Empire State of Mind

Let's be honest...Where else you want to spend an all-expenses paid weekend?


I was thinking the same thing. L'oreal flew me out to NYC to interview for an summer internship in their luxury product division. It was amazing! I hadn't been to New York since I was like 12 years old, and we only stayed one night. I think it might be one of the only places that actually gets bigger rather than smaller the older you get.


There were about 75 students from all across the country that came for the weekend. They pampered us pretty much the whole time. This is right after we had dinner in Grand Central Station. There were students from all across the nation, places like NYU, Duke, Harvard, Howard, Northwester, and dozens more. It was awesome to hang out with kids from different places like that and see how their experiences are different than mine. While BYU is technically a fairly diverse campus in terms of where people come from, lets be honest...it lacks completely in the diverse category. I even got to explain our church's beliefs to some of the others at dinner one night and basically taught a first lesson.


The first night there, we went through some orientation meetings and got to know some of the head honchos of our divisions. And the best part was the cocktail party they held on the opening night. I had never been to anything like that before, so I was definitely a little out of place. But the whole night was designed to let us ask questions to people who worked there and get some interesting feedback. After that was all over, we had some extra time, so we met some of the other kids, one of which was from NYC, and he showed us around. Rockafeller Plaza, Times Square, and everything inbetween. It was awesome.


They put us in teams depending on the specific product division we were interested in for our Saturday events. I was a part of the Georgio Armani team. The whole day was dedicated to different case studies and basically planning a rough outline for an entire marketing campaign. They gave us very limited time for each case, so it was a lot of pressure. For each session, there were different employees there to observe and judge us. It was even more pressure for that. And then after that we would try and pitch our ideas to them in a logical, yet concise manner. It was an interesting element to be thrown into a team with people you have never even met before and be forced to collaborate with them. Think about taking a bunch of kids who have been leaders most of their lives, throwing them together in a room, with potential bosses looming over, and then watch them sort it out. It was quite the dynamic.


Part of our day was to go out and do some store visits. They wanted us to see first hand how their products reach the consumer and get some insights for our campaigns. This was pretty cool because we got to walk around the city and see everything. I think the biggest disadvantage was that our whole case was for a new women's fragrance for Maybelline. Needless to say, I was a rookie in this area. At first it was a challenge. But I think it actually worked out well because I made sure that everything we did was for the right reasons, because I had no preconceived notions about anything.

That night after all was said and done, we went to the ESPN zone in Times Square and watched the Jazz beat the Nuggets. Take that DENVER.

The next day was the big kahuna. It was our interview day. I was excited for this cause I think I could do better one on one than in a group. And it went really well. I felt good about it. And it felt like it went really fast, which seems like that would be a good thing, right? Well they are supposed to let us know in the next 2 weeks. So keep your fingers crossed til then...

Cause Let's be honest...Who wouldn't want an internship with a huge international company in the city that is basically the center of the universe?