Three Days In

Fair warning: this is going to read like I’m showing off. Because I am.

Three days into my apprenticeship at Aperto and I’m already writing the most embarrassing post this journal has ever seen. Aperto is one of the leading web design agencies in the country. A few months ago I was washing dishes and delivering pizzas. These aren’t exaggerations. The jump from that to sitting in the creative department of a real agency—eating free breakfast every morning, working on a G4 Power Mac that’s about to be swapped for a brand-new iMac—is the kind of thing I can’t describe without sounding insufferable, so here we are.

My fellow apprentice Thomas got taken on alongside me. Good guy. From day one we were being walked through meetings, workshops, and presentations together, alongside a small intern named Arabella. Everyone here is genuinely welcoming. Free daily breakfast is apparently just a standing thing. I keep waiting for the catch.

Monday vocational school starts. Tonight there’s a ZDF party—Aperto built the new ZDF Mediathek streaming platform, so the whole agency’s invited. Business cards are apparently also coming, at which point I’ll officially have to stop pretending this isn’t real.

Everyone keeps mentioning what comes next: real projects, real deadlines, the kind of sustained pressure that makes free breakfast feel less like a perk and more like a coping mechanism. I’m ready. Or at least I want to be, and right now that feels like enough.