Day three at Centerline has definitely been one of my favorites so far. The environment here continues to be both welcoming and fascinating, and I’ve woken up every morning looking forward to the day ahead of me. I’m starting to become less and less dependent on my NAV to get here which is a plus! Today I’ve spent the day with two really wonderful women: mackenzie ( hopefully I’m spelling her name correctly) and Valentina, who work in the writing and accounts departments respectively. My time speaking with mackenzie was really wonderful as I spoke to her about her education and the course of her career. We discussed for a while the difficulty of being a writer in a corporate environment and the struggle to implement her own creativity and voice into sometimes quite formal pieces of work. She noted that her job was to ” find the human” in  the product, and to ensure a way to make the pieces connectable and resinate with an audience. Over the course of our conversation she also opened up to me about her relationship with her writing and the occasional cut and dry vibe of the industry. She said how quite often it takes quite a thick skin to be a writer in an agency, as scripts can get rejected and sent back incredibly easily. For a writer, who pours everything she has into what she creates, it takes a strong ability to focus on the final product and satisfaction of the client rather than her own feelings. After lunch and more chatting I met up with Valentina from the Accounts team who’s job seems to be another challenging one. Valentina ultimately works as a project manager, so her job demands extreme organizational and customer service abilities. She essentially works as the overseer of the marketed product from the moment she comes in contact with the client to the final sending off of the product. Through her complex schedules that she showed me in 2nd picture above, she organizes every single step of the process. While organizing and facilitating the production process along with the writing, film and animation departments, she simultaneously communicates with the client. Her goal is ultimately to figure out exactly what the client needs, ( the message they want to convey, their target audience etc.) communicate that idea to the creative teams, and ensure that the final product is perfect before its sent off to to the client. Long story short- if I ever hear that someone works in accounts again I will instantly have a massive amount of respect for them.

As a side note I think there’s something really amazing about being asked ” so who are you?” by every person you encounter here. Every individual I’ve spoken to genuinely seems interested in who I am beyond just my name, and I think thats not something to go unnoticed. Talking about myself and spending time within so many different departments has made me think about not only who I am but also who I want to be. If I’ve learned anything from all of the people that I’ve spoken with so far,  its that the answer to both of those questions is always changing.