August 2004

Gillian Woodburn • All Business

This month of June has gone by in a whirlwind of business trips. My desk calendar at work is covered in writing: hotels addresses and phone numbers, hours I’ve worked, numbers of surveys I’ve collected, where I’ve been. In the last three weeks I’ve spent a total of three days in the office. Needless to say, my summer is going by way too fast.

One week, I had to prepare for four trips: fill out all my travel forms, reserve cars and hotel rooms, photocopy surveys to take with me, print maps of the destinations, and look up things to do in the evenings. In addition to all that, I was working on a project for the group tours office. I had to go through stacks of foreign magazines and news releases, find articles pertaining to South Dakota, and write out a report summarizing the article lengths, topics, and authors. I liked looking through the German magazines, because I could actually understand some of the articles, but trying to figure out what the Norwegian magazines were writing about South Dakota was more difficult.

On Thursday I headed out to Deadwood with another intern, Jessica. We stopped in Rapid City to do some shopping, and then drove to our hotel in Lead, about six miles from Deadwood. The whole weekend was cold and cloudy, and it rained a little bit. The overnight temperatures actually dropped below freezing, which, in the summer, is pretty cold even for the Black Hills. We walked up and down Main Street and surveyed a few people. Jessica had never done the surveys before, and she was a little leery about stopping random people as they looked in store windows and walked from casino to casino. (Downtown Deadwood is almost entirely composed of saloons, casinos, and gift shops.)

Sunday, I celebrated my “golden birthday”—turning 20 years old on June 20. I spent the morning finishing up the surveys with Jessica. I thought about trying to get people to pity me by telling them it was my birthday and asking them to do the survey so I could finish up and head home—but I thought that seemed a little desperate.

When I did finish, I drove to Rapid City where my Dad and sister Kendra drove out to meet me. We spent a little time in the mall, then had a birthday/Father’s Day dinner at Sanford’s. Despite having to work on my birthday, it turned out to be a pretty good day.

By Wednesday, I was at Mitchell, doing surveys at “The World’s Only Corn Palace”—or, as my dad calls it, “The World’s Largest Birdfeeder.” From the outside, it really does look a little bit like a palace, and the corn murals are pretty interesting, but when you get inside you realize it’s really just a high school auditorium set up with a giant gift shop in the summer. It’s got some interesting history, though, and after three days, I was practically ready to lead the tours.

After one day off, I drove back to the other side of the state to Mount Rushmore for three more days of surveys. It’s a nice drive through the Black Hills—not quite as deep in the mountains as Deadwood, but still surrounded by trees and cliffs, and with a few pretty sharp curves. (Strangely enough, the speed limit on many of these two-lane winding roads surrounded by rock cliffs and sharp drop-offs is 65 miles per hour—the same as on I-80 through Iowa.)

By the time I got home, I had finished 275 surveys in one week (not including the ones I collected in Deadwood) and I was more than ready for a break.

So what have I learned from all my travels so far?

To everyone who reads this, I’d like to ask a favor. Please, if someone stops you on the street or at a mall or a museum or even on the phone and asks if you’d like to participate in a survey, please say yes. Remember, we’re not trying to annoy you, and we’re not making personal judgments based on your answers. We’re just doing our job. So, please, the next time you’re asked to do a survey, take a few minutes to make somebody else’s job a little better.

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