'Live from New York,' Overland Park Resident Emily Menez Works at SNL

ITHACA, NY (04/17/2013)(readMedia)-- When Overland Park resident Emily Menez graduated from Johnson County Community College in 2011, in her valedictorian speech she vowed to one day fulfill her dream of becoming a writer for the longtime television sketch comedy "Saturday Night Live." Less than two years later, she's already made huge strides toward making that dream a reality.

Menez is interning in the script department at "Saturday Night Live" as part of ICNYC, an Ithaca College program that allows students to spend a semester living and working in New York City.

A senior television-radio major with a scriptwriting concentration in Ithaca's Roy H. Park School of Communications, Menez said she chose to attend Ithaca College so she could be closer to her dream.

"One of the main reasons I came to Ithaca was because I knew that I wanted to work at SNL and Ithaca was a good place to start," she said. "When I saw there was an internship there I jumped at the chance."

Menez's main task is distributing updated scripts to the show's cast, crew and producers throughout the week.

"The coolest part of my job is that I get to sit in on the weekly read-through and observe how the sketches I've been copying and reading all day play out with the cast. It's exciting to see what the process is like."

ICNYC is a semester-long program that combines internships with classroom-based and online courses, allowing students to gain real-world experience in New York City. Students have interned at NBC, Rolling Stone and Seventeen magazines, the "Rachael Ray Show" and Madison Square Garden, among other companies.

Along with her internship, Menez is taking three classes: Sports Journalism, Urban Sociology in New York City and an independent study on writing comedy for television. She said the opportunity to take courses in a new environment has been beneficial.

"There's an advantage to studying something in person rather than just reading about it in a textbook."

Menez said her Park School classes and her extracurricular experience working on ICTV, Ithaca College's student-run television operation, gave her the skills she needed to be successful.

"Ithaca gave me a foundational knowledge and a place to jump off from, which has really prepared me for my internship."

After graduating in May, Menez hopes to obtain a full-time position working at "Saturday Night Live" and eventually become a writer.

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From day one, Ithaca College prepares students for personal and professional success through hands-on experience with internships, research and study abroad. Its integrative curriculum builds bridges across disciplines and uniquely blends liberal arts and professional study. Located in New York's Finger Lakes region, the College is home to 6,100 undergraduate and 400 graduate students and offers over 100 degree programs in its schools of Business, Communications, Humanities and Sciences, Health Science and Human Performance, and Music.