by William Needham Finley IV™

Broughton Intern Passes with Flying Pastel Colors

in Broughton/Humor/ITBNN by
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I needed help. It was late April and I was drowning under the demands of running a media empire, getting ready to attend the Fyre Festival, editing the Development Beat, and answering 50 messages a day from people in micITBit, a secret closed Facebook group for moms that I had just accidentally started. It was all so overwhelming that I was stress eating an entire Capital Creations Sunday night anxiety pizza in one sitting. And then it happened.

The divine power that is Broughton High School intervened. Broughton’s internship coordinator reached out and asked if I would like to have an intern during the upcoming school year. It was fate. This was potentially the answer to maybe one or two of my problems, depending on how capable this high school student was. I immediately said yes and met with the coordinator, who informed me that she had selected the perfect candidate for my growing media empire. His name was Blake and he was a rising senior.


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Over the next few months I continued to expand the media empire with appearances on Andy Cohen’s tv show on BRAVO, being featured in Vanity Fair, and doing interviews with hundreds of outlets (including a 7 minute TMZ Live interview with my ITBFF Harvey), while Blake spent the summer globetrotting around Europe and a few other countries that I already forgot. By last week he was ready to start his first day at the ITB Insider™ media empire.

We had a plan for Blake. We were going to teach him about advertising rates, sponsored posts, how to monetize social media accounts, and much more. But before that could happen we had to make sure he was someone we could ITBelieve in. The first thing we did was make him take a quiz about Broughton. Seriously.

First Week Pop Quiz

I asked my followers for question suggestions the night before the quiz and got so many amazing responses that we’ll be launching an ITB quiz series. Feel free to submit more questions to wnfiv@itbinsider.com. We didn’t want to overwhelm Blake on his first day, so we kept the quiz to 16 questions. The answer key is at the bottom of this post.

Pop Quiz – Week 1 – August 30, 2017

1.) What year was Broughton founded?
a.) 1987
b.) 1929
c.) 1776
d.) 1969

2.) What does the middle initial “B” in the school’s name stand for?
a.) Bae
b.) Beltline
c.) Bryant
d.) Basic

3.) What floor is the pool on?
a.) Basement
b.) First floor
c.) Second floor
d.) Fourth floor

4.) What was the nickname of the lovable unofficial mascot who rode his bike to every home and away game, had killer dance moves, and played guitar?
a.) Dash
b.) Flash
c.) Crash
d.) DSart

5.) What is the greatest band from Broughton?
a.) The Connells
b.) The Village People
c.) Dishwalla
d.) Chatham County Line


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6.) How many points did Shav score when he broke Pistol Pete’s all-time single-game scoring record?
a.) 44
b.) 42
c.) 56
d.) 70

7.) What is the maximum distance Colonel Barber would chase a student attempting to skip school?
a.) 4 blocks
b.) 1 mile
c.) 3 miles
d.) To the end of the Earth

8.) What is the senior tradition involving the bell tower?
a.) Students are locked in the bell tower for two weeks without food or water. The survivor is named Valedictorian.
b.) Students get to go inside and sign their name on the wall.
c.) One student is chosen to live in the tower for the entire year.
d.) Students are allowed to take a rappelling course where they rappel down the bell tower.

9.) What TV show was Broughton graduate Sharon Lawrence on?
a.) NYPD Blue
b.) Pacific Blue
c.) The Big Bad Show
d.) Game of Thrones

10.) How much time does it take to drive from the flagship Bojangles’ on Western after Friday morning breakfast and still only be 3 minutes late to Caps Class?
a.) 5 minutes
b.) 9 minutes
c.) 12 minutes
d.) 15 minutes

11.) What TV show was Broughton graduate Colin Fickes on?
a.) Dawson’s Creek
b.) One Tree Hill
c.) Boston Public
d.) Law & Order


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12.) How many state titles has NC Soccer Hall of Fame Coach Izzy Hernandez won?
a.) 7
b.) 2
c.) 3
d.) 11

13.) Which movies did Broughton graduate Peyton Reed direct?
a.) Ant-Man
b.) Yes Man
c.) The Break-Up
d.) Bring It On

14.) How many times did Coach Hernandez’s teams finish ranked number 1 in the NATION?
a.) 0
b.) 1
c.) 2
d.) 3

15.) What does AC stand for?
a.) Air conditioning
b.) Algebra Club
c.) Albert Clifford
d.) All Clear

16.) Finish this sentence: Approve ye that which is…
a.) Gnarly
b.) Excellent
c.) Average
d.) Whatever

We then went over a few personality questions.

What’s your favorite ITB street to drive on?
Oberlin

What’s your favorite ITB ZIP code?
27605

If you could be a Dog of ITB (follow @dogsofitb), what type of dog would you be and why?
Husky, because they’re like an icy German Shepherd.

If you were to create a slogan for your life, what would it be? (Example: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.)
Be chill or hype but never anything in between.

Favorite floor of Broughton?
The pods

We reviewed his answers and after a long deliberation we decided that he was fit to work with us. To stay on #brand we renamed him ITBlake and held an ITBaptism using Pamplemousse LaCroix to make it official.

It was time to introduce ITBlake to the world. We took the required first day at the ITB Insider™ media empire picture and posted it online.

What we didn’t plan on was ITBlake becoming an overnight sensation. People went nuts.

In less than a week, ITBlake’s picture became the 5th most liked picture on my Instagram in the last YEAR. That includes all the pictures of Fyre Festival (which I went to), pics of Webb Simpson, and pics of Trophy Wife sunsets (#followthesun).

Fame

Seeing that type of boy band level hysteria made us realize we needed to leverage this opportunity. So, in addition to his normal duties of making sure our LaCroix is always 42 degrees and learning how a media empire works, we are now going to make ITBlake famous. We created @ITBIntern Twitter and @ITBIntern Instagram accounts for him and have added “Make dank memes” and “Get 1,000 followers” to his learning objectives.

We hit our first teachable moment when we let ITBlake choose his own profile picture for Instagram.

While we applaud ITBlake for combining American flag Chubbies shorts with the beltline and the North Carolina flag, we were concerned people wouldn’t believe this was an ITB approved account. What ITBlake didn’t realize is that there are a lot of knock-off ITB accounts out there, some that even use our own logo to try to gain followers by riding our coattails. We had to make sure he was staying on ITBrand, so we did an entire logo overhaul for ITB Insider™. The graphic design work was done by Broughton graduate Katie Bryant, which is why it looks so amazing. We’ve also partnered with her and Southern Ego Clothing, a company run by Broughton graduate Roshad Williams, to make sure you can get these logos on every piece of clothing you could ever dream of. More on that coming soon.

Our new ITBrand

We’ve been recording these teachable moments with ITBlake and plan to launch a podcast in the next few weeks. This is going to be the most entertaining internship ever. Everyone please join us in welcoming ITBlake to the team. Follow him on Instagram. Like everything that he does. Make him famous.

If you have any suggestions on things that ITBlake should work on, please e-mail him at intern@itbinsider.com.

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First Week Pop Quiz Answer Key

1.) b. 1929
2.) c. Bryant
3.) d. Fourth floor
4.) b. Flash
5.) either a. The Connells or d. Chatham County Line were acceptable
6.) c. 56
7.) d. To the end of the Earth
8.) b. Students get to go inside and sign their name on the wall
9.) a. NYPD Blue
10.) b. 9 minutes
11.) this was a trick question, as Colin Fickes was on all of these shows
12.) d. 11
13.) another trick question, as Peyton Reed has directed all of these movies
14.) c. 2
15.) b. Algebra Club
16.) b. Excellent

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