Interning with Conan
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When Kyle Bethea scored an internship on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, not all of his friends were impressed.
"Some of them were kind of like, 'That’s great, but what are you going to do, mop the floors?'" Bethea says.
As it turned out, Bethea, a junior in the Communication Technology Scholars program, had plenty to do. As a script intern, he spent nearly 40 hours a week on the job for four months fall quarter. He reported to Late Night's two script supervisors, doing everything from distributing the script each day to delivering urgent script changes to TV cue cards.
Bethea was “really surprised at how much responsibility you get," he says. "They make a change in the script, and then they hand it to you."
Before the show each night, it was time for Bethea's "favorite internship duty:" listening to Conan run through his monologue backstage before airtime.
"He frequently made last minute changes that the director needed to know about in considering the cameras," Bethea says. "I was responsible for getting any changes made to the jokes and their order for the director's use during the show."
An extra benefit: The New York City office building where the show is headquartered had plenty of other offices, including one for the Sci-Fi Channel, where Bethea hopes to intern next.
Bethea, who's also done a stint at WBNS-10TV, is in good company.
Ohio State undergraduates have interned for all sorts of companies, including the National Institutes of Health, NASA, Abercrombie & Fitch, Walt Disney Imagineering, and General Motors.
The jobs offer hands-on experience, and they're a great resume booster come graduation--so check with your college to find out who's hiring.
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(Text: University Marketing Communications. Images: Kyle Bethea )
