Single Rider-dom

There is a secret back entrance to the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. One needs a secret ticket to even get in. You hand your ticket to the guy with a conspiratorial wink. You wait for an elevator to take you up over the tracks, then scurry gleefully past the plebes in the regular line, and wait for an elevator to take you down, when you are then unceremoniously shoved into a small bamboo-cordoned queue, where a fedora-hatted cast member yells for ones and twos. You then get on the ride.

Total time: < 20 minutes. Always.

Standby time: ~1 hour. A lot of times, more.

I'm on and off before anyone in the slow line even gets to the awesome inside queue.

Being a single rider is pretty advantageous, even when not at Disneyland. 

Want to go see a movie? Even at the most crowded, there's always that one seat in the middle. 

Want to go to a concert? Don't have to keep track of how drunk your friend is getting.

Want to go eat food? You go where you want to go, order what you want to order, flirt gently with the waitstaff, and leave - no bumbling over who wants to go where, indecision, and coordinating a group. 

Really, why add that extra layer of complexity that compounds with every other person you want to bring along? 

Even before I moved back home, I had a tendency to go the single rider route. Even when I had a boyfriend - for my birthday one year, I decided that I was going to see one of the Thor movies ion theaters. I had my ice cream and movie ticket before I realized my boyfriend also just happened to be there at the dame time. I hadn't even thought about asking him. 

It just makes everything so much easier. There's just one person to keep track of, one set of needs to be met, and one person deciding what's on the radio, and zero solid meetup times to miss, zero people to impress, and zero peer pressure. I can come when I want, and leave if it sucks.

It takes so much time and effort to coordinate with even one person sometimes. 

On the flip side, going single rider does tend to be more expensive - no group discounts, no one to split gas with, no one to buy you that shot except yourself. It can be a challenge to strike up a conversation with people I've never met before. You can end up getting thrown in with some unsavory people. 

But there's also the chance to meet someone awesome, so hang with the other single riders, to find out something new that you never would have found out if you were there with someone. The benefits of exploration and being able to just do things can outweigh the costs that come from flying solo by a massive amount. 

Cuz while I love my friends, sometimes, they are just too dang slow.

Community College vs Four Year College

I've been taking some classes at the local community college, kinda treading water, and I've noticed some significant differences between the community college and the "traditional" college.

For instance, in community college, it is assumed that everybody works. Everybody has a job, or at least some way to make money.
At U of A, that was not the norm. Some people had jobs, but it seemed like most did not and that was that. If anything, people got internships over the summer.

In community college, there are security measures everywhere. There are eye-in-the-skys and bubble mirrors and "public safety officers" everywhere. Everywhere you go, you're potentially being watched.
At U of A, there were entire buildings that seemed like they should have cameras that didn't. Of course, the Student Union was supposedly more secure than a Vegas Casino, but labs and performance spaces were left to their own devices. I mean, locks are breakable and lasers are fricken valuable. I guess there was a higher level of trust?

At community college, people are older. There are still the 18-19 year olds, but a lot of the people who are in freshman-level classes are 21+ - and in every class I've been in there is at least one person who is significantly more established than the average college student is expected to be.
At U of A, seeing anyone over 25 who wasn't a professor or TA of some kind was abnormal and viewed with suspicion. You are expected to go in at 18, do your four years, and either do grad studies or get TF out of there. No one old is allowed.

At community college, you tend to fend more for yourself. There's public high school level disparity between advisers and students, and while the professors are nice, they actually go home at the end of the day.
At U of A, you are smothered with people trying to make your life easier. There was always a prescribed path, a group you get railroaded into, someone you gotta meet to finish something out - at least when you're a freshman - then it goes away fast.

SO overall, plusses and minusses both ways. You don't always necessarily get what you pay for.

Me, Interrupted

This is to answer the dreaded twin questions:

What have you been doing?
and
WTF is wrong with you?

The shortest answer: everything and nothing, all at once.

The long answer:

I guess I had a more difficult time adjusting to college life than I realized or let on. I started having mean/bad/strange intrusive thoughts near the end of my freshman year. Most prominent among those was that "I need to disappear," which, in and of itself is something every socially awkward person thinks every once in a while, but when it's a weekly, daily, hourly occurrence, you know something is wrong.

So I did disappear - I went to Florida and had my Disney World adventure, where I had everything that I thought I wanted - a solid friend group who liked me, a great job, my own money, an escape from the real world, decent roommates, an apartment I paid for, etc., and during that time, I subconsciously tried to cut myself off from the last noticeable vestige of imperfection in my life - my family. I had stopped returning their calls, so they shut off my phone - the last little bit of easy control they had over me. I used WiFi instead, and since everyone I cared about used email, messenger, and groupme, it wasn't too much of a hardship.

After that, I went back to school, spent the summer in a pothead house (I didn't smoke), and when I wasn't in class, I hunkered down in the library until dark, bingeing Smallville and Vlogbrothers and occasionally actually doing homework, alone, hot, bored, tired. I did okay over the summer, but I hated it. To try and break the monotony, I joined Tinder and went on a few dates, none of which led to anything substantial. Despite constantly slugging water, eating semi-healthy, and getting plenty of exercise, and being in regular communication with some people, I felt like crap. At least the dog liked me. Some blogs talk about a "post-Disney depression", so I chalked it up to that and having to wear jeans in 110 degree heat for a shop class.

Then came Senior year, where my slowly downward sloping trajectory took a turn for the exponential. I stopped going to the classes I found boring, then I stopped going to the classes that were in the morning, then I stopped going to Rube, then I stopped going to classes at all - except for my dance classes, and I didn't finish any of the written work they required, making that the one class I didn't fail my last semester. Then I stopped participating in my senior project. And that was it. I still maintained a facade of normalcy - I still had my Wednesday night group, and when people asked me to do fun stuff with them, I did. I was passably sociable, and BSed about "being busy" and "everything's getting so tough" and "I don't know what I'm doing" - I just repeated what everyone else said, and no one was any the wiser.

I tried to get out of the house at least once every day - I did a lot of walking, explored Fourth Ave, went to all the libraries a lot. I actually was on campus most days - I still had a meal plan to work off. I had a quiet corner in the main library with a power socket, comfy chair, and table all to myself that I jealously guarded. At the same time, there were days when I hid in my room and stayed really quiet, hoping that my roommate, whose classes started later than mine, wouldn't notice that I hadn't yet left the house. I left the door closed at night and when I wasn't there so that the cats wouldn't wander in, so it looked the same either way. I went hungry some days because she had most of her classes in the afternoon and didn't leave until well after lunch. I did start going to counselling after a late night anxiety attack, but although the lady was nice, I didn't feel like it helped much.

I got almost literally dragged home by my parents for my little sister's Confirmation, and have been stuck at home since. I still haven't completely unpacked, and a lot of my stuff is still gathering dust in the garage. I took a community college class over the summer, and got a job. I got a C.

I went to see a doctor, who said that I was completely physically healthy. No help there. I went to a psychiatrist, who told me that I had suffered a major depressive episode. That sounded about right. Then, horror upon horrors, she ordered a blood test. After nearly passing out, the results came in. Slight anemia, nothing physical to worry about. So it really was all in my head.

I'm now taking community college courses, getting therapy, and taking meds.

The next logical question:

Am I doing better?

Honestly, at the moment, not really. I'm going to class, and talking to people, and keeping up appearances, but my head's still feeling pretty crowded and confused and scared and I still seem stuck in my own little bubble. I was running along the road more traveled, took a left turn to avoid monotony, ran into a wall, fell almost all the way off the path, and got stuck in a ditch, which, despite some effort, I seem to be digging myself deeper into. I'm trying to blindly feel my way to the train tracks so that I have a minute chance of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. No luck yet. I haven't even figured out if my eyes are open. Telling myself to quit feeling so out of it hasn't worked yet.

So yeah, that's what's going on with me, and WTF is wrong with me. I'll probably expound a bit more later, but that's the overview.

TL;DR: Apparently, I'm depressed. No, I'm not suicidal. And yeah, it sucks. And yes, I screwed up. And no, I'm not sure what to do about it.

So, yeah. That's it for now.

Why I'm Not Famous

Speaking of fame, the closest I ever got was in elementary school - we were graduating/promoting/going from the fifth grade to the sixth.

I, being a good little student well liked by at least my teachers, had gotten the best grades in the school in my graduating class and was kind of the valedictorian, except I didn't get a give a speech. As such, I got called up on stage to get an award, which I hadn't known about beforehand.

I flounced up the stairs to my elementary school cafeteria stage, resplendent in a brand new teal polo shirt and skort outfit, my floofy ponytail bouncing behind me, to shake the principle's hand and get a shiny plaque celebrating my accomplishment. Afterward, the whole way home, everybody - teachers, classmates, parents, relatives, kids I didn't know, everybody - came up and congratulated me on my "accomplishment", on what a "good job" I'd done, on how I was a "great kid" and they'd "miss me".

I was overwhelmed. Instead of just going home to a nice dinner with just my family, where I could relax and stuff my face with pasta, I was stuck for some time after the ceremony, taking pictures with everyone and getting all the attention and not eating the stuffed shells that I knew lay waiting at home.

Everybody loved me, and I hated it.

I couldn't not smile, couldn't stop repeating "thank you", "you too", "I'm sure it was close", etc. I couldn't breathe I couldn't comprehend everything that was going on, I was overwhelmed. I wasn't consuming my cheesy saucy carb-filled deliciousness.

That 15 minutes of being the most popular kid in my 700 person elementary school proved to me that I never wanted to be really famous. I couldn't even handle slight notoriety in a limited context; being truly well known, where everyone thinks they have a right to you and what you do and think and say, would probably kill me. I would never be able to relax, let my guard down, and enjoy it.


I've always had issues with people watching me.

I stopped posting negative stuff here for a while because I'd always get concerned people asking what was wrong.  I put on personas and change my affect around people I don't know. I can play the "Find the Hidden Security Camera" game on hard mode. I've got tape over my laptop camera. I've turned off location tracking on my phone. I'm hyperaware that as I'm writing this right now over school Internet with at least two eye-in-the-skys watching me, every keystroke, every website I visit, is being recorded along with my identity by the school in association with my identity.

I really hate being watched because it makes me hyperaware of myself and everything I'm doing "wrong". It's like the "you are now manually breathing" trick - it makes me pay attention even when I know what's going on and how everything works. It doesn't help that the modern world is a panopticon of cameras, trackers, and spyware where you never know who is looking at whom.

At least when it's overt, when it's people I know and that I can see, I can analyze a situation and react appropriately - and I've gotten a lot better at that since elementary school.

So, my dear anonymous audience - like, comment, and subscribe - I like knowing who I have to avoid. ;)

Encounters

When people ask where I'm from, I tell them I'm from Los Angeles. (I'm actually from a suburb of a suburb of LA, but for most people, it's close enough)

When people hear that I am from LA, they almost always ask one of the same two questions: 

Do you surf? 

OR

Have you met any famous people?

And my answers are as follows: 

Um, kinda, yeah, I did once when I was, like, ten. I like to boogie board, though! 

OR

Yeah, I've seen Bob Hope/Frank Sinatra Drive, haha. 

In all seriousness, though, yes, I have met some famous people. My hometown is kinda like the vacation resort town for people who can't quite afford Malibu, so we get our share of C-listers and wannabes. 

There was one time, I was taking a walk down Main Street when a guy with an acoustic guitar walked up behind me and tried to jump scare me. While violently strumming right when he walked past me, the guitar slipped a little from his hand. 

"You know, that might be easier if you had a strap," I yelled after him, and he cracked a smile. 

"I don't need to - I do this for a living," he said. "I'm Jay-Z's guitarist - I'm the only white guy on tour."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Look me up!"

And with another violent strum of the acoustic, he was off into the sunset. 

I did look him up. At the time, I was pretty sure he was legit. Now, I'm not so sure, but it's a fun  story. 

So yeah, there's one "celebrity" I've met.

Also, Whitney Houston's daughter went to my middle school. We had the same PE period and everything when I was in 6th grade. I didn't really talk to her - she was older than me and had her own clique - but at the same time everyone knew who she was, even if a lot of us didn't have a clue who Whitney Houston was. Every time there was one of those stupid school fundraisers, selling magazines or some shit, one of the rewards was a Whitney Houston CD - I guess her mom had donated a bunch and the school had no idea what to do with them. Nothing more motivating to a kid than trying to earn a CD for a person his parents probably liked.

Rebecca Black, of "Friday" fame, almost went to the crosstown high school, but dropped and did homeschooling because of "harassment." She was also at Disneyland the day of our 8th grade trip. 

I met the dude form Candyman, the dude from Starship Troopers, and one of the original visual effects guys for Star Wars when I volunteered at Comic Con. That was pretty cool. 

I've also gone to stuff like TV tapings for stuff like America's Got Talent, Conan, the Late Late Show, and Jimmy Kimmel, where I've obviously seen, but not interacted with their respective hosts and guests for the day - including Adam Sandler, Darius Rucker, and a bunch of people no one's ever heard of. 

However, the best celebrity encounter I've had was the one time I was walking out of Kimmel, minding my own business, trying like mad to remember where I parked my car, when I walk onto Hollywood Boulevard where the premiere of Thor: Ragnarok was taking place. I got to visually see and take pictures of the beautiful Chris Helmsworth, the incredible Mark Ruffalo, and the indescribable Tom Hiddleston - from behind a barrier on the street that was about 30 feet away from any of the action. 

Sometimes living near Los Angeles can be pretty cool.  

Internet Layers

The internet is a multilayered thing.

On top you have sites that you can get to from the front page of Google results that tend to be a one way transaction of information - knowledge passes from some server through the magical internet wires to your computer and into your brain. Anybody with internet access is familiar with this level.

Scratch the paint on that just a little bit and you find a massive turf war of "communities" and "families" and "interest groups" with names that sound like made up words. This is where all the fun happens because it depends on a two way interaction with three parts - someone makes or does a thing then sends it through the aforementioned internet wires to you, and you can internalize it and call the first person a "f&#@ a#-$+# q1@-$+# of a k-$+#(" - and they'll see it! (through the magical internet wires of course)

The social internet is not usually a bad thing - crowd-sourced sites like Wikipedia or GitHub show that people are drawn to create order as much if not more than they are to create chaos. It's a place to connect with people you never thought you'd know - and, while some are inevitably horrible people, most of them are nice and empathetic and a little bit weird - and they are people on the other end.

In my personal opinion, this is the best place to hang out. You can be as anonymous as you want, say whatever you want, disagree with anything, or find people who are just like you in unexpected ways.

Then of course, there's the dark web, which you need a Tor browser and some savvy to get to where Bitcoin is king and you can get whatever you want - but you can't watch Netflix there so what's the point?

NaBlEDiNoMo

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people make it a goal to write 50,000 words in November (along with not shaving, being aware of diabetes, and going vegan) as part of National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo was started as a way to bring writers together and to give people a kick in the pants to actually write that novel they've been talking about forever.

Every year I have friends who participate and get close. I even tried once or twice myself, often in a post-Halloween sugar detox depression, only to realize that 1,667 words a day is a heck of a lot and give up my (mostly directionless, plot-less, single character) attempts at a novel within the first few days.

The idea is kind of exhilarating - you write like mad for a month and at the end you have something you can slam down triumphantly on a publisher's desk only to have them throw it in the slush pile with everyone else's - or maybe it becomes the next Harry Potter. Who knows? It's all fun.

That being said, I am not - repeat NOT - participating in NaNoWriMo this year (Nor am I participating in NaFADOYBIMSCOM).

I am, however, at a point in my life where I would really like to get better at writing (with feedback) and I need achievable, tangible regular goals. I also have a lot of thoughts and opinions on stuff that I am just dying for the Internet to ignore.

As such I will be participating in NaBlEDiNoMo - National Blog Every Day in November Month. Every day this month, I will post something new on this blog. It may be a sentence, it may be a story, it may be ranty, it may be a meditation - I don't know yet, but every day on November 2017, something sill be going up. That way, I can still participate in all the fun part of NaNoWriMo - the word wars, the storytelling, the writing stupid shit that sounds so terrible you laugh while sobbing - without the added pressures of having to end up with one coherent story and having a word count.

I do have some things that I would ask of you, dear reader, if indeed you are not a German adbot (in which case, I AM TOTALLY HUMAN AND WELCOME YOUR HUMAN VIEWS).
First, I would love if you commented, said hi, or interacted with what you read. I would love to know that it is not just German adbots reading my stuff.
Second, I welcome any and all constructive criticism. I really do want to get better at writing and they say the way to get better at writing is to just write, but knowing how I can get better would really help me out. (Note: "Git Gud" and "Be happier" are not valid criticisms)
Finally, know that I reserve the right to opinions and ideas that may not match you own or others. Please, if you do interact with me or the single other reader in France, please be civil.

Thanks. Let the fun begin!

I'll see you tomorrow.

-G :)

The Holodeck Solution

The Drake Equation is a famous calculation that attempts to numerically define the factors that lead to the chance of the existence of extraterrestrial beings. It's the fancy-looking justification for a those "I WANT TO BELIEVE"rs that, unless extremely conservative values are used, posits that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe.

(This is in contrast to the Flake Equation, which posits that there are a lot of people with believable stories about aliens.)

If the vast numbers of smart aliens are indeed out there, one huge question remains - despite SETI, all the Voyagers, all the years intentionally and unintentionally throwing radio waves into space -

Why haven't the aliens contacted us?

Or at least - why haven't we heard or seen any sign of them?

This is the Fermi Paradox - there should be tons of sentient intelligent life in the universe, and some of it should be more intelligent than us, and some of it should be older than us, but there's no sign of anything else anywhere that we've found.

There are lots of theories thrown around about why we haven't heard from our interstellar neighbors. Most of them are somewhat terrifying. The simplest solution, and one of the least likely, is that we are the first and only intelligent life in the universe - cuz someone's gotta be first, right? Why not us?

The opposite is also speculated - because of any of a myriad of unfortunate circumstances, we are the last intelligent beings in the universe and whatever cataclysmic event that killed off everyone else just hasn't reached Earth yet.

The more interesting theories lie somewhere in between and include ideas like fifth dimensional transcendence, arsenic or silicate based life, and Vogonic technological advancement.

Based on human experience, one of the most likely reasons that we have not encountered aliens is the Holodeck Solution to the Fermi paradox, named after the technology in Star Trek that allows the crew of the Enterprise to virtually simulate any situation they can think of. In a nutshell, the Holodeck solution proposes that, before any extraterrestrial intelligent species developed the technology to move between the stars, they developed the means to create increasingly realistic simulations. Essentially, extraterrestrials focus more on creating their own perfect universes and realities rather than exploring the one they are in. Thus, as extraterrestrials focus inwards, fewer signals get sent outwards, and there is even less of a chance of those signals hitting Earth. (1)

This seems to be the way that humanity is going. After the conclusion of the Cold War, governmental spending on space exploration declined and investment in video games, virtual reality, and simulation technology has increased massively. Because of this increased investment, 1080p video is not good enough. Models have been created with millions on billions of variables that simulate everything from nuclear war to the way ketchup gets out of a bottle. Non-reality and reality are coming increasingly close in many ways. 

Once those lines become close enough, we will be able to create alternate realities that improve massively on "real life."

And of the dream is better, why wake up?

(1)This concept of the perfect unreality supplanting the reality is explored in books like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and movies like the Matrix trilogy, among many others.

The Yellow Bandanna

When I was about 6 or 7, I saw this magic show at a dinky kiddy theme park that I absolutely loved. About halfway through the show, the magician pulled out this correspondence course envelope and announces that he will be learning how to perform...

The Yellow Bandanna!!! *cue fake applause and puppet yays*

The gimmick of the trick is that supposedly, the magician gets this really cool new magic trick kit in the mail with taped instructions, but instead of including the yellow bandanna, a yellow banana is included instead. The trick is turning the banana into the bandanna and making it all disappear. Overall, it's an extremely cheesy trick with lots of visual gags, and the taped instructions mean that the performer doesn't have to think up much of a patter.

Most people just saw a kinda stupid disappearing trick with a dumb pun as the premise. I took away something the magician probably didn't intend.

The fake instruction tape used in that trick "teaches" the performer about palming - using your hand (your palm) to conceal small objects. It's one of the most basic moves a magician ever learns, and is used in everything from massive stage magic to up-close sponge ball tricks. Despite the relative simplicity of the premise, it's difficult to learn how to pull off correctly because the real trick of palming something is not in hiding coins (or folded bananas) in your hand, it's the misdirection that keeps the audience form knowing that the thing was ever there.

For whatever reason, this trick stuck with me after we got home. I'd sit in my room practicing palming and revealing quarters and pennies. Then I got brave.

My house has always had a pretty strict one-candy/cookie/desserty thing-only-after-you've-finished-dinner rule. Most of the time me and my siblings would draw from large Tupperware buckets of leftover Halloween candy, trying to discover that one last Reese's cup months after the holiday. One day, after asking permission to get my "bucket treat", I decided that I would try to sneak an extra piece of candy. I picked up and displayed a Three Musketeers bar (almost as good as a Reese's), and got the okay from my parents. While putting the lid back on my bucket, I slipped an extra Snickers bar out, palmed it as I walked back to my seat, ate my Three Musketeers bar, and asked to be excused. I took the Snickers bar out of my lap, palmed it in a fist that to me was obviously too tight, and hurried up to my room.

The extra candy bar was sweet with adrenaline-fueled goodness.

I hid the wrapper under some other trash, and thus began my prolific years-long career of petty larceny of candy and cookies. I now think my parents were aware of some of it (at the very least, I'm sure they had their suspicions) but I never got called out.

That was the first time that I started to break the walls of the panopticon and see that I was not always being watched - in fact, that most of the time, people don't notice what they aren't looking for. Over time, I used that knowledge and an expanding awareness of what people actually pay attention to to get away with doing basically what I wanted most of the time. I still do, to some extent (my friends will tell you I am a fantastic cheat at Munchkin). I've learned what I can get away with, and sometimes, it seems like I get away with way more than I should be able to.

Does this make me a bad person? I don't think so. I have definitely picked up some bad habits - it's way too easy to fall into them when one can be relatively certain of their own impunity. In a lot of ways, that has hurt me. On the flip side, I have gotten really good at knowing how to make people pay attention when I want them to.

My friend bemoans the fact that I'm not a magician. Sometimes, the tricks are just so much more fun to pull off without a stage.

Why Disney Needs Interns

Hello all - it appears that what little traffic that still comes my way after months of silence and bombastically declaring myself done comes from lifeanchoredinhope's list of Disney internship blogs - which is cool and all, but I never meant for this to be a Disney blog. You guys are here anyway, so I'll try to give you something fun to read. And I feel your pain - there's little enough first hand information about the engineering internships in particular - I know, we engineers are not all illiterate, we just act like it sometimes.

Quick background - I was a Professional Intern at Walt Disney World from January 4th 2016-May 15th 2016 (Spring 2016), working with Facilities Asset Management (FAM). FAM manages all the construction and refurbishment that the Imagineers or the Design and Engineering group doesn't manage across all the parks and hotels. I worked on projects like repainting the Aladar statue in front of Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur ride, building projection towers for the Hollywood Studios new nighttime entertainment, replacing a beer cart at EPCOT, and bringing the Carousel of Progress back up to modern fire code, among other things - not necessarily the glamorous jobs, but the ones that needed to be done to keep the parks safe and functional. Specifically, I did cost estimation and cost control, making sure that these projects had relevant numbers to budget to and that they stuck to those budgets. I got to see projects before they happened and see them progress, which was super cool.

Enough about me - to the main point - why Disney desperately needs interns.

Don't get me wrong - Disney is a great place to work. Therein lies the first problem - a lot of people who work there have been there for a long time, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Experience means that there almost always is a solution to almost any problem, but at the same time, there is a set way to do things - which can cause issues in a company that prides itself on innovation. Interns bring in new perspectives and new techniques, which can help the company grow and change with the times. Disney is an old company with a lot of traditions, and it relies on the churn of interns to shake things up a little.

In addition, interns come in imbued with the pixie dust that a lot of the people working at Disney seem to have lost after years (or decades) of working there. From personal observation while I was there, a lot of the full time cast members seem to forget how cool it is that they work at monkey-flipping Disney World, where their job is literally to make the imaginary real and to make people happy. It was part of my job to passively remind the people I worked with that it was pretty amazing that what  they do is unique and pretty frakking amazing - I mean, some of them got to work every day underneath Big Thunder Mountain, or with real zookeepers, or on frakking Rivers of Light - and, yes, I know, it all becomes over time an every day job, but working with young cultish enthusiastic interns helps remind older cast members why they wanted to work there in the first place.

In addition, interns bridge the gap between cast member and guest. Because the vast majority of Disney interns are young, family-free, and brand new in town with shiny blue (free!) passes to Disney World, that is where a lot of us spent a lot of our free time. (I mean, Universal and Sea World cost money.) A lot of the permanent cast members don't have time to actually experience the magic they help create because they have families and bills to pay and hobbies (ugh!), so they miss out on a crucial perspective of making Disney what it is - what it looks like from the customer's side, which, as Disney prides itself on catering to its customers' needs, is extremely important. A lot of the time, interns serve as instant focus groups (and test dummies) when it comes to testing new ideas because they have not yet become ensconced in the Disney Company bubble and still have a bit of an outside perspective.

And finally, there's the reason you all want that gosh darn internship in the first place - Disney needs interns to find the best people out there and indoctrinate  hire them. Disney consistently ranks as one of the most desired workplaces among millenials, the LGBTQ community, and maybe, I don't know, America?, so the internship program seeks to find out who really wants to work, not just who wants the shiny big brand name on their resume. As you've undoubtedly heard before, it really is a long interview that goes both ways, and as internships unfortunately become more of the new entry level position, Disney needs hungry new interns to fill up the lower ranks.

Long story short - interns keep the company young and hip, and help Disney find the best new talent. The Walt Disney Company would not survive without its internship program, which is why it's so monkey-flipping amazing. If you can get in, it's definitely a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

If you have any questions or comments about Disney and/or internships, feel free to shoot me an email at g14racer@gmail.com or look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook.


*Please note that all opinions are my own and in no way represent The Walt Disney Company or any of its affiliates.
**Also note that the hyperlinked images are not my own and belong to their respective sites.