Introductory Article Draft

My intro draft is below. Some things to consider while critiquing:
-Is it too long? What can be omitted?
-What isn't clear/needs to be added?
-Are there any spelling/grammatical errors?
-Does it flow?
Anything else that can be critiqued, please do critique it. Thanks.
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I pass many large, almost monumental structures on my way to work. I pass a huge white church that looks more like a modern day palace, the Hyatt Regency on La Jolla Village Drive, and the huge, wiry white pyramid that is Ashley’s Furniture Home Store that anyone driving along Miramar Road can see. As I turn the corner of the mirror-windowed pyramid that’s currently having a rug expo, a long building comes into sight. At the end of it, a large black and green logo reads “SkinIt” as if it owns the whole place. I straightened my suit, entered through the front door, tried not to get lost, and hoped I don’t seem too shy. I was still intimidated by the whole idea of being an intern and working in a world outside my school. It’s just after 9:00 AM. I’m early.

John O’Brien walks into the office at around 9:30 AM. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a black polo shirt over it, but there’s a striped collared shirt draped on the back of his chair that never seems to be worn. He drops his black backpack under his desk and sits down in the black chair, and he gets straight to work. He checks his email, opens Adobe Bridge and photoshop, gets a phone call, checks his schedule, and goes off to a meeting. When he comes back he’s talking to Michael Miller about what was said at this meeting or that thing that the sales department wants them to do. The ideas bounce, they get back to work, and the office falls awkwardly quiet.

John is a native San Diegan who went to school in northern California, and he’s an avid art student with a passion for design. With encouragement from friends and family, he pursued this path. Classes of AP art in high school and scholarship classes of Otis Parsons Art Institute pushed him along as well. However, he didn’t quite get out of college with the degree he was aiming for, being just two classes short of getting his Bachelor of Arts degree when he switched from trying to get a Bachelor’s Fine Arts degree. He was okay with it, though. “I’ve realized, in my particular field... I guess it’s like anywhere else, a degree is kind of a nice thing to show people, but it’s not necessarily going to help you get a job depending on where you’re going. Some people look for it more than others,” he told me with a smile when I asked about it. The experience of college was enough for him. He had a good time at Chico State University, working at the Instructional Media Center on his school campus and taking glass art and steel sculpture classes.

Interestingly, John admits to having about twenty jobs over the years. He’s done everything from oddball things like being a driver and moving man to construction and glass-blowing. Of course, he’s had plenty of design experience, having worked as a freelance designer and in places like the media arts lab. His hands are rough and sometimes he wears a wrap around them, because if it’s not hot metal and melted glass that hurts him, it’s the tablet mouse. He sits at a desk in a somewhat small cubicle all day with his hand in one position, only his index finger moving to click down the dirty white Wacom mouse. He only gets up to go to meetings, but even then he’s just sitting. It was no wonder he hurts himself so often. When I got to my internship, he gave me a little guide titled “Repetitive Strain Injury”, which detailed things to do so I wouldn’t cramp up or hurt myself by sitting at work too long like he did. Though his work might cause carpal tunnel syndrome or back problems, he’ll still go to work every day and persevere. It’s obvious that he’s a very hard worker.

John has always been that diligent, but he is also a guy who likes to get out and do things whenever he can, especially with his hands. However, despite being an art student, he doesn’t draw or spend his free time doing that sort of stuff. He hangs out with his friends, goes running and surfing, and he likes reading and watching movies. But he’s constantly checking his email, at home and on the go, and it’s what takes up a lot of his morning when he comes into work. When I went out to lunch with him, he took out his phone when we finished and commented, “I got like, thirty emails in just my lunch hour.” He’s an important man in Skinit, and half his emails aren’t even addressed to him. “People just like to CC [carbon copy] me and some people just hit ‘reply to all’.” He’s in on almost everything going on in the company.

He first joined SkinIt by answering a Craigslist advertisement. It started in Colorado about five years ago, but it merged with the San Diegan company Cellfan a year later and moved to California. He’s been with it since the beginning, and currently he’s the Creative Director and the business is booming.