My college touts a wide array of academic opportunities, but I wish this emphasis on variety carried over to campus dining. Sure, the cafeteria staff provides plenty of options at each mealtime—it’s just that they all taste the same. No exaggeration: I know what my favorite dish looks like, but it’s at different times been labeled both “calzone” and “cupcake”.

But my main criticism isn’t of the cooks or their laxative-charged foodstuffs; it’s of my own finicky tendencies. I’ve felt these same sentiments build up many times before, and I fear it says something about me…maybe about everyone. It says that if I eat anywhere for four months I’m going to get tired of it. In a sense, it’s only a matter of time with any steady food provider before the romaine lettuce starts to look greener on the other side.

Not to say mass dining is all bad news. As a matter of fact, it offers some commodities that home cooking never did. Just ask any cereal fan: diverse selection (sugary and granola), and someone gets paid to sniff out the stale boxes. Plus, we all know that spaghetti tastes best with black hairs from someone you don’t know (Mom’s were always so blonde and flavorless).

As for finding recourse elsewhere on campus, the pickings are pretty slim. To make matters worse, the few existing alternatives do everything they can to sell themselves short. Seriously, not one of the available eateries will take the plunge and call itself a restaurant. Instead, we have cafes, snack shops, and smoothie joints—not one of which sounds likely to fill a belly. When I arrived in September, I may have freely associated coffee shops with the word “hip”; now, it’s more like “hungry”.

So where do I go from here? There’s always the option of buying property in the middle of campus, building a strip mall, and making sure to include a couple Chicken Kitchens. Or else I’ll just swallow my pride. How long would that tide me over for? And as far as the so-called freshman 15 plague when you go away to school – IMPOSSIBLE I say.

At any rate, I wish the blogosphere a “Happy, Merry whatever you’re celebrating”, and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

Peace, Love, and as always Personalized Media,
-John the Intern

www.DailyMe.com

The pilgrims were thought to have an astounding sense of foresight, and I can understand why: their Mayflower Compact greatly influenced our nation’s founding documents, and Cape Cod real estate is as valuable as ever. But their greatest preemption of all—the timing of Thanksgiving—generally goes unmentioned. This is because only students can appreciate it in purest form: to us, it’s the vacation that breaks-up fall semester at just the right moment.

I’m not sure if it was the atmosphere around campus or a product of my infradian rhythms, but something made it feel very appropriate to pack my bags and fly home last weekend. This was even easier done than said: I just printed my boarding pass, dumped some dirty laundry into an empty duffel, and was off. Even though I was leaving a campus that I had called home for the past two months, it was to remain at the front of my mind for the coming week…because old high school friends are only interested in comparing college stories.

In discussing various elements of our new lives, my friends and I found both common ground and whatever the opposite of “common ground” would be. We are all enrolled in classes, but only some of us attend these classes; we all have roommates, but only some of us have smelly roommates; the only truly unifying fact—we all have at least ten friends who play the acoustic guitar.

Getting re-acquainted with my house involved much less give-and-take. The process, however, served as a constant reminder of the creature comforts I passed up for higher education. For instance, sandals in the shower are not needed in the bathrooms here. And the kitchen is both open all the time and exponentially more comfortable to eat in than the school dining hall; I guess that’s why they say, “home is where the sneeze-guard glass isn’t.”

At the end of the day, though, I think my two different spheres (home and school) complement each other well. If you were the holiday-appropriate type, you could even say I’m thankful for them. But that would sound a little too Hallmark, and I’d prefer if no one put words in my mouth.

Happy Turkey Day.

-John the Intern

www.dailyme.com

The college life is oft credited for its lack of structure, but I see this as more of a mixed blessing. Because the unforced hand must bear a lot of responsibility, and the choices we make—as perceived by others—are completely our own. And just like under any government structure, students are frequently confronted with trade-offs for which they must pick a side.

In a co-ed dorm with a co-ed bathroom, it’s either privacy or hygiene (you are never alone in there, but it’s the only place you can get a good hand-wash these days); and when it comes to biking across the campus’s full sprawl, it’s either safety or style (refusing to wear a bike helmet may be man at his most irrational, but for some reason [the chin strap], many share his stance.) When it comes to finding good outside news coverage, however, our choice is more of an ultimatum. The only two options: ignorant bliss, or find it for yourself. So here is where my summer internship at DailyMe REALLY made it easy to choose the latter.

The only universal adjectives to describe a college campus are “insulated” and “digital” and hopefully DailyMe will find a large captive audience in my demographic. I mean, it’s not that no other news reaches us: each dining hall is well stocked with copies the regional rag, and we also receive a student-run daily. When I pick one of those up, though, I seldom get beyond the classified ads (psychological experimenters offer up to $25-a-week for willing subjects). Bottom line: I seriously give DailyMe props for creating a platform to give me all the information I want in the most convenient way possible and FREE – muy importante to the average college kid.

And it adds some structure to my day, too. I chose the automatic print delivery option (the only dependable paperboy left in this world), and it’s the best alarm clock I could ask for. My laserjet’s print-in-progress sound is just what I need to get my feet on the floor (I love the smell of toner in the morning). The way I see it, this system will only fail to wake me come the day when there is no news to print—and is it even worth waking up, in that case?

As far as my former Florida officemates - well, I haven’t seen them since long before their launch date. I do I share the occasional text message, email, IM and/or phone conversation with Mrs. Boss. It seems as though things are off to a real good start. I did hear that the atomic clock synchronizing dilemma peaked once again with the changing of weeks for Daylight Savings this year, but it’s safe to say that was a secondary business interest of the CEO.

And now for the part of my blog you really want to know…college life is awesome! (but you knew that already – right?) - More to come about the daily trials and tribulations of my freshmanhood in my upcoming blogs. The DailyMe Intern is back baby!

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media -

-John the Intern

I’ve been sitting in front of a blank Word document for about forty-five minutes, and Times New Roman is not getting any more fashionable.

And though I’m seldom one to fallback on self-reference, I found it impossible to come up with a sharp opener worthy of today’s topic. Can you guess what it is? I’ll give you some clues: it’s a word freely associated with some of America’s greatest ventures; it’s the second meal of the day with a twist of the letter “A”; it’s the message we’ve all been waiting for…it’s the friggin’ DailyMe.com LAUNCH!!!!!!

The company’s long gestation period left me a bit antsy, but a smooth delivery by the OB/GYN of abstract business entities (“Congratulations ma’am, it’s a .com!!”) brought relief. Though I am not physically with the rest of the team in Florida, I understand their celebration was characterized by loud cheering, swivel-chair spinning, and a shortened lunch break to compensate for the work-time lost. After all, it would take an obscene amount of hubris to treat our first destination as the end of the journey. You wouldn’t turn around at the Fort Pierce rest stop and call it a vacation to Disney World, would you?

Anyway, it was great to step out of the partial-employee role for a minute this week and accept a friendly yet “official” invitation to the DM Beta test. I knew what to expect, but was happy to see some of my favorite features in action. I can now get full coverage of my South Florida sports teams from local newspapers while keeping up with the latest Britney sitch from national columns (keeping track of capricious celebrity’s makes for some good mental calisthenics). I’m also really enjoying the Automated Print feature, which places a digest in my roommate’s printer before I wake-up every morning (a convenient “Grab & Go” for the dining hall if you are tired of reading the university’s Daily).

I’m also pumped about the site’s upcoming community features. It’s fascinating (and only a little intrusive) to see what other DailyMes are spouting to their readers each day, and such a tool could double as a match-maker. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a woman who also subscribes to “Reality TV Junkies” and “Gamers Anonymous”?

Anyway, now that Dailyme.com has entered the world at 7 lbs. 6 oz., 21 inches, and varying bandwidth, you should visit the kid! ‘Cause this launch has been a blast-off, and haven’t you always wanted to be an astronaut?


Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

I always count my blessings that the Earth is—beyond a reasonable doubt—round and without end. Our ancestors put up with misconceptions about a flat planet for years, but could modern man even handle the notion of a “terminal edge”? We have evolved into a species that always fears the finish, and our habits verify this fact (when was the last time that television-watchers were satisfied with a series finale?). Of course, this idea is no better put to work than by our farewell customs: people these days would prefer a novelty e-card to the warmth of a genuine goodbye hug, and I’m no exception. This is one reason why it will be difficult to wrap up my internship at DailyMe come the end of the week.

Yes: by this time on Friday, I will be putting my seat in the full upright position in preparation to land at an airport close to college. But before I recede from the blogosphere completely, I’d like to reflect on some of the DailyMe team members who made my summer fun and informative (FUNformative!). The first word that comes to mind is “roast”, but those are usually done with permission.

The CEO/Founder a.k.a. The Founder/CEO : The dual-title alone explains why this guy got the corner office, but don’t think for a second that our fearless leader lacks humility. This is a man who shares a refrigerator with his employees, which says a lot more than “Please! Call me by my first name, and shorten that to a nickname if you’re promoted to management”…we have that policy, too. The Chief was never a stickler on time, but time was often cruel to him. Like the time he bought three atomic clocks for the office, only to find that they were out of synch. We did “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” to decide which one read correctly.

Mrs. Boss a.k.a. 20-Words-Or-Less : I’d like to keep this reflection short and sweet, because that was my direct supervisor’s style. She has plenty of fun things to talk about, but wait until lunch to hear about them. Always the champion of focus--Mrs. Boss can bring a meeting back to center from just about any digression (just about any digression), and sometimes manages to fit an eight-hour workday into six. She taught me a lot about Sales and Marketing (her two areas of expertise), and skillfully wore both hats throughout my internship (three hats, if you count the DailyMe manual-fit cap we produced for a convention).

The V.P.s a.k.a. The Veeps a.k.a. The Two Programmers a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2 : These guys only have one thing in common—their job--but it happened to be the only thing I was using as a basis for nicknames; this is why they have been aggregated for the sake of description. Not that they really mind, having spent months aggregating your relevant news with their well-tweaked DailyMe algorithms. You could almost say it brings things full circle. Either way, these are some very particular characters: they like their work hard, their lunches cheap, and their cubicles by the window.

At the end of the day, I’m happy to have worked with such a lively crew. These co-workers taught me both the written and unwritten lessons of working for a company, and the only ones I neglected to learn were in messy cursive. I will sign-off now, but not for the last time. I plan to make guest web appearances throughout the school-year, and cannot wait to keep you posted on all irrelevant things DailyMe. (And of course the actual launch of DailyMe, scheduled in the upcoming weeks!)

Peace, Love, and Personalized Media.

-John the Intern

www.dailyme.com