Connecticut College CELS Internship Blogs 2007

Being a development intern, in my case, means that I do whatever tasks the development team need the most help with, or those that they never get to. I love it, because it means that I’ve already done quite a variety of things. For someone who is as clueless about what type of career they want as I am, what could be better?

National Braille Press is located near Symphony Hall and Northeastern University in Boston, MA. It publishes and produces Braille books in a fairly complicated process, which involves transcribers, proofreaders, people who collate pages, people who record the text of books, people who operate the press, and others who bind the books. And then there are those who work behind the scenes – like me. For more information on how the process works and about the organization itself, visit the web site: www.braille.com. Since I have already been working for a while, I will catch you up by copying down my daily thoughts, which include how my commute went (it always seems to be an adventure), and the main tasks I did that day. I will go more in-depth on some things in future posts, but if you want to know more about something or are confused, leave a comment, and I’ll address it. Heck, leave a comment anyway!

Day 1: I made it to work, yes! I remembered the route, and despite my extreme nervousness, I got here in one piece! Maybe I’m better at using this cane than I thought. Today I researched Harry Potter blogs to post on to let fans know about a team of kids that will be walking in an upcoming 5K as a way of fundraising for the Braille version of the seventh Harry Potter book that we’re producing. Let me get this out of the way right now: don’t bother asking me anything about the seventh book, because I have no way of knowing. All I know is that National Braille Press is producing it for the same price and around the same time as the print one. Case closed. NBP and Scholastic are very protective of this process…and after all, I am just a lowly intern.

Day 2: Today I learned that the reason that tea and coffee come in the same kind of round containers in the break room is that the machine treats them all the same: it opens the container, and runs water through the contents and into your cup. Who knew! I am loving the fact that the vending machine and the coffee machine are brailled. I never thought that caffeinating myself would be such an easy process here.
I did more researching of HP blogs and got ready to post on them. Unfortunately, because so many of them require you to look at an image and copy down numbers from it (called and image verification code), I had to get help registering as a user of almost all of the blogs. One instance where being blind is a slight nuisance – but that’s what awesome NBP employees are for. I posted on a few blogs before the end of the day.
I also called some newspapers in the hometowns of those who will be participating in the 5K in support of NBP – adults and children. Had little success, because most people didn’t answer or hadn’t gotten our press releases about the event. I’ll just hope that some of them pick up our story anyway.