Letters from Disney: Anything but Boring!

When I was telling my friends and family that I wanted to move to Florida for seven months and work for Walt Disney World, most of them wanted to know one thing: Why?

Depending on the person asking, I would generally give some sort of safe answer. “It will look good on my resume,” I told them. It will get my foot in the door of a major company. There will be networking opportunities that relate to my major even if the work I end up doing is completely unrelated. It will open up the possibility of doing a more field-specific internship with Disney down the road.

While all of those things are true, and while they definitely influenced my decision to participate in the Disney College Program, I had other motivations behind my desire to do this internship. Mostly I felt that I needed to do something that seemed a little reckless and unconventional for once in my life. Practically since kindergarten, I have always been the type of person to do things by the book, make the honor roll, never cause too much trouble. Living my life this way has certainly made my parents proud, but I was essentially tired of being boring.

I’ve been living and working full time in Florida for the past three months, and my life has certainly been anything but boring. I spend my working hours in Disney’s Hollywood Studios ensuring that everyone’s favorite characters are looking their best for meet-and-greets, as well as for a nighttime show called Fantasmic! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title). During my off time I have free reign of the four parks that make up Walt Disney World. While I would like to tell you I have spent that time wisely by exploring everything that this sprawling resort has to offer, I mostly just ride all of my favorite attractions over and over again.

I cannot recommend highly enough the importance of making decisions based on your own wishes, rather than what others want or expect from you. Many people were very confused at the fact that I would want to put off graduation, something I was on track to do a semester early, in order to work some minimum-wage full time job at an amusement park. This internship is a lot of work, but I have also had an incredible amount of fun over these past three months and expect that to continue over the next four. I would not have experienced any of this had I stuck to the status quo by simply finishing off my degree in a traditional fashion.

I felt as though I had not taken enough risks in my first two years of college. I have come to realize that college the best time to experiment with your choices and do your own thing before being subjected to the pressures of the proverbial real world. This is a time to experience new things, meet new people, and figure out how to make yourself happy.

So while the Disney College Program will certainly be beneficial in a professional sense, I feel that its real value is in what it has done for me personally thus far. Luckily I’m only halfway through.