At present, I am studying Business Management and Marketing at University, which so far amongst my studies, has taught me that I would love to go into publishing in either the marketing or editorial sector. I have lived in South West London my entire life and have always had Time & Leisure’s magazines posted through my letterbox.
A typical weekend in my household always includes my parents leafing through the magazine looking for suggestions about what activities/ restaurants we could try in our local area, so naturally, I enquired about a placement at their magazine. I will be forever grateful for Lucy Kane, the owner, kindly agreeing to take me on in their marketing and editorial departments.
The main word which I would use if asked to describe Time & Leisure’s office is welcoming. I will never forget the array of smiling faces I was greeted with on my first day when I walked through the door of the Merton Abbey Mills office. This warm welcome instantly put me at ease making my nerves disintegrate which made it all the more difficult to say farewell to everybody at the end. Time & Leisure’s staff are not just colleagues, they are family which ensures there is never a dull moment in the office especially when the perfect song plays on the radio and everyone starts singing along! This jovial atmosphere in the office is intoxicating making even the less interesting tasks such as copying and pasting articles to the website seem enjoyable.
In terms of work, I found the internship extremely stimulating due to the amount of independence I was given- I wasn’t just shadowing an employee around all day, I got the chance to write my very own articles that were published on their website. This made the work experience feel meaningful and worthwhile as it allowed me to see whether I was genuinely cut out for working in a magazine in either marketing or editorial. Luckily for me, I realised that I really loved writing articles- I enjoyed dissecting the task and researching to find the perfect solution to the issue. I feel as though I really found my passion for writing articles because of the high levels of autonomy I was given. I could control each and every aspect of my articles/ listicles ranging from what research to include down to how the website page looked (what images to use and where to place the text). The trust and confidence that Time & Leisure placed in me enabled me to flourish and encouraged me to trust my gut when making decisions.
In such a short time I was shocked by the amount of skills and talents that Time and Leisure unearthed including IT skills such as using the website builder WIX and how to use Eventbrite which are crucial skills in the new digital working world. Time & Leisure helped me to improve my critical thinking and taught me the most effective way to skim through articles to ensure that I was using my time most efficiently— I will definitely carry on using these skills at University when writing essays!
This internship was genuinely life changing so if I could give you one piece of advice why not apply to be an intern next summer, you most definitely will not regret it!
