Summer 2019 has been a wild ride for sure, it’s not only helped my personal life but also my professional life. As senior year is about to start, I found myself needing to do more than just work a summer job – something that can help build my resume and help create contacts for the real world. With that being said, I applied for an internship and I couldn’t be happier. Over the past 2 months, I really learned a lot about myself in the workplace as well as what I want to do as a profession. Let’s jump right into what my internship has taught me…
#1 Criticism can be your worse but your best friend
As I’m not going to name the company I was at due to any legal issues and also privacy issues, I learned that people here can take whatever project you worked on and give you what you might think is harsh advice… but really probably the best advice because they’re just giving you tips on how you can improve on any assignments going forward – which I really respected.
#2 It’s okay to feel like you’re not the best
A difficult part for me throughout the last two months is feeling like I wasn’t good enough for certain tasks given to me – whether that’s writing a press release about teachers involving social media into their lesson plans or writing content calendars for companies you have no idea what their message was. The lesson I had to learn was as long as you’re giving it 110% of your effort, it doesn’t matter how long it took you or how it made you feel like you couldn’t do the job, you finished the task as best as you can.
#3 Work environments are really important
It doesn’t matter if it’s an internship, a full-time/part-time job, or anything else, work environments are super important as it not only affects how you work but it reflects what type of company you’re working for. I have to say the employees at my internship were quite, but I respected that because they were getting a lot done for the company and personally if I was in a setting where it was super chaotic all the time for no reason, I wouldn’t be able to thrive as well compared to a setting where it was quiet.
#4 Being a good decision maker is key
I say this because from what I experienced/saw – 8 out of 10 times, you’re gonna have to go off on a whim for a decision you’re not sure about. Making a last-minute decision for a client’s project is risky but it can often lead to good as it can be fresh and interesting. Honestly, this can go for any profession as everyone has to take risky chances.
#5 Having a positive support system and attitude can get you far
My time at my internship I’ve seen enormous support from one another from tiny issues – such as a little typo on a post to big issues – such as an entire website being down for a couple of hours that had heavy traffic. I can tell that everyone had each other’s backs and wanted the best for one another – which is really refreshing to see especially during the times of social media where everyone is knocking one another down.
I can honestly say that although I didn’t receive payment nor credit for this internship, it was one of the best decisions I ever made – not only is it helping me with my resume but I learned a lot just by being hands-on and learning from a real digital marketing point of view. Education in this field is really important and I’m grateful that I minored in this. However, being in person working on assignments for different companies that vary from a dream app to a fish company and everything in between has made me realized that there’s a lot more than what meets the eye when it comes to running a company, I only dived into the advertising aspect – I can only imagine what the rest is like.
Kaela Brandi 