Becky Goodling, a West Manchester Township native and 2005 West York Area High School graduate, is in Beijing through Aug. 26 as an intern with NBC Sports during the Olympics. She is a student at Ithaca College in New York who expects to graduate in May 2009.
She answered questions via e-mail from York Daily Record/Sunday News correspondent Greg Gross.
Q: You've been in China a few days now. Was it a culture shock when you got there? If so, what surprised you most about the country and its people?
A: When we arrived at the airport in Beijing, they had the entire terminal shut down, and a welcome committee, complete with waving mascots, video cameras, and people snapping pictures waiting to greet us as we exited the tarmac.
The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming hospitality of the Chinese, almost excessive at times. They are incredibly polite, patient and always smiling, and ready to help you in any way they can.
At the hotels, there is a person whose job it is to wait outside the elevator, just to push the button for you as you climb in, and at the gym where I'm staying, it's someone's job just to open and close the door for me.
At the 24-hour Starbucks at the NBC commissary, someone will take the sugar container out of your hand and pour it for you.
The Chinese are also very proud of their country, and proud of the Olympics. Everyone is sporting Olympic T-shirts and excited to see our credentials and ask us if we're working for the Olympics -- much different from the U.S. where the residents of the host city are excited, but in a much more passive way.
Q: What sort of tasks will you be doing as an intern?
A: I'm a nighttime (7 PM-7 AM) logger for SportsDesk, so most of the work I'm doing is in the Avid editors. I'm digitizing footage, searching the tape library for footage from past Olympics, organizing bins for stories to be edited the next day, searching Interplay, (basically a clip server), for existing footage for the stories we're currently working on, and basic organizing, transcribing, logging time code and doing research for the feature packages that SportsDesk will run during the Olympics.
Q: Will you get to watch any of the games in person, or is it all work and no play?
A: My credentials limit my access to the IBC (International Broadcast Center) and the MPC (Main Press Center) so I cannot enter the venues unless I have a ticket. Occasionally, SportsDesk is given a few tickets to hand out to employees, and first preference is given to members of the night shift (which I am) since we have days free to go see the events. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
Q: Is there an event that you want to see?
A: I'd love to see swimming. I was a swimmer in high school and although I was never a fantastic swimmer myself, I really appreciate and understand the incredible amount of work it takes to get this far. I also think it would be cool to see one of the more obscure events like synchronized swimming or badminton.
Q: Did you have to prepare in any way to go to China (e.g. learn a bit of Chinese, the customs, etc)?
A: We completed a security briefing mini-course online to prepare us for the major differences in culture between the U.S. and China, however, learning Chinese was not necessary as most of the Olympics employees were chosen because they can speak a sufficient amount of English, if not completely fluent. It makes me sort of embarrassed to see how many people from other countries can speak our language, but how few of us can actually speak theirs.
Q: Describe an average work day for you. Do you have to travel to get to your job, anything unusual you see along the way, what do you do at work, how do you spend your downtime?
A: We travel about 10 minutes by bus from the Media Village where we live to the Olympic Village where the venues and the IBC are located. Beijing is a huge city, and it's spread out similar to Los Angeles, so we see plenty of apartments and office buildings and highway traffic along the way, but it's not the same sort of crowded feeling as New York City, for example.
I see more of the city during my time off. I've visited the Forbidden City and Tien'anmen Square, as well as the Silk Street Pearl Market, an inside market packed with vendors shouting "Lady, lady! You need a North Face! You need a Polo shirt for your boyfriend! You need pearls for your mother!" and grabbing at your arm. Some of them will even trap you in their booth until they make a sale -- the key is to haggle the price as much as possible.
I spent a lot of Yuan today (the currency of China -- although the going rate is about 7-1 so 70 Yuan is only about 10 bucks). Throughout the city, I've noticed that the marketing campaign for the Olympics is incredibly aggressive. The billboards are everywhere and are enormous. Even on the walls inside the subway as the train is moving there are LCD screens flashing advertisements about the Olympics, and inside the trains themselves there are televisions explaining how the different events are played.
Q: Have you gotten a chance to tour other parts of China or Beijing? If so, what was that like?
A: Tien'anmen Square is still a functioning part of the city, but just as you see in pictures. I'd like to attend the changing of the guard if I get off work early some night (it happens at 4:30 AM), I hear that's very moving.
The Forbidden City is more massive than I ever thought, my friends and I walked for about an hour and a half and only made it through about 1/10th of the city. The architecture is incredible and the upkeep is great -- I heard it takes about 10 years to fix up the city, and by the time they finish, it's time to start again.
Q: How did you become an intern with NBC?
A: NBC regularly takes interns from several colleges for the Olympics, and Ithaca has become a college that they always come to to recruit because they've been very happy with the quality of interns from IC! I applied and they came to the school in the fall to interview, and I found out on December 31st that I was accepted. I had friends who were interns in Torino, and their stories were the reason I applied.
Q: Your dad said you're a TV/radio major. What do you want to do when you grow up?
A: Short term, I'd like produce television news -- or break into producing by editing or photogging -- preferably in a city other than York (I'm thinking Philly).
I produce now for our live news show at school, and have since freshman year. Last summer, I got a taste of the real world interning at News 8, and decided this is definitely something I want to pursue for the future. I'd love to continue coming to the Olympics in some capacity -- I crew for our live sports productions at school and have considered doing some sort of work for ESPN as well. Long term, for now I think I want to go to law school (UPenn?) and study media law, and perhaps someday mold and shape the journalists from the future from some reputable institution like Ithaca College. :)
Q: How will the Chinese experience help you in landing that perfect job?
A: Well this is my second internship with NBC and will hopefully help me land a job with NBC in the future. It will also carry major weight when I look into coming to future Olympic games. Many of the Torino interns are now getting paid to work in Beijing.
Thanks for a great article/interview about Becky Goodling covering the Olympics! Becky was in my English 11 Honors class and my journalism class at West York. She was also on our school newspaper staff, THE PAW PRINT. As her former teacher and advisor, it's great to know how successful Becky has been at Ithaca. She is an alumni that West York can be very proud of.