Occasionally, The ConnCollegeLive Experience will invite guests to blog about their experiences as a Camel. The following is part of this guest blogger series.

At the beginning of this month, I had the opportunity to work on the ESPN production team for the week of the Super Bowl. The job landed me in Times Square, NYC, where I worked at Times Square Studios (TSS), the location in which we shot our Sportscenter shows, and a variety of other stories, for the week.

During the fall, I worked for ESPN on College Friday Night football games at both Boston College and UCONN. I originally got the position through close family friend and alumna Caroline Davis ’99. Caroline is a production manager for ESPN, and works primarily with Monday Night Football, PGA and the major tennis tournaments across the world. She set me up with the hiring team for ESPN, who contacted me to work my first game in September at Boston College. After connecting with the staff and meeting a wonderful group of people, they set me up with the production staff that invited me to work Super Bowl week.

‌I worked at TSS each day from 7:30 a.m.-5:30p.m., helping our studio production manager and talent producers make sure everything went according to schedule. We covered live Sportscenter hits, as well as different taping and live hits for The Scott Van Pelt and Rusillo Show, Highly Questionable and Numbers Never Lie. My job was to ensure that talent got from the front doors of the studio, to hair and makeup and onto set on time.

Although I did have to miss a week of school to participate in this work, I think that it was certainly worth it (sorry, Professors!). During the week, I not only met some of the best and most legendary football players in the NFL, but so many amazing people within production and operations from both the ABC and ESPN groups. As a senior who is approaching graduation, I am quickly learning that for where I want to be after graduation it is not necessarily what you know, but who you know, that gets you there. Making connections this week already provided me with a potential job offer, as well as a good deal of contacts in the industry that I can get in touch with as I am trying to decide where I want to end up when I leave in May.

Patty Shields '14 is a Psychology-Based Human Relations major, and has been studying Sports Communications. Through her work in the Sports Information Office, Patty manages the Camel Athletics social media outlets, including @CamelAthletics on Twitter.

Hannah Storm interviews AJ Hawk on the SportsCenter set (left,) and a behind-the-scenes view of anchors Hannah Storm, Mark Schelerth and Merril Hoge.‌