Warsaw Grad Lands Internship At Famed Sydney Opera House
Warsaw Grad Lands Internship At Famed Sydney Opera House
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Warsaw Grad Lands Internship At Famed Sydney Opera HouseOlivia Tucker, 20, traveled to the other side of the world for her college internship over the summer. The 2014 Warsaw Community High School graduate interned at the Sydney Opera House in Australia through Purdue University. This fall she will be a junior at Purdue, studying marketing, management and human resources. “I was really ahead of my credits from Warsaw High School, actually, so I could have three majors. It was easy. I could graduate early if I wanted to, but I’m probably going to stay,” she said Thursday. When she was looking for a summer internship, she didn’t specifically seek out the Sydney opportunity. The internship was through the Sydney Internship Program at Purdue. CAPA, an international internship and education organization, is the internship/program coordinator in Sydney that locates an internship in a student’s major and general area of interest. “They had me submit a really generic resume, and then pick three areas that I would like to go into. So I put event marketing as my No. 1 placement area. Then they went around and looked at places where people had already done internships at, and then somehow I got placed at the Sydney Opera House,” she recalled with a laugh. Because of the time difference, she received the email notifying her of her internship at 6 a.m. toward the end of March. “I could not sleep that whole day. I had an exam that night and everything, and I could not study because I was so excited. I was freaking out,” she stated. She left for Australia May 16, and returned from her internship either July 8 or 9. The two-month program kept her busy. “It was really cool. I was actually the first event marketing intern they’ve had,” she said. “There are two divisions of the Sydney Opera House marketing department. There’s the visitor experience – and that’s all the tours, food and beverage and everything. And then I was the first intern that helped market the actual events going on in the Opera House.” She said it has six or seven theaters “They have events from all over the world, all different types of genres. And they’re just starting to rebrand the Opera House so that more of the genres are noticed other than the simple opera and ballet. That’s usually what people think is there. But they have comedy, kids shows, contemporary music. They had Prince there a couple of months before he died actually. It was kind of freaky to be on the same steps that Prince was just on,” she said. At the beginning of her internship, Tucker admitted it was a little bit slow, but after the first couple of weeks everyone realized Tucker was an intern they could put to work. They started giving her a lot more to do. “I was mainly in charge of these huge digital screens they have all around the Opera House. They put me in charge of managing them, so it was actually a pretty big responsibility. I was surprised,” Tucker said. The screens flash all the different upcoming shows. She also worked with her co-workers on developing a genre strategy for the digital screens. The Opera House wanted to increase visibility for each of the different types of genres. “I got to see that all the way through while I was there, so it was really cool,” Tucker said. She also had the typical intern jobs, too, while she was there – invoicing, tracking social media posts, creating brochures and keeping track of the event calendar. “I learned a lot about working in an international environment,” she said. “I was working with people from all over the world.” Her deskmate, Anja, was from Berlin, Germany. Her supervisor was French and had such a thick accent that Tucker couldn’t always understand what he was saying, but she said he was a great supervisor. “I worked with tons of Australians, a couple of people from India there, a Scottish guy ... I learned a lot about working in an international environment and just working in a big marketing department,” she recalled. Her past internships were in marketing departments with about 10 people. The Opera House had about 60 on one big floor. Tucker’s internship was not a paid one because of visa regulations. She stayed in student housing with seven roommates, but became great friends with many of them, she said. The housing was in a neighborhood called Ultimo, and the Opera House was in the Central Business District. While in Australia, she worked eight hours a day three days a week and took a class one day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. She was only allowed to work 24 hours for the internship so she had Fridays off. Her travel trips were limited. She and her group from Purdue traveled to the Blue Mountains, which are a stretch of mountains a couple hours outside of Sydney, and they got to see a lot of Australia’s wildlife. Tucker also got to pet a koala bear. Olivia, the daughter of Maria and John Tucker, later traveled to Cairns with her family to snorkel the Great Barrier Reefs. Her family was visiting for a week and wanted to check out the Reefs. “It was amazing,” she stated. “... I felt like I was in ‘Finding Nemo.’ There were clownfish everywhere and a sea turtle. It was really cool.” Though it was “an experience of a lifetime,” she said she only saw one opera while there – “For the Love of Three Oranges.” She said it was about people who turned into oranges. “It was really odd, but all the other operas looked incredible. It was just really hard to go see shows,” she said.
