I had the unique opportunity to observe how San Diegans live during a brief internship at The San Diego Sun. My assignments ranged from covering downtown ice cream shops to the controversy surrounding singer Kehlani headlining the local Pride Festival.
During all the interviewing and reporting I did, one thing about all of San Diego became clear to me: the general construct of a slower paced life.
I’m from Melbourne, Australia. For nine months before arriving in San Diego I was studying and working at Rutgers in New Jersey and frequently traveling into New York City.
Everyone moves at the speed of light in New York. People are constantly exceeding themselves, and it makes you want to do so, too. My college internship there often required me to multitask numerous interviews and articles at the same time. I loved the rapid pace. I was in constant conversation with my supervisor about what story I would be publishing next, and pitching ideas for potential articles.
But extensive conversations with strangers were hard to come by on the East Coast. In contrast, my time at The Sun allowed me to develop more thoughtful dialogues with individuals featured in my articles.
For the ice cream story, I spent two days visiting downtown San Diego ice cream shops, getting to know the workers. Conversations were long, though large quantities of those interviews didn’t make it into the story. But these experiences illustrated to me the pride San Diego locals have for their city.
San Diego reminds me of my hometown. In Melbourne, there’s a blend of big city and nature. In comparison, I found a lack of accessible nature in New York. My Sun internship exclusively covered downtown San Diego but I spent a majority of my free time on the beaches of La Jolla and Ocean Beach.
In San Diego, and at home, there is the opportunity for work-life balance. In Australia, I would swim in the ocean nearly every day. And write outside in the sun. In San Diego, I wrote frequently in a cafe where I became friendly with the barista, who took keen interest in how I always had my notebook open and wondered what article I was working on that day.
In California, everyone could tell by my accent that I’m Australian. I’d tell people I was a reporter working on a story and they were immediately curious how I’d ended up in San Diego for an internship. It often became its own separate dialogue.
One of my favorite, intense conversations on the job didn’t make it into my Kehlani article. In brief, after Kehlani was hired by San Diego Pride, some local Jewish organizations pulled out of the Pride Parade due to their perception of antisemitism in Kehlani’s songs regarding her self-described anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian stance.
I chatted off the record about this with a group of Irish women. They recalled a similar story about pro-Palestinian freedom of speech headlines back in their home country. This allowed me to also draw in my perspective on Indigenous rights movements in Australia, which share solidarity with Palestinian experiences of resistance to power. To me, this demonstrated an international issue found in downtown San Diego and all over the world.
Again, whether it was an interview about ice cream shops or freedom of speech, one of the things I valued most from my time interning in San Diego were the in depth conversations.
My internship was an absolute privilege. I came to love the locals I reported on, the tourists I met and the unique pace of life here.
Thanks to everyone, and I hope to be back. SDSun
Interested in an internship at The San Diego Sun? Reach out to the editor at: rondonoho@gmail.com.
