Overcoming Obstacles at Marie Claire Magazine

One of the main challenges I faced throughout my internship at Marie Claire Magazine was that I was assigned to work for the senior market editor along with four other girls. However, unlike the four other girls, I was the only one that worked five days a week and knew everything that was going on throughout the week. Therefore because I was there the most days and spent the most time with my editor, one of the girls I worked with became extremely jealous and needed to know everything going on because she wanted to be in charge at all times. It was a constant struggle to work with her because she either tried to complete tasks secretly, which didn't help anyone or she attempted to boss myself and the other interns around, which wasn't fair. I handled the repetitive power struggle with her by saying something and approaching the problem in a level headed manner anytime that it occurred. I didn’t think that it was personally fair to allow her to boss us around, but I also didn’t want to create a hostile environment. The challenge with trying to create a non hostile environment is that although I tried to approach the problem and presented ideas such as trying to divide up all of the work that needed to be done for my boss and to communicate with one another so that we are all aware of what was getting done and by whom, she still used the fact that she was four years older than me as an excuse to boss me around. Although this challenge was extremely frustrating, I learned that not everyone you work with is going to be pleasant or nice and you must learn to keep a level head throughout the entire process and remain positive on your end.