"Welcome to your 9 inning vacation"

I never fully understood what it meant to fall in love with a city. I mean I've visited places and loved being there but could never imagine myself being there long term.. and then I moved to Madison, Wisconsin. That city has forever changed my life.

Exactly one year ago today I started my three month internship that ended up being the best experience of my life. I moved to Madison last May to work for a summer collegiate baseball team, the Madison Mallards. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but regardless I knew I'd have fun, I mean who wouldn't have fun working on a baseball field every day?

The hours sucked, the over 900 hours in three months kind of sucked. The humidity and random thunder and lightening storms had me on a emotional roller coaster and left my already curly/frizzy hair even more curly and frizzy. I never thought I could work so many 14 hour days in a row but I did and I got to spend my days with people that became my family.

There were 32 other interns in my class that endured the same hours I did as well as the full-time and seasonal staff. We all spent every single day together. Spending roughly 90 days with the same people was sometimes rough. We pushed each others buttons and even got into screaming matches sometimes but by hour 14 we all were able to get together, grab a beer and laugh because we somehow made it through that day.

I won't say that I necessarily fell in love with Madison solely because of the city. Downtown Madison is amazing, don't get me wrong, but the people there is what made my three months fly by. Some of my best friends are the ones I met last summer and they are from all over. I have people I still stay in contact with in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. I talked to them weekly, if not monthly. I even had gone to visit them.

Being a PR major, I live for the relationships I can build with people. Those are what make my life fun and I created more relationships with people in those three months than I think I have in my entire college career.

There is something to be said about spending 900 hours with the same people that really bring you together. We became the biggest dysfunctional family but we worked, we were a team that made 6,400 fans happy every single night. Very rarely did we have fans leaving and hating the Mallard experience. Instead, we had fans coming back weekly and asking for us by names.

Madison, Wisconsin forever changed who I am. It showed me a work ethic I wasn't 100% sure I still had. It taught me that it doesn't matter how long you know someone, lifelong friendships don't have a time frame. It solidified my love for the career path I have chosen.

I remember about a month in to my internship, I looked at my best friend and said "Megs, I think Wisco is slowly stealing my heart." She responded with, "This place does that."

And I can now confidently say:

Wisco stole my heart.

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