leave?

40% Tourist / 60% New Yorker

(Sorry this post is late! The past week and a half have been very hetic — forgive me!)

As my third week came to a close, its hard to pick out just one thing I should write about. Everything I am experiencing in New York is new and vastly different from what I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve decided to download an application called momento, where I can just write a quick one to two sentences about what happens each day, so that I can come back to this blog and delve more in depth about everything that has been happening.

Early on in the week my bosses had a large event that was only for executives in the company, so instead of making me sit in the office (which would not be a bad thing at all, I love being there!) they sent me out on another retail store of some of the most interesting stores in NYC. I was sent out with a list of different flagship stores and popup shops to see how different companies are utilizing an omnichannel experience and how they create an identity or story within their stores. I went to stores like Makerbot, which is a store of 3D printers with the Estee Lauder Companies use and insanely high end stores that served me expresso when I walked in the door. My favorite store was Warby Parker, I thought they did a great job incorporating an online retail experience with a physical store. You could try on all their glasses in the store, and order online seamlessly, all while taking pictures in a photo booth of your new glasses to post to Twitter and Facebook. More related to the beauty world, I went to custom makeup stores like bite beauty, where you could craft your own lipstick color. I also may or may not have stopped at the puppy store.

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I’ve also made some really wonderful friends while I’ve been down here. Saturday morning I went with the friends I’ve met at  Hillsong, the huge church next door, to Central Park for a picnic! It was so much fun, and our friend from Brazil had his very first PB&J sandwich. The friday before hand we went to this beautiful park and saw the sunset and played soccer, I loved every minute of it! Saturday night I went out to go Zouk, Salsa, and Bachata dancing with some really nice people I’ve met in my dance classes here. I honestly love nothing more then coming home right after work and going straight to dance class. Everyone is so helpful, friendly, and welcoming its a nice refresher from some of the not so friendly parts of New York. I was nervous coming to New York without knowing many people, but there are so many opportunities to connect with different people every day and its one of my favorite parts of the city. One of my favorite things to do is to go out swing dancing during the week too!

I’m starting to feel more and more at ease with the pace and style of living here, I’m getting less lost and finally starting to navigate without Google Maps, and I’ve mastered some quick walking without running into zombie people just staring at their phone screens while still magically moving. It was a wonderful week, and I can feel the time slipping by, but I’m enjoying it all while I can! I also spur of the moment bought a pet fish to help me navigate as well. His name is bubbles.

 

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There will be time for sleep later…

 

*A quote by Estee Lauder that I collaged earlier this week

 

Gauging by my experiences in New York so far, I feel like I’m going to start the majority of my blog posts with an, “I can’t believe…” So many things have happened here that I would have never seen myself doing, experiencing, learning, etc a month ago. I knew my time was short, but I didn’t anticipate throwing myself into everything at once. I couldn’t help myself because there is so much to see, do, and learn in such a short time here. I’ve signed up for every dance class imaginable, started doing boxing/martial arts during the week, explored parts of the city and stumbled into slam poetry cafes, and just found Hillsong church to become involved with throughout the week.
All on top of the fact that I’m lucky enough to be interning at one of the largest international companies in the world within one of the coolest (I don’t have a less lame word for that, forgive me!) departments — corporate innovation. Every day I’m learning, and in all honestly I probably need to slow down so I don’t burn out, but I love everything I’ve been exposed to so far and I don’t know how to give any of them up!

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I can’t express how grateful I am for all of the help I’ve had from Penn State, the PLA, and liberal arts in coming here. I’m so incredibly lucky to go to a university that not only invests in my education with notch teaching staff, facilities, activities, and opportunities but also helps to finically support their students in “non-traditional” learning settings as well. Without all of the support I would not be able to take this summer to experience a completely different career path that I had previously written off, and now I find myself loving and enjoying.

Work has been incredible. My bosses are nothing but the nicest humans to exist, and the investment the company puts into developing all of the interns is incredible. This week just some of the people we were able to meet and learn from were Leonard Lauder, William Lauder, John Demsey (Group President of the company), and Fabrizio Freda (President/Cheif Executive Officer). The very highest people in the company wanted to take the time to get to know us, and impart advice about the company, the beauty business world, and all sorts of things that I would have never learned otherwise. It was incredible to sit next to, ask questions, and talk with some of the most successful people in the company I’m working for this summer.

IMG_8863On top of that, a former intern who is now working in my department took me under her wing and invited me to a day long think tank conference run by L2. The conference was called Social is Media, where they first gave presentations on the social landscape and what it means for companies. Then case studies such as DOVE came to present about their successful advertisement campaigns, and startup companies pitched their ideas and products to the companies attending.IMG_8862

 

Additionally, executive members from Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Pintrest all came to explain why and how companies should use their platforms for advertising. The entire day was fascinating because as one of the few millennials at this conference, I use these platforms on a daily basis. But seeing it from a marketing and brand’s perspective completely flipped my viewpoint, and the data presented really gave me a new understanding of how these platforms can be used, what habits users tend to have on these sites, and gave me a curiosity to learn more because of all of the fascinating insights that were presented.

 

 

I’ve only touched upon one day of this week, and I’m already out of words. I think I’ll start next week’s blog tomorrow and write a little of what happens each day because there’s so much I’m forgetting to cover — and I love working here and I can’t wait to learn more.

Welcome to New York

I can’t believe that only a week ago I was at home, in my small suburban town, counting down the days until I would be living in New York. My summer has been completely reshaped and flipped from what it was a week ago, from relaxing days with friends and taking care of the dogs, to working a 9-5 professional job that requires full attention and involves continually learning. My thoughts about the week are all over the place, largely a result of the million things that have been going on, so forgive me as I do my best to coherently organize the main things that have happened while I’ve been working and living in NYC. I found New York’s educational housing for students for the summer, and decided that would be the best place for me to live based on the location in Manhattan, the security, and being surrounded by other new interns and students to the city. I’m lucky enough to be living right next to Penns Station, and it has made navigating NY a bit easier — although I honestly get lost everyday (it’s getting better I promise). I’ve been so happy to meet other wonderful interns who are working all across NYC in fashion, business, banking, and in other fascinating industries. I was only allowed to move in on Sunday, and work started for me the next day at 9am sharp. And from that point on, things have been a whirlwind for me. Fast forward past all of the wrong turns I made to arriving at my office right next to central park. My whole first day was unbelievable, starting with the fact that the building that I am working in is so incredibly high that my ears actually pop on the way to our welcome meeting on the 41st floor. This isn’t the best picture, but I was in a rush to get to work early — and also try to put the whole building in a frame which I couldn’t do.IMG_8758 When I arrived at the floor I was told the new intern orientation meeting would be at, I was in awe of the beautiful central park and NYC views. There were 42 interns selected out of over 300 applicants from all over in the world, working in total for all of the departments and over 30 brands of the Estée Lauder Companies. We all went around and introduced our selves, saying our majors, school, and part of the company we are working for. As an Spanish Education, International Studies, and ESL major I can’t tell you how out of place I felt sitting in a conference room of students getting their masters in law or finishing up their degrees in business and marketing from schools like Princeton and UPenn. I was immediately struck by a feeling of how incredible of an opportunity I have been blessed to have, and soon had this confirmed once I met my supervisor, boss, and the people I’m working with. I found out that I was the only intern for Corporate Innovation, but would have the chance through various meetings and on lunch breaks to interact with the other interns to see what they were working on. IMG_8752 Fast forward again, to meeting my supervisor and boss. I was so nervous to enter into the business world, and had no idea what they would be like. I quickly saw that they were both some of the most wonderful and helpful people I’ve ever met, and completely destroyed any scary images I had of a typical business environment boss. Andrea, who will be my supervisor for the summer, has been nothing but the most kind and welcoming person I could ever ask for as a mentor. She answers all of my questions and truly wants me to learn as much as I can while I am here for the short 10 weeks. I can’t explain how grateful I am for all of her help, as I’m learning so much from her and I’m so excited to be learning about certain aspects of the business/fashion industry. Since I am working in Corporate Innovation, the nature of the things I am working on deal with future products and data that are confidential, so I can describe more of my experience in the work environment and what I am learning — but forgive my vagueness! (Also on a side note, I even have my own office!)

My office !

In short, I’m loving every minute of working here and I can definitely see a future working for this company if I would ever have the opportunity — or even another business job. I would have never thought that a week ago, and I can’t wait to learn more about this type of career! Wish me luck next week, and I can officially say I completed my first work week of 9-5!


There have been some general rules I have learned while living here, that may seem obvious to any native New Yorker, but that I was wholly unaware of when arriving.

  1. Don’t talk to Strangers — I know the general rule of not approaching random people to strike up a conversation, but what has really been different for me is that even just acknowledging someone that happens to be crushed into your space on the subway with a hello, or good morning,  is largely not a good idea. Out of habits from the warm Spanish cultures I’ve grown accustomed too in Costa Rica, and the Southern hospitality I grew up in Florida with, little things like a smile to people walking by or talking with someone in the store have always been something regular. In New York, this is not exactly an ideal thing to do. There’s almost too many embarrassing stories about how I’ve gotten stuck talking to some crazy (when I say crazy, I genuinely mean these people I’ve run into are not entirely sane), people or ended up in some not so comfortable situations to include here. I’m still trying to drill this rule into my head, but I promise when I’m back in State College I’ll be happy to drop this “Tough New Yorker Face” as some of my friends from here call it.
  2. Don’t walk alone — I’m sure everyone can universally agree that especially women should not walk alone anywhere around night time in a city. While this is completely normal and safe in my town, and even more so in State College, I came to NY knowing I couldn’t do this here. Regardless, I may have gotten lost a few times (and by a few I mean, ALL the time) and ended up walking alone at night. In retrospect I should’ve taken a cab home, but I recognized the surrounding area and I knew I was relatively close to my hotel and would be there soon. But, not that many people where out (as there usually are during the day) and I would say the first time I felt truly afraid was walking past a few groups of men who seemed to be drinking and various people who seemed a bit out of it sitting or pacing along the sidewalk. I’ve been lucky to grow up in areas where I’ve never really had to be concerned with some of the things that might occur at night to a girl walking alone in the city. I’ve never been so aware of how small I was that night, and how if any of these people decided to come over to me how I didn’t have a way to leave. I hate the feeling of walking by a man I don’t know at night and sensing a quick dose of fear, because I know the almost full majority of these people I walk past are probably wonderful and harmless. But because there are some people who aren’t, I become aware of how much of a target I am as a small girl walking around lost in NY. It’s been a good lesson for myself, because I know there are women all around the world that live in dangerous places who are feel, even more rightfully so, afraid to even step out alone in the day-time. It’s terrible that women have to feel this way, but beforehand I never really understood the idea of being afraid based on my gender until experiencing walking alone at night in a city I don’t know well.

I have many more things I’ve learned here, but I’ve realized after typing so much that I’ll save them for another week — as I’m sure I’ll learn more and add to what I’ve been experiencing. Overall, it’s been an amazing week in New York, and I couldn’t be more excited about this summer how much I will learn.


 

IMG_8813 As a side note, New York is an awesome place to learn how to dance! I’ve been going to lessons and dance socials after work and I’ve learned some dances that I didn’t even know existed before — like Zouk! I’m really enjoying exploring the dance community here, but I need to learn salsa on 2 quick if I want to go out for social latin dancing, wish me luck!