Skate Blog Intern Blog

So, the past two weeks have been subject to all kinds of mercurial activity. Like usual, we’ve all been incredibly occupied with our commitments and goals; which can produce soporific effects at times…especially if one is laying supine while working on Hookit…

Last weekend Oliver, Corey and myself attended the Seismic US Open in Oceanside, which was my first slalom skate experience. We all enjoyed ourselves and were able to network with locals and greats of the slalom community. It was a fantastic experience.

Unfortunately, this week did not follow a similar, jovial pattern. Our class has been downsized to half in a matter of 36 hours, which seemed quite capricious. In all honesty, I am not entirely confident I will pass the internship on BambooSK8’s quantitative (and sometimes pedantic) standards either.

However, whatever the result may be, I feel this internship was rather fortuitous. Since I lack experience in the action sports industry, I am very grateful I was chosen to be apart of Class 13. Having contributed a lot of hard work, stress and sleepless nights, I have learned a tremendous amount. I also consider myself so lucky to be in the company of like-minded, talented, smart and terrifically versatile individuals. I have learned significantly more than I had ever anticipated and have grown so much in these few months.

Because of this, I consider this internship a personal success and feel the slow erosion of my own diffidence with this industry. Myself, Corey and Jacob will continue pursuing our respective goals to the best of our abilities these next four weeks. Collectively, I know we have a lot to accomplish, but it’s important not to lose perspective. We have also accomplished quite a bit professionally and personally, and for that, we should all be so very proud of our successes.

-Virva

So here we are twelve weeks in. Things are moving along and the goals are on the horizon, but we aren’t there yet. Every week we say its busier than the last and it’s always the truth. Just this past week we all took the final for the month and I feel like I can never be prepared enough. I know we’ve all been charging along I have faith we can pull this off. Next month I hope to make it back down toward LA to meet with the interns, hopefully in a victorious spirit! This has for sure been a learning curve, coming in with a creative background, this has pushed me to grow in areas outside of my norm. I know these four months will influence the way I understand the operations of running a business and the skills to prove it.
On another note I’ve been skating these boards the last couple months and they hold up! It doesn’t chip like a 100% maple, I like it. Well it’s gonna be a super busy next four weeks so I should probably get back to a couple things…

Hey everyone! What a fantastic two weeks it has been since the last post.Even though we are all insanely busy and feel every minute ticking away on our stopwatches as we sweat out the stressors, I think we are also surprised to realize how quickly the weeks are passing us by.

Since our last post, a MAJOR event occurred here in LA, the X-Games! Being that I only live 10 minutes away from downtown, I had the opportunity to attend a few events before work. As expected, LA Live was completely packed and I saw so many athletes and amazing venues for skate. It was an awesome first experience!

 On a more local note, we had not one, but two “out-of-the-office” office days!

The first one was in Newport, where we were able to get 5 out of the 6 of us down for a day of work and fun. We accomplished a lot, including some midterm discussions with Jacob on Skype, visiting Volcom Skatepark and ending the day in classic Class 13 style—Taco Tuesday! I think being out of the office and meeting somewhere new was a great experience for everyone, both in productivity and bonding.

 This week we decided to meet up here in L.A. Unfortunately, only a few of us could attend, but it was the first time those few of us had the opportunity to finally meet our NorCal intern, Jacob. It was really fantastic meeting him, even if only for a few short hours. We were able to get some work done, laugh a bit, and have some great discussions.  I really hope he has the opportunity to come down south again, so the rest of the class can meet him.

As for this weekend, the Seismic US Open skateboard slalom race in Oceanside is on Saturday, of which myself, Corey and Oliver are attending. It is going to be my first skateboarding race, so I have no idea what to expect! All I know, is it’s going to be a great day to promote BambooSK8 and really network with skaters on the local level.

As for the remaining six weeks, I have no idea what to expect either; only that it is going to continue to become more hectic and challenging. Geoff reminded us that it is difficult to balance all of life’s demands with an internship; and that it will only get harder. I am finding more validity in this statement every week, as new obligations come obligingly to my door, increasing the intensity of pressure in my already-too-busy schedule. However, I find I can only meet this intensity with a laugh and smile.  Although there are times when it seems your life continues to diverge your attention, we must remember we are only one person (physically, anyway) and that we can only ‘do what we can, with where we are, with what we have’—ourselves.

The weeks keep flying by, and the hits keep coming. It’s hard to grasp that we are coming down to the home stretch, but there is still so much left to conquer! Hookit has been giving all of us a run for our money, but I know we can all pull it together and find a way to meet our goal.
It’s been a blast meeting up with the team the past couple of weeks in Newport and LA, and we finally got the chance to meet with Jacob! The rest of the guys, and girl, are so awesome there is no way we can’t kill the rest of this internship.
Got the chance to check out the Volcom park in Costa Mesa last week, which Oliver wasted no time shredding on his Bamboo.
Besides completing the internship out here on the west coast, I am getting stoked about graduating next month back on the east (beast) coast. It’s been challenging juggling the internship and college this summer, but I’m sure when I am handed that diploma in the UNF arena, the sacrifices will have paid off!

-With the waves picking up here in southern California, the Heat winning the championship, and the weekend knocking at the door, all I can say is LIFE IS GOOD!

Until next time…Skate hard, skate green!

At this point 10 weeks seems like a lifetime ago. We have been time traveling, I’m sure of it. Since the last update there has been no slowing down. These next few weeks are really what is going matter in terms of reaching the goals we set originally. I know as a team we are all very tuned in to what is going on and working collaboratively. It’s crazy we are 10 weeks in but it’s even crazier there are only 6 weeks left! These experiences are giving me an opportunity to grow professionally as well as expand my knowledge of a running business. The mid term really helped put some understanding behind how financials are dealt with. Every week is exhausting but I can tell the other interns are getting that second wind and have their eyes on the finish line. This week has already seemed like 5 days packed in three. I got to drive down the coast to meet a few of the other interns in L.A yesterday. That was yesterday? Oh well, I’m looking forward to making it down there again and meeting everyone. This California weather can’t get any better either, so until next time I’ll be cruising around on the ole BambooSk8, which by the way has been a great board!

The internship is halfway over!! It has been an arduous journey thus far, however the light at the end of the tunnel is faintly shining for this internship. I have made great friends with the other interns and definitely enjoyed our work days together, thank God for taco Tuesday. I have definitely learned to become a detail oriented individual with this internship, which I wasn’t at all before. This program is a definite test of what you are capable of and will push you mentally to say the least. It has been quite a challenge being part of the one man sales team but things seem to be turning around in my favor which I am excited for.