Untitled Entertainment

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Derek Cano, COL ’19

Coming to a university like Penn has been one of the best experiences of my life. They have provided me, a first generation low-income student, the means to afford and attend a world class institution. Once again, Penn has gone above and beyond to offer me professional opportunities that truly have truly made a difference in my career development. This summer I had the incredible opportunity to intern for Untitled Entertainment in Beverly Hills. Untitled is an entertainment management company most known for managing clients like Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Emma Watson, and Uma Thurman.

My daily tasks at Untitled ranged from a variety of responsibilities. Since it was a medium sized office, I was able to take on a bunch of tasks. As all internships go, I cleaned the kitchen, sent out mail, delivered packages, and printed materials. However, specific to this internship I had the opportunity to get experience working reception (usually a starting place for many in entertainment), reading scripts, printing casting materials, writing coverage for managers and assistants, and covering desks for assistants. Each of these tasks that I would get to perform gave me a comprehensive understanding of what kind of everyday procedures go into being a manager in entertainment. This entertainment as whole helped me realize that I definitely want to get into entertainment management rather than agent work.

The entertainment industry as whole is quite complex and massive. Before coming to Untitled I had very little experience or knowledge of what negotiations, deals, and discussions go into large projects like movies or television series. This internship helped me a get a solid grasp on what film, television, and Broadway management are like from the perspective of talent representation. That is, those whose career’s are to represent actors and actresses.

One of the first big distinctions I learned this summer was the difference between a talent agent and a talent manager. At first this distinction was passed on me, I once thought they were the same but I soon learned that agents are meant to find and book roles for talent. Every actor or actress typically has an agent whose purpose is to find them roles in Television or Films. However, the manager is quite different. Of course they are involved in booking their clients with roles, but their purpose is to create careers for their clients. That is, they are tasked with managing the overall career of the performer. The manager tends to be a good friend to their clients, having multiple discussions throughout the weeks about a variety of topics from new roles to ordinary things like vacations. One time this summer, a manager at Untitled was discussing vacation plans with her client (Uma Thurman) and asked her assistant (who I was shadowing at the time) where Montenegro was? Silly right. Well they didn’t know, but luckily I did so I was able to get on the phone and speak to Uma Thurman about Montenegro. Therefore, as you see through this anecdote the role of the manager is much more personal with the clients than that of the agent.

Go with the Flow

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by KaJaiyaiu Hopkins, COL ’19

As an undergraduate sociology major, the chance to participate extensively in qualitative research does not come along often. When the opportunity presented itself to not only gain valuable, marketable skills in my preferred field but to also engage in the type of work that I love, I was more than ready to accept the offer. With the help of funding from Career Services, I was able to do just that.

My research assistantship at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kakuma, Turkana County, Kenya was an invigorating experience. The time and effort expended for practicing qualitative and quantitative methods of sociological research has made me a better (amateur) sociologist; working with people from all walks of life and all over the world has made me a better professional and person. It is difficult to compact such an adventure into bullet points, but I’ve decided to anyway:

1-Learning to “go with the flow”

Academic life for students at Penn is, more or less, carefully orchestrated. Professors and staff are dedicated and try to create an environment that facilitates learning and development. While admirable and often quite helpful, this model isn’t adequate as the sole preparer for professional life—especially as a qualitative sociologist. There is nothing like real-world and consequential work that challenges you to manage the surprises, ups and downs, and curveballs that professional life that are surely coming in the professional world. Kakuma certainly had more than enough twists and turns to figure out (with some help of course).

2-Cooperation and Social Navigation

Kakuma is a complex web of refugees, international organizations and NGOs, independent researchers, the local population and so on who all live and work in the same place together and must somehow figure out how to coexist. Poverty, geographical isolation, disease, water shortage, etc. are terrible realities of life there, yet refugees every day find a way to get things done, to be savvy and find a way by working together and taking advantage of the opportunities they have. The struggles in my life are in no way comparable to those of the refugees I met and worked with, but I learned valuable lessons about collaborating in and navigating social and professional networks to make the most of a situation. They taught me to take advantage of the resources that I have and to do what it takes to get to where I need to be.

The immersive experience I had this summer can’t be replicated in a classroom or possibly anywhere else than exactly where I was. I had the guidance of advisors to help me with building critical skills for my field and I learned to how to manage myself and my work in fluid situations and come out mostly unscathed. My journey as a research assistant in a situation foreign to anything I’d ever done before is undoubtedly an essential building block in my professional and personal development.

Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Dominique Martinez, COL ’20

I spent my summer working as a Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship (PURM) research assistant (RA) in the Brannon Lab. The Brannon Lab is one of the six labs that make up the Penn Child Development Labs, a group that is interested in how children grow and develop within various cognitive domains. Collectively, the group studies creativity, language, brain plasticity, and numerical cognition. More specifically, the Brannon Lab is concerned with the development of numerical cognition from birth to late-childhood. My main role as an RA consisted of collecting both behavioral and neuroimaging data. The hands-on nature of the position allowed me to explore my academic interests and love for research like never before.

One of the projects that I worked on this summer sought out to answer the question: Can children successfully divide before they are taught division in school? The study helps to determine if division is an innate ability or if it is a socially-learned skill. Collecting data for this study involved administering a computer task to children aged six to nine. Although I had previously collected this type of behavioral data, this experience strengthened my ability to collect data accurately and without bias. I especially enjoyed data collection for this study because of the children; the stories that they shared with me and the other RAs were always very entertaining.

Another project I was involved in used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study at what point children are able to map verbal numerical quantities to physical objects. Data collection in this study provided me with the chance to work alongside MRI technicians to image childrens’ brains. Although I had been a participant in an MRI study before, being on the other side of the scanner was both exciting and academically enriching. Since I am majoring in Biological Basis of Behavior (BBB), I have learned about neuroimaging in an academic setting; however, through this summer opportunity I was able to learn about this technique in person and with actual participants. More specifically, the post-doctoral and graduate students in the lab taught me MRI safety and the science behind how an MRI machine actually functions.

Overall, this research position introduced me to new experimental techniques, exposed me to a new participant age group, and helped me discover my passion for research. I was lucky enough to participate in this opportunity because of sponsorship from the Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships (CURF) and an additional funding award from Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania. The additional funding from Career Services allowed me to focus on research and not on how I was going to afford various expenses, such as rent and groceries. Without this funding, I am not sure that I would have been able to accept my position in the Brannon Lab and pursue my academic goals this summer.

Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Dominique Martinez, COL ’20

I spent my summer working as a Penn Undergraduate Research Mentorship (PURM) research assistant (RA) in the Brannon Lab. The Brannon Lab is one of the six labs that make up the Penn Child Development Labs, a group that is interested in how children grow and develop within various cognitive domains. Collectively, the group studies creativity, language, brain plasticity, and numerical cognition. More specifically, the Brannon Lab is concerned with the development of numerical cognition from birth to late-childhood. My main role as an RA consisted of collecting both behavioral and neuroimaging data. The hands-on nature of the position allowed me to explore my academic interests and love for research like never before.

One of the projects that I worked on this summer sought out to answer the question: Can children successfully divide before they are taught division in school? The study helps to determine if division is an innate ability or if it is a socially-learned skill. Collecting data for this study involved administering a computer task to children aged six to nine. Although I had previously collected this type of behavioral data, this experience strengthened my ability to collect data accurately and without bias. I especially enjoyed data collection for this study because of the children; the stories that they shared with me and the other RAs were always very entertaining.

Another project I was involved in used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study at what point children are able to map verbal numerical quantities to physical objects. Data collection in this study provided me with the chance to work alongside MRI technicians to image childrens’ brains. Although I had been a participant in an MRI study before, being on the other side of the scanner was both exciting and academically enriching. Since I am majoring in Biological Basis of Behavior (BBB), I have learned about neuroimaging in an academic setting; however, through this summer opportunity I was able to learn about this technique in person and with actual participants. More specifically, the post-doctoral and graduate students in the lab taught me MRI safety and the science behind how an MRI machine actually functions.

Overall, this research position introduced me to new experimental techniques, exposed me to a new participant age group, and helped me discover my passion for research. I was lucky enough to participate in this opportunity because of sponsorship from the Center for Undergraduate Research & Fellowships (CURF) and an additional funding award from Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania. The additional funding from Career Services allowed me to focus on research and not on how I was going to afford various expenses, such as rent and groceries. Without this funding, I am not sure that I would have been able to accept my position in the Brannon Lab and pursue my academic goals this summer.

Think Like a Scientist

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Devaughn Mark, COL ’19

This summer, I worked at the Laboratory of Comparative Pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. I worked at the same lab last summer. It was extremely hard to support myself last summer whilst doing this unpaid internship. My parents provided housing and whatever little assistance, but it was not sufficient. In addition, I exhausted my funds I saved throughout the school year. This year, the funding I received from Career Services assisted tremendously in easing my worries where finance is a concern and allowed me to focus on my experience in the lab. Instead of splitting my time between the lab and a minimal job, I was able to focus exclusively on the lab and gain valuable knowledge that I can use to become a doctor. The funding covered my travel expenses to and from the lab every day as well as food. I also used the money to buy clothes to look professional in the lab and other settings. I am extremely grateful for the funding I received because working in a lab at a renown known hospital is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was able to seize such an opportunity for the second time. This opportunity allowed me to apply what I have learned as well as acquire new knowledge and skills.

Having experience in a lab helped me to “think like a scientist” which will be helpful as a doctor. Being familiar with research gives me the ability to assess the validity of new treatments. Being in the lab also provided me with valuable skills that will help me as a physician. I was able to hone my analytical skills as well as oral and written communication skills. I learned how to write up a gross report on a necropsy with proper terminology. I was also able to sharpen my time management skills and be a team player. I often worked with the lab technicians and completed a variety of tasks and projects throughout the summer. Last summer, I focused on how to identify parasites under a microscope as well as running chemistry samples through a machine. This summer, I performed and observed multiple necropsies, learned how research slides are made and learned how to identify white blood cells under a microscope. The necropsies helped me to review anatomy and pathological processes. Knowing the difference between specific white blood cells will help me in my journey to becoming a doctor.  I know that I want to be a doctor and this opportunity provided experience and assisted with my decision. Since this lab provides a variety of services, I was available to talk to various professionals that worked in the medical field. Through these conversations, I found out what I want to pursue on my way to becoming a doctor. Once again, I am thankful for the summer funding and I will use what it provided me in order to achieve my future goal of being a doctor.