Tomorrow night, the Muhlenberg field hockey team will try to get a jump start on the rest of the Centennial Conference when it hosts McDaniel in the first league game of the year (most other CC teams open up conference play on Saturday or later). And if there’s one player on the team who knows plenty about getting an early start, it’s Christine Germaske.
The junior forward spent the summer interning with Scott & Todd in the Morning, the popular radio show hosted by veterans Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill on WPLJ 95.5 in New York.
“It was fun. I loved it and really loved everyone I worked with,” said Germaske.
The only downside was the hours. Germaske would wake up at 2:50 a.m. at her home in Raritan, N.J., and take a 4:00 train from New Brunswick to Manhattan. She worked from 5:00 to 10:00 and arrived back home at noon to take a nap, her full day of work complete.
Germaske discovered the opportunity on the Internet, interviewed with one of the producers and found out just a few days later that she had gotten the job. She was one of five interns and did not receive any pay or academic credit for her time. To make some money over the summer, she worked at a J. Crew store some night and on weekends.
So what did her duties entail? When she arrived at 5:00, her first job was to put together a packet of newspaper clippings for Scott and Todd to talk about on the air. During the show, she worked the phones, taking listener comments and occasionally passing them on to the hosts as well as picking up the phone for on-air contests.
Then there were trips to pick up items for the hosts, including Todd’s daily Diet Coke. Germaske also got to meet in-studio guests like musicians Gavin DeGraw (pictured above) and Demi Lovato and television health guru Dr. Oz.
“It was cool to work with celebrities,” Germaske said. “People think they’re selfish and demanding, but they were all really nice. I didn’t expect that.”
Germaske, who scored her second goal of the season in last night’s 5-1 win against King’s, made it on air on several occasions. Once, she was sent to SoHo (her first subway ride) to stand in line for a cronut, the croissant-doughnut hybrid that became all the rage this year. While she was waiting, Scott and Todd called her to ask her about the type of people who were in line.
When she exited the store, Germaske was interviewed by a television station about her cronut experience, making for a memorable day.
Another time, Germaske sat in with the hosts and producers to provide another voice for a morning discussion on topics such as the hit song “Blurred Lines.”
“I was there to laugh or add input, but I didn’t know how to just jump in!” she said. “I was like, I’m just a 20-year-old girl and you’ve been doing this a long time.”
Germaske admitted a little nervousness at being on the air on a popular show airing in a big city. “I was trying not to think about how many people were listening,” she said. “You just have to think that you’re having a normal conversation with the other people in the room.”
Germaske’s last day at the station was August 2 – right before she left for Europe with her Mule teammates. And although she sees her future in business, not necessarily show business, she did learn many valuable life lessons from her summer internship.
“I learned professionalism – you have to act like a grownup,” she said. “And I learned people skills, and the ability to work with people who are older than you, and being able to put a smile on every morning even though it was 5:00.
“I also learned about the ability to produce work quickly, and to be able to drop what you were doing to get something for someone and then go back to what you were doing.
