Today is Only the Beginning

     I started my internship today at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  It was a pretty easy day.  I got a tour of the track, met the staff, made some phone calls, and cut out newspaper clippings with anything that mentioned Atlanta Motor Speedway.  I feel like I've already been doing that for years though because I always save the promotional fliers and stuff that they send to my house.  Maybe I'm a hoarder? Oh well.  While I was meeting the staff I got to meet Ed Clark again.  He's the track president and he's really good friends with my Great Aunt and Great Uncle and cousin.  They've known each other for years and I was looking around in his office and I spotted two shelves just dedicated to my cousin Allison.  My cousin is mentally retarded and she just adores Ed.  They're always at the track every Thursday for Thursday Thunder.  Ed's got all kinds of pictures with him and her on the two shelves.  I thought that was just too cute cause they've been really good friends over the years. 

     A really cool thing that I got to do today was sit in on a staff meeting.  We talked about how they're going to Charlotte for the All-Star Race on Saturday which I would LOVE to go.  Maybe one day.  Then we talked about different driver event ideas that we need to come up with before race weekend in September to promote the race.  I was really glad that I got to voice my opinion in the meeting and be involved in pitching ideas because this is what I've been preparing myself to do for a while now.  I don't think anyone understands how happy I am to finally get the chance to work with people who know racing and knows NASCAR.  They understand my language! I only have a select few friends that I can talk about NASCAR and they know what I'm talking about.  No offense but the rest of y'all are clueless.  

     I realize that this internship is what I'm going to make of it and hopefully they'll want to hire me after I graduate school.  I know that I'm going to learn a lot about Public Relations and the media and I already can tell that I have numerous contacts and connections for myself in the future of racing.  It's going to be a challenge but I think that it's what I've pretty much been preparing myself for since I realized I wanted to work in PR for NASCAR.  I really can not wait to see what the future holds for me and the experiences that I'm going to gain from this.    

                                                 
                                         Here's a picture of the track that I took this morning. 
                                                          The road to my future!