A most unusual internship

Anna Gunderson, Caley Goldblatt and Christina Cummings with a very happy Mr. Katt.

I’m quite sure our three summer interns will never have a professional experience quite like this one.

We had just two perfectly average days. Then, early on the morning on Tuesday June 12, they got a message from their boss: “Our office is flooded. Not necessary to come in today but if you do, wear shorts and be prepared to help us move stuff.”

Since then, they’ve been working like the rest of us — from their cells phones and laptops, from their own homes and occasionally from mine.

On Thursday, Anna Gunderson, a double-degree student at ASU’s Barrett, The Honors College and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, was plopped on my family room sofa with eyes glued to her laptop. As she worked, she became a focus of interest for our portly, 13-year-old male cat. Thankfully she likes cats; she soon was typing stories with one hand and scratching him with the other.

Christina Cummings, who will be a senior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, was at my kitchen island finishing a story about summertime asthma tips. Caley Goldblatt, a recent graduate of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York, was at the kitchen desk, writing about a new turf field at Ice Den in Scottsdale.

I’m so proud of these young women, who have been completely flexible and unflappable in the face of extremely unusual working conditions. They’ve each gone above and beyond to keep it touch with me and offer help. They’re all hardworking and professional — such a gift they will be to future employers!

And it’s not just their professionalism that has encouraged and supported me. It’s that youthful exuberance and contagious sense of possibility, that earnestness, sincerity and sweetness.

And that “somewhere in here I’m still a kid having fun” sense of humor.

Before my three interns left for the day, they all had bonded with our sociable orange tabby. They were even snapping pictures to remember him. (I doubt they’ll forget his uninspired name: Katt — or, sometimes, Mr. Katt.)

After they were gone, I noticed that Anna had posted a tweet: “Working hard for @RAKmagazine – getting distracted by the loud purrs of the kitty next to me.” And she included the following picture.

I’m glad someone can still find bliss in the midst of all this chaos.