I have a professor who likes to say, “When you write about business, you write about everything.” In my 10 weeks at Fast Company, I’ve found that this couldn’t be truer. 

 

Within my first hour on my first day, my deputy editor David Lidsky asked for help on a project called “A World of Experience.” It was a four-page spread in the September features well taking a sweeping look at how consumers and businesses are investing in the booming experience economy. I spent weeks researching theme parks, museums, music festivals, escape rooms, and death cafes (look it up, I swear they’re a thing). Then I compiled illustratable data and collaborated with my art director and editor to turn it all into a map of the world, as seen through the experience economy. The whole process took four weeks. Not only did I get a full page byline out of it, but it also allowed me to be a part of a project from its inception until it went to print, which was a truly rewarding experience in and of itself. 

 

Within the first hour of my second day, I was sitting in on a meeting with Celtics player Jaylen Brown and my editor in chief Stephanie Mehta. Brown was in the office to talk about his upcoming work as an MIT Media Lab fellow, and we were hoping to get the exclusive. After the meeting, I told Stephanie I’d be down to help with the story in any way, thinking I’d just fact check or transcribe an interview. Instead, she straight up gave me the story and told me to run with it. A few weeks later I talked to Brown again on the phone for 45 minutes about his goal of reinventing the American education system before writing the feature-length piece and going through edit rounds with Stephanie. After publishing, it was our second highest performing story of the week with about 120,000 views.

 

And in the final weeks of my internship, I took on a story that was the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. I went to cover BuzzFeed’s totally bizarre Internet Live event, which Lil Nas X headlined, and met Snooki and the “Damn, Daniel!” guys, among many other obscure pop-culture personalities. I ended up writing a 1,900 word first-person narrative of my strange and wonderful night—something I never would have expected to do at a business publication.  

 

Those projects are just three of my favorites from a very busy summer. They fell between fact-checking and line editing, meetings and interviews, and many cups of coffee. I wrote sidebars, SEO heds, and news posts. I learned a new way to look at the world from an incredible staff who put out stories on billionaires and artificial intelligence and tech empires. And at the end of every day, I left the office a little bit smarter and listened to Lizzo on the subway home.