By Kiah Haslett, CQS ‘10

My desk at the Chicago Tribune is littered with yellow Post-it notes and pieces of paper pinned to the sides of my cubicle.

There are directions for setting up voice mail, a list of “helpful websites” and instructions on how to file for www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com and get into the news computer system.

I have the words “Fact. Check. Everything.” taped to my monitor, “Sense of awe/open” tacked to the cubicle and “Sense of Urgency” attached to my desk.

My internships lessons and instructions are mixed in with my to-do list, story files, business magazines and Easter candy.

To say I haven’t made mistakes would be a lie. Sometimes, I feel all I do is make mistakes. But I make fewer mistakes than I did three months ago; I make different mistakes each day.

And, more and more, I do things right the first time.

This is my first internship.

I had to make the mistakes sometime, at some paper, with some editors. I made them at the Chicago Tribune’s business desk, an internship that’s unreal even to experienced student reporters, never mind me. This is my dream assignment.

While none of my mistakes was career-ending or reflected negatively on my character, they did embarrass me. I gave sources a phone number for three days before I realized it didn’t work. My editor rewrote a story because it didn’t focus on the angle he thought was most important. A source blogged angrily about one of my stories; Google my name and read it.

I let my frustration about a story show to my editor through body language and voice volume. I pitched story ideas that were interesting but not newsworthy, or even new. I was under-prepared for a projects meeting and it showed.

A source gave me a large bouquet of flowers because I felt uncomfortable refusing them. A public relations representative asked me, point blank, if I knew enough about a story subject to do an interview and write a story. I missed a story assignment because I didn’t communicate with editors about the best way to reach me.

I’ve overslept, gotten lost, taken the wrong bus. And I worry that I haven’t been the perfect intern – no, not the perfect intern, a good intern – and that what my editors say to my face is not what they’ll say to a potential employer.

It’s easy for me to dwell on my mistakes, oversights and misunderstandings. It’s easy to feel like I’m unprepared and that my successes, my front page stories and original story ideas, aren’t enough to counter the mistakes.

But my wise cubicle-mate and unofficial mentor always says when I share these embarrassments with her, “That’s why it’s called an internship.”

They’re not mistakes. They’re lessons about what not to do and say. This is the place for me to learn them, with the grace that comes with the title of “intern.” I’m not expected to be perfect and know everything and never make mistakes.

I’m expected to work and learn. And that’s what I’ve been doing.

Kiah Haslett is a summer Pulliam Fellow at The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. She was a Spring 2010 Chips Quinn Scholar assigned to the business desk of the Chicago Tribune. She is a news editorial and economics student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Haslett spent a semester as a student-reporter fellow with the Omaha World-Herald in Lincoln, Neb. She was a health and business senior reporter and general news reporter at the Daily Nebraskan for four semesters. She was a press intern for former Sen. Chuck Hagel in Washington, D.C. (summer 2008), and a media intern at the Nebraska Wheat Board (summer 2009). She is in UNL’s honor program and is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, a business honorary society.