I Don't Want to Leave

This phrase is basically the only phrase I have uttered in the past week. I refuse to talk about my flight home to Iowa on Saturday (good job, Chloe. Acceptance is the first step), I shush people when they talk about leaving, and I'm secretly planning a way to hide out in the Parents office forever without being noticed. In a lot of ways, this ASME internship was the worst thing that could have happened to me. It made me realize how much I hate college, how anxious I am to move to New York, how much the world sucks without magazines infiltrating my every living second, and how my life will never again be the same after this summer.

I came into this program thinking I knew a thing or two about the magazine industry, solely because I had the ability to spin some words into better words. Apparently, there’s a bit more to editing than that. I learned everything from proper networking and writing to approaching editors and pitching ideas. I also have a newfound love for babies, which is something I never thought I would say. And unfortunately, this blog post won’t have a happy little ending that says I suddenly found worth in Iowa City and my classes and working full-time as a server at a restaurant, because that life isn’t my happy ending. It’s the large and uncomfortable stepping stone to my picture-perfect life, the one that shows me in New York, eating dry cereal in a cardboard box under the bridge, making no money and begging for an editorial job.

Isn’t that everyone’s dream, though? Well, maybe not.

-Chloe Metzger, Parents