Tessa during her internship in NYC!

Hi everyone! I am Tessa Schweckhorst and I’m currently in the 4^th year of the course IDE at the Nimeto in Utrecht. Right now, I'm doing my internship in New York City with an interior consulting company.

Today it's the 15th of September, 2017. I've been staying in New York for almost a month now. Oh, how time flies when you're having fun! On my first day in the big city I had already seen more than during my last internship in the Netherlands, which lasted ten weeks! On Friday (the 25^th of August) I first came by at the office for a little meet and greet. When I got there I immediately got a note with an address, time and telephone number. On Monday at 9 o'clock, I was expected to be at a luxurious new housing estate in the Upper West Side.

I went there full with enthusiasm. After a few things went wrong and while fearing I was going to be late, I still arrived on the location at 9 o’clock after sprinting quite a bit on my way over there. Once I was at the location though, I found out there was no one there yet. Due to the busyness and very full subways in New York it's not that crazy people arrive a bit later. It happens all the time appearantly. Lucky me!

When my colleague had arrived, we went to the 4th floor with the elevator. The floor had a gigantic and luxurious apartment with eight rooms in it. Lisa, the project leader, had done a large part of the styling for this house. And me, who was just gazing at the beauty of everything, got to babysit the apartment. Yes, read that correctly! Babysit. People were going to come for the curtains (sent by my internship company) and the owner didn’t like the idea of leaving them alone in there. He couldn’t be there because he was going to the beach that day.

So I went to sit down at the big table with my laptop and homework, having a beautiful view on the other apartments in the Upper West Side. Meanwhile I went to get a cup of coffee at Starbucks and when I came back, I called with the owner of the house. He wanted to know how it was going and if I wanted to let the workers know that they couldn’t leave dust behind. Me, who found it a little bothersome to have to say that, asked the painter if he wanted to make sure to clean up the dust when he was finished. Him, being very nice, nodded yes. When the men were done, I made some pictures for Lisa and when I got her approval, I went back to the office by metro and by foot.

There is also another intern working here called Sandra. She is from France. I went to sit with her during lunch in Madison Square Park, with a view on the Flatiron Building. After our lunchbreak we went to a big warehouse in the Upper East Side named the Decoration and Design Building, to get some samples of fabrics.

At this warehouse I was once again gazing at everything inside. There were 17 floors with some of the most well-known and expensive brands selling fabric there. The people who come here, mostly men, are millionaires and the women have all had plastic surgery of some kind and are standing there in their Chanel outfits. A very strange but wondersome world! After we collected the samples, we went back to Broadway in the Upper West Side by metro, where the company is located. Also here I never get bored because of the beautiful view on the Flatiron building.

I often get sent somewhere to pick up or give something off. It’s a crazy idea that I haven’t yet been here for that long but already have so much to tell! This is probably because I travel from location to location so many times and see a lot of the city. The best and most important thing is that I’m face to face with customers, suppliers and sellers very often. Through this, I learn to communicate and do business more effectively!

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to go somewhere with the designers. During my first experience I got to go along to the Upper East Side. I had never seen before what I saw there, a banker who had bought an entire floor of a large apartment building. His wife is an art collector, so the whole apartment was full with awesome paintings. The apartment needed to be repainted and we were going there to check the progress. Well, I would like to do that every day!

Other tasks of mine are calling and emailing suppliers to ask them for prices and the current stock of samples we have here. As soon as when I get a response, I write this down on a sticky note and put it on the back of the sample. We do this so that we can immediately inform customers when they have questions about this. This is not my favorite thing to do but hey, I’m in New York. Who cares?

Every evening I come home in the Webster apartments. All my friends are here. We always have a lovely and cozy dinner and talk about our day. Some evenings we go out and other times we go sporting or just sit in the living room to watch some TV. On pretty days we sit on the roof terrace with a lovely view on the Empire State Building.

The days are just flying by. If I was in the Netherlands, I wouldn’t say this but I’d wish time would go a little slower!

I hope that next time, I have a lot more awesome things and happenings to tell you about!