Every spring, we hold our Women’s Cafe Night where we honor awesome women doing awesome things on Temple’s campus. Recognizing these women inspires not only the ladies within our chapter, but outside of our chapter. We have handpicked these women based on their accomplishments, attitudes and bright futures. Some of them you may have seen on our website before, some of them may be new to you…from outstanding internships to on campus leadership roles, it is a privilege to have these women featured on our website!
Most college students would be lucky to land one summer internship throughout their college experience, but senior Media Studies and Production major and History and Spanish minor landed the prestigious The Emma L. Bowen Fellowship at NBC where she has interned every winter and summer break during her college career. In addition to the fellowship she also served as a Peer Mentor for two years on the School of Media and Communication’s Living Learning Community and consistently writes for the political section of the website, Her Agenda.
Take a look at what Ndidi has accomplished during her college career to earn her the recognition from Her Campus Temple and find out what she has learned from working with The Today Show to meeting new people during her four years at Temple.
Question: How do you think your perspective of college and Temple has changed from now being a senior?
Answer: I think when I first got into school I was not necessarily naïve, but I was very much influenced by the scene in like popular culture about what college is going to be like and I envisioned it being like a lot of parties and a lot of going out and meeting all kinds of different people and really exploring the city and becoming this crazy completely different person. And I think that now my view of college has just completely changed. I think that idealistic view of college still exists, but only for certain groups of people at this school because realistically when I started getting into my classes, when I started getting into my course work and my internships and different projects I was working on I stared to realize that I didn’t really have a lot of time to go out and go to all these parties and have these crazy wild experiences. I just became very focused and very driven on what I wanted post-graduation and I think that really influenced my college experience.
Question: Can you tell me about your fellowship at NBC?
Answer: I graduated high school June 16 of 2011 and then four days later, June 20 I started at NBC. So I was only 18-years-old; I don’t think I fully understood what I was getting myself into and I mean that in a good way. I didn’t realize how big of a deal NBC News is until during my last rotation when I was working on the news desk and I would be cold calling people that we needed information from for different stories and I would just say, “Hi, my name is so and so.” They wouldn’t really want to talk to me and then all of a sudden I would say I’m calling on behalf of NBC News and their entire perspective just changed so drastically. They would want to tell me all these stories and they would want to offer their input and advice and I mean I would just be calling to get statistic numbers that they had. I didn’t really understand how big of a deal that was until I was a little bit older and dealing with a little bit more.
Basically what I had the opportunity to do was every summer and winter vacation when I came home from school I would go back to NBC News in Washington D.C. and I would be interning for a different department. I was with The Today Show so I did a lot of stuff with The Today Show and it was really fun to watch how an idea goes from just being a thought in a morning meeting to a completed package on the morning news for millions of viewers to see. I think being able to be a part of that process and watching that firsthand and up close was really incredible for me especially as someone who wants to go into that industry. It was really rewarding for me to see the benefits of a lot of people’s hard work so that was really cool.
Question: What is the best piece of advice or insight someone has given you?
Answer: This was a really good piece of not necessarily piece of advice, but just something that I did that someone noticed and told me to keep doing. I’m very old fashioned in the sense that I prefer snail mail to email a lot of times, so whenever I write thank you cards or follow-up, I’ll physically write out a thank you card and mail it to someone or just drop it in someone’s box. Someone who worked there actually noticed that I had done that and pulled me aside and said, “You know that means a lot to a lot of people who work here especially in an age where everything is so electronic and an email is just another email in someone’s inbox. For you to actually take out the time to show someone that you cared enough and valued their time that you want to thank them in that type of way is really special.” He said that it says a lot about your character and who you are as a person. So I think that’s one thing that I learned is to always be humble and to always take the time to show people that you care. Not just that you care about the work that you’re doing, but also that you care about them and that you care about their well-being and you value their time as well. I think that was probably the best piece of advice.
Question: What do you look for in other women when looking for a mentor?
Answer: I was actually just thinking about this and quite honestly I have really struggled to find a female mentor that I look up to and can learn a lot from. I think part of the reason why I’ve had so much trouble with that is women I feel are so caught up in trying to be the best, in trying to be the most successful, but they’re not willing to help other women out and I’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed that, other interns that I was with they would only tell me certain parts of the story or if you know if they were working on something they would say, “Oh yeah this is what I did and it’s so cool.” When I tried to ask how you did it and who you talked to they would say this person and that person, not really giving me specifics.
I think what I really look for in a mentor is someone who’s not in it for themselves. I don’t know how else to really describe it, the only thing I can say is I always in a mentor I try to look for someone who is going to genuinely help me and not just sort of give me the bare minimum to get by. I want to work with women who want to see other women succeed and surprisingly enough I really don’t think that’s a trait that is as common in women as we think.