week 4

Week four at Unregular Radio has been a difficult one. I'm still doing well and I'm having a good time while i'm there. i enjoy being around all my coworkers, and it's not that the work load has increased, it's just different than what i've been used to. The station is going through an overhaul of the way articles are written, so what i've been used to doing has gone out the window and i've had to learn some things over.

Travel

Over the past week I have been traveling. I went to Long Island New York and then to Washington DC. According to my personality type I like to travel and do new things so I felt it was a must to do so. I will go back to my internship on Wednesday, even though I have been attempting to change my internship because a better opportunity for a business management major has arisen. Hopefully the kind people that make that overall decision can find it in their hearts to allow the switch.

Keep it,

G

Fourth Week

This week at the TR I got the opportunity to actually visit a potential new location so that the company can expand and take in new clients. We walked around the location and looked at potential pros and cons of the area. One of the main cons was the fact that the heating bill might be through the roof because of how "open" the upper part of the room is and it is a very large area. The biggest pro was definitely the location. It is in a very popular area and it is not too far from the first location. So having clients at both locations is not that bad because the drive is short. The main problem is now finding the right employees to take more clients.

I have now been given another project where I go through the list of people that replied to a survey. I take down their email and "comp" them a free outdoor bootcamp class. This not only rewards the clients that gave us feedback, but also gives them the chance to try out the bootcamp and potentially get them interested in purchasing more outdoor sessions.

I've been logging in hours from my computer which is nice, but I'd still like to go in more when I have time. Right now it's a little harder because I am in the middle of volleyball season, but I can make some early morning slots to help out. I am excited to get it all done and have done something quickly so that my supervisors feel like I am doing what they ask in a timely manner.

Thanks.

Week 4

Last Friday at my internship was definitely the best day I have experienced so far. After finishing my promotional video for the studio it was finally time to show it to my supervisor. I was a bit nervous because I have made video's before but nothing that was ever used in a professional setting. But immediately after he viewed it he had great praise for it and said it will be up on the website as soon as possible. He liked it so much that we will be using the blog to post weekly videos such as exercise of the week or different types of short fitness videos.

As I transition from that project my supervisor also said he likes my idea of a fitness competition help the clients train harder. I will begin drafting up ideas on what the contest will consist of and begin making a poster to put up in the studio. From there it will be all about signing members up and picking a day to hold it on. I hope to be as successful on this project as my last. The internship has gotten off to a great start and I hope it continues the rest of the semester.

Tough week

This last week, I was given the task of helping my supervisor with the mailing list and packing up all the newsletters to be sent out. Mainly it was very tedious and challenging to continually place labels on envelops for one whole day. The next day I had to continue to place the labels on the envelops and then take the newsletters and place them in the envelopes.

For the most part, I did not enjoy the two days while doing this but it does allow me to see what goes into organizing and sending out the newsletters to the individuals who are members. It helps me understand that it is challenging to do all these things for businesses.

Week 4

Things are incrementally improving at my internship site. I am gaining a better sense of trust and communication with my supervisor. (Because much of the time is spent on individual projects, it's hard to really get to know others. I've noticed there is a lot of bonding that takes place outside of the work place with different shows and events.) I am sometimes confused about how to spend my time, because there is not always something that someone else needs done. I think I need to find a way to spend my down time there more constructively.
I was given the opportunity to write an opinion piece on a topic of my choice. I was nervous about this freedom, because I was uncertain about how to write it. I settled on a topic (abortion in Virginia), but did not take the time over the weekend to draft out the piece. When I went into my internship today, I found out that there were new developments about the story and spent a lot of the time re-researching instead of drafting the piece. I was nervous that I was taking too long and writing in an awkward style. I reminded myself that this was my first piece and it isn't expected to be perfect. This anxiety is important to finding a writing style, but I shouldn't let it control my outlook.
I am looking forward to upcoming assignments. I want to challenge myself, but I do not want to take on more than I can handle. The assignment I just completed seems like a starting step to challenging myself.

Phone Calls

I didn't think the environment at my internship could get any better but this past week it exceeded my expectations. My co-workers showed me some events the company has done in the past and the raps that they have all come up with as the company "theme song". I couldn't have asked for a better work environment to be in during my internship. Everybody is always very motivated and happy to be at their job and cares about what they are doing. Everyone also knows to be relaxed and enjoy the day and knows when to take a break and to not just sit at a computer and stare blankly into it for a full day. Everyone is friendly and it makes it easy for me to get up and go to my internship in the morning and I don't ever dredge it.

This past week I did much of the same as I always do. I composed an email of the students of the week to be highlighted to potential host family and then was given a research project to keep me busy for the rest of my second day that I was their. I have been given research projects before such as finding different locations in an area where marketing would be most affective. The only difference of this research project was I was finding different rates for advertising such as newspapers, magazines, billboards, flyers, and pamphlet advertising. For this project I had to make phone calls on behalf of the company and discuss possible pricing points for the advertising. It was the first time I had to make phone calls at my internship and it scared me. I eventually worked up my courage and made my phone calls which ended up going much better than I could of hoped for. All in all last week at my internship went really well. My projects are increasing in difficulty and depth and I've improved on making my weekly emails in a more timely manner I get them done also now.

Week 4

            This past week was not too bad at my internship.  I finished the Powerpoint presentation which I believe turned out really well.  I interacted more with the other employees in my building.  I actually helped out the Sports Information Director at Simmons on a project during my Friday session in the office.  It was nice being able to help other people within the office.  

            I did have some trouble with dealing with my Gremlin.  Every morning when I get up my gremlin tells me it's okay to go back to sleep.  That is my problem, however I have been fighting the temptation of staying in bed instead of going to internship.  It is hard sometimes only because of practice late then having to wake up early.  

            I will be at internship for 4 days this week.  It is longer than normal so it will be interesting to see what my tasks will be during the week.  I have been doing a lot of payroll filing through excel, which has taught me a few things that I was not familiar with before starting this internship.  However I am hoping for a good week!

Blog #5 A Week of Bad Communication

I did not intern this week because the Cambridge Public Schools had a week off due to the public holiday of President's Day. However, my supervisor had asked me to work on Friday from 9am- 12pm. After showing up to work, I was informed by the secretary that she was out for the day and wouldn't be back until next Monday morning. I was a bit disappointed, mainly because of three reasons: 1) Waking up and taking the time to travel all the way to work, and being fully prepared to handle any tasks at hand, 2) I thought it was quite unprofessional for them not to at least call me beforehand to let me know that there was no need for me to come into work. An email or simply a phone call would have been appropriate, and 3) I disliked the fact that I didn't get any hours in for the week. Evidently, there was a lack of communication this week between the secretary, my supervisor, and myself.

Perhaps I should have called a day in advance to remind them that I was set to work the following morning. On the flip side of things, the secretary expressed that I was working so hard in prior weeks, (considering all the major events the school needed help with last week), that I deserved to get a break and spend time with my sister who is currently visiting Boston. Nevertheless, I hope that in the future, similar experiences like this would not happen again. And I also hope for a better chain of effective communication. I look forward to going back to work this week and I am planning on asking if there's any way I could make up for the lost hours.

Recognition

As last week was an eventful one at my internship, my patience ran out as I had a task that seemed too overwhelming at the time. Writing a whole entire newsletter for a large amount of people in the community was already a stressful job and to have it finished in less than a day seemed a little more than stressful but rather difficult and demanding. As I mentally overloaded myself all day, I finally finished the newsletter with a sigh of relief, but still felt under-appreciated for all the work I put in. As the weekend past and I received no recognition for finishing the job I just accepted the fact I wouldn't be recognized and let it go.

In class we discussed emotional intelligence, a skill that allows one to recognize their own feelings as well as others to, overall, best manage. It takes attention, memory and skill but I also realized the whole team, or group of employees, from intern to manager, has to each have emotional intelligence of some sort to successfully run. Everyone has different personalities, sense of humors, intelligence, and skills and in order to best work with one another they need to see the best of each person and appreciate them. I knew that my boss was busy and stressed out with much more than my little newsletter incident so I quickly accepted it and moved on to the other tasks I was given, but the next day after our class on emotional intelligence I had received an e-mail saying thank you for all the work I put in and it was greatly appreciated and necessary for the organization. That one sentence made me forget about the whole day, from running around in stress and panic trying to finish the task, but made me want to do the many more newsletters to come without fear knowing that I was supported and recognized and I was essential to building a better community and helping the organization. After all, I think everyone wants to feel that they are important in their own way to their job.

Week Four

     This week at my internship was a little more laid back than it has been before. The office was really busy so I was kind of in a position of keeping myself busy. I had previously been given some directions for ongoing projects so that is what I worked on. In an effort to do PR for our own company, I was asked to look up possible speaking opportunities for our CEO, Dennis, so I have been compiling a spread sheet of possibilities for that. Another related project I worked on was finding awards that we could be nominated for as a company. These are both things that I used to keep myself  busy but it is hard to work on this for a while because I feel like I exhausted my search after a couple hours.

     On Friday I did some research for another co-worked that looked at some of our competition and the strength of their websites.

      This week was okay but overall I kind of hoped that I had a little more to do. I still feel like I lack so much knowledge and experience in this field, especially for being in my last year of school. The thought of working at a place like this in the next 6 months seems very daunting and I don’t see myself as at all prepared yet. I hope in the coming weeks I am given more substantial projects so that I can learn more.

New Projects!

This week at my internship, I had finished transcribing about 25 minutes worth of video for part of Tuesday and Friday. After that was completed, I helped with development on a project by collecting information from various blogs and newsletters about facilities renovations. This information will be given to an organization who recently gave Citi Performing Arts a grant; we have to prove that this money has been spent wisely.

I was pretty proud of myself to be able to complete two projects in a matter of an hour or so. I felt that I had a lot of energy that Friday morning. However, this energy drained by around lunch time and I think it was weather related. My supervisor also gave me a big project: I have to find 1,200 quotes as to why the arts should be supported. I am not sure how long this will take, but finding that many quotes (even copying and pasting from the internet) is time consuming, not difficult. I probably will be working on this project for a couple of weeks. Hopefully my supervisor can give me something else to do as well because doing one project constantly becomes boring.

Now that the semester is about half way, I have completed more than half of my hours required for the internship. I will probably be able to have 120 hours in the next month, which will be nice. After that point, I am going to try and arrange coming in one day a week for a few hours because school will continuously become busy and it will be nice to have more time to dedicate to homework. Even if I finish my internship early, I do not think that dropping it off completely is a smart idea because I want put the best out there in case they want to hire me.

Working this Week

Wednesday was a very interesting day. I had so much work to do. I was basically in charge of trying to find interns and intern networks to advertise and how to appeal towards students and other people. I was given open ended control and pointers to direct. Unfortunately a lot of sights cost money to advertise for new hires but a lot of college networks look for companies that they can send their students to work at. I worked on that for a big chunk of the day. The second half we actually had to make a client follow up at a law firm not too far from where we were. We had to post placards for the paintings that were hung at the business. We are hoping that artists will be able to have their own at some point. We first had to head to fedex kinkos and get the supplies at the convention center on the seaport. On our walk I learned a lot about my supervisor. I learned that we had similar political views and I learned a lot about what he did for school and his family life.
When we got to kinkos he taught me how to print and cut the placards. A lot of this was to train me on how to work out in the field if we needed to. When we got to the business we had to begin finding the paintings on multiple floors and figure out which placard went to what painting. It was a fun and interesting process since it was in such a beautiful building at the trade center on the seaport. I went away with a lot more information.
On Thursday I had spent a lot of time back on the internship tasks. I also had my own suggestions for work. I was to update the FAQ list with current information as they haven't updated it since they were in beta in May. We also had a discussion about his advisor and how he needs to have someone on a future board that has a prominent role in fine arts such as a curator or director at a local museum. So i made a database list of staff of the surrounding museums. A lot of my work consisted of creating data and information. He also invited me to Startup Boston Weekend which is an event where you build a company over the weekend it sounded like a great event but by the time I was told it was the next day and it costs a small chunk of change that I didn't have.
I'm finding that I am developing a close relationship with my supervisor and I think he really trusts me. I do not want to disappoint him and I want to do the best I can for him. I am actually very much motivated to work here and look to more work in the future! Next week will be more interesting.

Same thing different day

As much as I truly enjoy my internship it seems to be very repetitive. I understand my responsibilities and the tasks I am given so I am now able to do them much quicker than my first or second week. This has unfortunately made it so I don't have as much work and a lot of my time is done keeping myself busy with small tasks in between my assignments from my supervisor. I am very greatly for my internship and the wonderful environment that I am in since I love working their I just wish I had more of a variety in the work I am given. The work is a large responsibility I just wish it was a different task and not the same thing each week. I;m hoping to as for a few more responsibilities or to be shown some other aspects of the company and maybe sit in on one of the floor meetings and try and get myself involved in other aspects of the company to learn more.

week 3

week three is the same as the rest of the weeks so far.
i'm still having a great time and writing and being able to flex my creativity by reviewing and previewing shows that Unregular Radio has put on.

the one difference that has happened recently was that my assignments have gotten bigger. where as the past few weeks i've been writing at most 300 words, but this week i had to do a write up for a festival that is happening at the end of march called LIFT FEST. i have to write 500-600 words on it. this wasn't crazy difficult, because there was a lot to write about.

i find it easier to do than actual classwork because everything i've ever done for any class has been busy work and it feels like the teacher is only assigning papers because they need to. but these articles actually matter and i know exactly what i'm doing and the reason for the articles is clear. it's a good feeling.

Not much happening

Hello dearest colleagues,

My internship has not changed much since the past class. I still sit in a chair and surf the web for whatever my site supervisor tells me to. I do a lot of looking on Global Edge and Inman News. I think these websites offer a lot of knowledge in the Real Estate world. The more I work in the field the more I realize why people say the Real Estate market is down. You can do a lot of busy work and not get paid. But if you are selling homes or space you can make profit. Your success in the market is the only way to stay and to make profit. My internship site supervisor moves too slow for my likings and I feel our personality types do not mesh and I am the only one making an effort to accommodate the friction. Overall though life is good.

Peace homes.

Week 3 At internship

Hello class i have now been at my internship for three weeks and i have enjoyed my time so far.  This week i created some flyers and tear off posters to help market our company.  Starting in march the apartment rental season is about 50 percent done and most of the rental activity happens between march 1st and may 15th.  As a team we met at the office and decided the best places to hang up these flyers and posters.  We are trying to focus on the college students so we thought about places they go most.  We choose to hang up flyers on college campus, bars, coffee shops, super markets, and food places that do delivery and we are in the process of trying to get our flyers sent to customers that order from these places.

Third Week

This week was a little different to the last at the TR. Basically, my internship supervisors decided that since I wasn't to accustomed or familiar with that my time should go into something else. I didn't feel that good about it because I was basically given a responsibility, but then it was taken away... so, now I'm on a different project.

Instead of designing emails for clients, I am now working on getting together 2 email addresses from 10 main universities or colleges in the Boston area. The criteria is basically for students that are graduating and might be potential employees for the TR. This is a great idea, but it's not that hard and therefore a lot less responsibility.

I didn't go physically into the TR this week, but I have been logging hours daily looking up the correct terminals to go through at different universities or colleges. I am also not really in charge of what goes in the email, I just have to provide the email addresses. Kind of boring.

I'd like to go into the TR randomly just to spend time there and help with whatever I can. I'd rather do that than just keep emailing back and forth a bunch of email addresses. Also, I can work out whenever I want there. I think spending more time with the owners will help to because I want to be able to provide any kind of help that I can, be it information about what a certain demographic is looking for, or just restocking the Gatorades in the refrigerator...

Thanks.

Week 3

This week at Fitness Together was more of the same but I am getting towards the end of my first assigned project. After filming a few of the class I have started to make a video that will be featured on the companies website. The main goal was to make a video that shows the personal side of FT Cambridge but at the same time is informative. I have combined images along with workout footage and even a personal note from the owner himself. This is a good first project because I enjoy doing things like this and hopefully my supervisor will see my skill set.

Since this project is almost done I have begun to discuss new projects with my supervisor. After some brainstorming we think I will be in charge of creating a fitness competition for available for any members of the gym. I will be in charge of setting up the whole event for the most part and I am excited for the responsibility. Hopefully this idea is appealing to our members and again it can be something to show my supervisor that I am capable of any task.

Internship Week 3

I do not have much to report on because I was sick last Wednesday and my site had yesterday (Monday) off for the holiday.

On Monday I encountered an issue that many journalists run into. I was asked to call restaurants the week before to find out if they had any special events or menus for Mardi Gras. Some of the restaurants responded right away and with everything they had going on. Other restaurants were not as compliant (whether they were busy or had not finalized a menu) had taken down my phone number and said they would get in touch later. I found that you do not always get everything you are looking for after a phone call (or 3). It is important to have back up resources and more information to work from, then to struggle to pull together information.
In relation to our discussion last Tuesday, I find that I have many fears that hold me back. Much of my fears are related to confidence and "not being good enough".  I am trying to combat these fears by getting a better feel for my environment and challenging myself with new experiences. I am currently working on creating a pitch for the upcoming print edition of the Weekly Dig.

Last week at Baystate...

I continued to sort the orphan client cases, but I have started to identify the larger more valuable  cases. It is still a pain, but at this point the majority of them are sorted. Hopefully this week I will start learning Smart office a program used by the Professional Development team.

This week was more or less the same as the other weeks. The work was boring, but the atmosphere was nice. My supervisor's birthday was on Saturday so we had a small celebration in the office for him. There was ice cream cake and I met more people around the office.

Internship blog post

This week at my internship I continued to work on my project the virtual tour of monuments for the Cambridge Historical Society's website. I went out again and found some more monuments, took pictures and marked them the map where I will use the map to show people where they can find these monuments. Unfortunately I still have not found all of them, I have to find three more which are located somewhere in Harvard and in Harvard square.

I'm going to try to find some research on these monuments to get a better understanding of where I might find them so I can finally start on designing my part of their website. I found out that this project is much harder than I previously thought it was going to be, but I feel that when I can finally work on it that it will be a very rewarding experience. I want to finish the pictures as soon as possible to work on the overall design of the website, because I already have some ideas on how it could potentially look and some of the features I can use for it.

Week 3

            Another week as gone by at my internship and I am still working on the same few activities that I was given.  My main project is working on the NCAA rules and regulations for recruiting and practices schedules.  I will be finishing this up within the next week.  During my time working on this, I created a calendar of all of the future games for the 2012-2013 school year.  I filled out the basketball, volleyball, tennis, soccer, and field hockey calendar.  Hopefully this week gets more exciting with the new tasks that I will be given.

Week Three

I had another good week at my internship this week. I had a lighter workload, but I also felt helpful. One project I continued to work on was trying to get donations from pizza and ice cream providers to give to local school winners for the Coats for Kids drive. I didn’t completely finish the task, but that was expected, and I did get some more donations as well as re-organizing our documentation. 

Another thing I worked on was for a new event we are working on for Belle of the Ball that is with Bloomingdale’s. This is a really great opportunity for our campaign. It is going to be a drop-off site for our dress donations as well as the host of a fashion show that we will be involved in. We are also trying to motivate 4 local schools to participate in a competition-like dress drive. My task was to look over all of the information for both Belle of the Ball and the Bloomingdale’s fashion show and compile a document that would embody all of that information to invite the four schools to participate and help. This is difficult because you want to both motivate and inform and it was my first experience creating an entire document like that.

I had some other small tasks this week involving our Facebook and other accounts, but definitely had less work than last week. I am still really enjoying my time at Fuseideas and the more time I spend there and get to know the other employees, the more I enjoy it.

Blog #4- Lunchbreak

Despite the challenges faced prior to my fourth week as an intern at CRLS, there has been a significant amount of improvement in my social and interpersonal skills. Part of the reason has to do with the level of comfort that is transmitted through the athletic department—from my supervisor, coaches, and the school's secretary, as well as student athletes. Last week, for the first time ever, my coworkers and I became very personal in terms of sharing with each other a little about ourselves- our backgrounds, our family history, and pretty much what our goals were in life. We laughed and told a few jokes, and overall just had a great time over our one hour lunch break.I have been often told by peers and college professors that it is not a good idea to talk about your personal life on the job, and that both spheres must remain separate. However, my colleagues are such friendly people and I couldn't help but answer any questions they had about me-- about my relationships with family and friends, what my interests in life were, what my home country is like, why I had chosen to study in the United States, what my plans were after graduation, my likes and dislikes about the U.S, and whether or not I was planning to return home.

I was asked a lot of questions. I was a bit uncomfortable at first but I figured that by having a new person from a totally different place interning at an organization, they were just genuinely interested in getting to know me. And through sharing my life with them and listening to theirs, I found it quite interesting that although we are from two totally different places ( the U.S and the Caribbean), we all share similar values in life- family, education, career, and happiness. In our last internship seminar, we spoke about negative (catabolic) and positive (anabolic) energy in the workplace, and I can safely say that I work in a very positive work environment. Everyone who I work with is very passionate about their job. Working in such a place contributes to how comfortable I am at the moment interning at CRLS.

Promoted

So this week was a much different pace than the last with all of the big events that we did last week. This week was all placed in the office. I only work 2 days out of the week so its not really that much work for 10 hours a week. On Wednesday I actually had arrived to the office early and began an assignment that was given via e-mail. I basically gathered a lot of the information on competitors and what press they were covered by as well as who were their investors. I pretty much created a database that whole day of that sort of information and how to contact the reporter. It wasn't a very eventful day so I don't remember anything else that went on.

Thursday was a different story. I started off again with the same task but the day soon changed when they arrived. I actually was tasked with establishing our wall (pictured above) with some art from artist through our service. I had to go through a list of artists and pick 1 or 2 to show there work at our business. I completed that. I was then tasked with cleaning the wall as it was covered with other art and objects and took pictures for the website so people understand the space better at our office. I actually got a lot of tasks done for the business and was excited to get a lot done today.

The most exciting part of my day came at the end. The owner actually asked if I wanted to walk with him to South Station from the seaport. It was a nice day so I thought it was a good idea. We actually had a big conversation about the future of the company as well as a lot of the goals, issues, and problems. We actually exchanged a lot of ideas on things. We actually came to the conclusion that the company needs a lot of help as it is still bootstrapping. He decided that he would like to give me a bigger responsibility and begin hiring interns and managing them. We need interns for programming our website and getting a lot of tasks that we need done sooner rather than later. I also brought to idea to have an updated FAQ as the site progresses as a lot of similar questions repeated and to also give a start up guide for any new employees or interns for applications and services they need on there devices and info for social networking. I would basically be a community manager of the business. I thought this was a fantastic idea and we are going to elaborate more. I do realize that I am still an intern at the moment but the possibilities of this relationship could be a lot more beneficial to me and my career path in the future. I am very excited to see where this opportunity may take me!

Meet my Gremlin

Well, as you know, you will be meeting my gremlin in class on Tuesday, but I found my gremlin revealing itself at my internship Friday, so I couldn't help but give you an early introduction of Penelope.

It all began Friday morning when I first arrived my internship, it was about that time to write another newsletter for the organization, a stressful monthly task that I'm only designated one or two days to finish. As the day continued my "to-do list" got longer and longer, my emotions began to over-work, and my stress was skyrocketing. I kept telling myself that all this work couldn't be done, I didn't have enough time, the work I was doing wasn't good, and I began to slowly break myself down inside. That's when I realized my little bundle of negativity inside me was my gremlin.

Penelope was the name I chose solely because it is a deceiving name, it appears as a nice and friendly name but once the pressure of work and life hit, Penelope goes into negative mode. As you'll learn more about my gremlin on Tuesday, I did realize that once I noticed what I was doing to self-destroy under the stress at my internship, the more I could let go of all the little negative thoughts and focus more on the work at hand. Maybe having a gremlin isn't bad after all, we all have negative thoughts when things get tough but if we recognize them it is easier to let them go and solely focus on the work that needs to be done.

The Perks of Citi Performing Arts

This week, I happen to have a lot of personal reflection time about my internship. What do I like about Citi Performing Arts? What do I dislike? How does it compare to the previous internships I have completed?

What I love most about Citi Performing Arts is the kind of people it puts me around. Citi is one of the top non-profit organizations in the area, so it attracts high quality workers. For one, there are highly intelligent. My supervisor, for example, studied at Harvard University. In addition to that, I have now attended three events outside my internship (a performance at the BSO, a Lenny Kravitz concert, and, most recently, a fashion show). I have noticed that the kind of people who attend these events and parties is what I desire to associate myself with. At my last internship, I was interacting with mostly criminals (certainly more than lawyers); they are obviously of a different class.

This past Thursday night, I went to the Liberty Hotel for an Addams Family inspired fashion show. It was an absolutely incredible experience. Before I went to the event, I had no idea what to expect. I ended up being very pleasantly surprised; as soon as my accomplice and I entered the hotel, we were literally blown away. The Liberty Hotel is a highly elegant place and there was SO many people:

Addams Family Fashion Show- Liberty Hotel

The picture located above was taken at the beginning of the event. I was on the second level with other staff looking down at the crowd.

Later on that evening...

I took this picture later on in the evening and clearly the place was packed!

I enjoyed going to this event for a few reasons. First, my supervisor and other staff members saw me in a more social setting. I feel like I have been kind of stiff at my internship for some reason (I did not have the same relationship with my current supervisor as I did with my last one). I have never been with staff at previous internships outside the site I work at. However, I think that it is a good idea so I plan on continuing this. I look forward to the next event.

Week 2

My second week of my internship has been equally successful as the first. Along with continuing to be trained by my supervisor, we have begun developing a new marketing plan. Our idea is to attract more clients to the PACK training program, which will bring in more revenue. For starters, I have started filming classes and will then edit the video to post on Facebook this way we have a more personal way of advertising to the general population.
I have also begun talking to a few new clients about why they decided to switch to Fitness Together. From this I can put the testimonial on the website as another personal touch. From these past two weeks I can tell my supervisor really values my input. This allows me to have more confidence and allows me to perform my best at any giving task. I hope to be successful in this project and will allow me to work on more projects through out the internship.

New experiences

This past week I was able to start my new project by making a virtual tour, I was told by my supervisor to go out and find the monuments that he told me about. I would then take a picture of the monument and mark it on a map which I will upload when every monument is cataloged.

This was pretty cool to do because I kind of experienced how much effort it takes to start certain projects at this historical society. Thats what I did not Thursday, but on Friday I did my normal reading and scanning the journals that they need to get cataloged online. So I definitely enjoyed walking around on Thursday taking pictures of the monuments, rather than sit all day but I'm excited to continue to work on my new project.

New Responsibilities

This week I was given a new responsibility at my internship. I am now given multiple city names in one state all surrounding a certain school district and told to do research on this particular area. The research I have to do involves looking at what the community has and finding locations we can get a hold of to meet new families that might be interested in being a host family for a foreign exchange student. I love being given a new responsibility and a project that I am doing on my own. It shows my supervisor has trust in me to do these jobs and thinks I can handle the responsibility of doing a job that will affect the entire work floor. I was really happy moving on to a new project from my last one but I am able to tell that the work I am given is also just busy work that not many have time to be working on.
I also started noticing everyone else's different work personalities. The work space we are in is very open and nothing dividing our desks from one another so you are always surrounded or next to someone. This is nice cause it keeps things open but also can be distracting. Much of the day many other employees are on the phone and some love it and talk loudly to customers but an employee that sits next to me talks very quietly almost whispering in the phone when talking to customers. Everyone is very good at respecting each other when they understand they need to have work done and to be on the phone but also everyone enjoys taking short breaks while sitting at their desk and talking to one another. This makes it so the work area is always fun and nobody is every miserable or lonely while at work. For this reason I really enjoy working at my internship so far since everyone is so easy to talk to and understanding if I am having trouble and need help on anything

Week two @ Realty Office

This week was great i attended a company meeting this morning.  In them meeting we discussed many things from our status of income to the new things we are currently doing to stay on top of market place.  So far in febuaary we are approaching recod seeting number in terms of rentals.  We are also coming out with new and innovative ways in which we can jump ahead of our competitors... but i cant say what they are sorry.  This week i also learned the real estate market better, the CEO of the company talked a lot about it in the meeting.  I learned the new way the market is heading and what must be done to stay on top of it.

Week 2

            This past week at Simmons I have been doing some of the similar things.  I have been creating excel sheets for the payroll to keep track of how much each assistant coach is getting paid over their time of work during the year.  It actually has been fun learning about how the assistant athletic director does payroll.  It has been nice learning her day to day activities that she takes part in.

            The new task that I have been working on is creating a powerpoint that will be shown to all the coaches to explain the rules and regulation of NCAA.  This is very exciting to me because I get to learn more in debt about the rules.  The two main topics is the recruiting rules and the off season and in season practice times and games. I have been learning about things that I didn’t know came into effect.  I look forward to my finishing of the project.  

Another exciting Week!

I finally got a computer last week. This is nice because as much for as looking through hard copies of client information, it definitely feels inefficient. Other than that it seems to be going well. I am getting the hang of the morning commute and slowly getting to know the names of more and more people around the office.

It is an interesting office setting. There are some people who are still working there that are in their 80's. I saw and old woman walking around and I assumed she was a life insurance or investment client. Turns out she is actually an adviser. The office diversity is good with a great mix of young and older employees.    

week 2

My second week at unregular radio was basically the same thing as last week with a few exceptions. I spent the week in the studio, writing show previews for events that were coming up that were sponsored by Unregular. A lot of shows happen at the same venue so it's a lot of copy and paste, but there is room to be creative in previewing what the bands are like and what the venue has to offer in terms of food and drinks and pricing.

What else is fun is that i get to record ad spots. i get to read scripts for commercials in between music that will be played live on air. This is fun because my voice will be broadcast to people everywhere, which is a cool feeling. I'm still enjoying my spot at Unregular, and I'm always excited to go into work every monday and tuesday.

Second Week

This week was a little different to the first week. On Wednesday I was able to take a group of my volleyball players and random friends to take one of the classes they offer at the TR. The class was called 50/50, basically we cycled for 30 minutes straight and then did body-weight exercises (stuff like push-ups, abs, squats, etc.). Some of us couldn't sit comfortably for a day or two, but we found that the more resistance you add the less it hurts your butt in the end.

I also started working on an email that will go out to their clients about their summer outdoor Bootcamp at a nearby park. This is exciting for me because I like working with advertising and think I can help them a lot with giving it a nice design. The email I'm putting together is through a website called www.constantcontact.com, they make it really easy to put together an email that people on their mailing list will actually open.

I was going to go look at potential locations with the co-owners, but there was a little mix-up and scheduling conflict. They are looking to expand because they have a lot of clients and if they take in too many they will have to shorten sessions with older clients and affect them negatively.

This next week I'm going to work on an email for small classes they offer. I look forward to hopefully being given more responsibilities, but I know that I have to put in more hours to get there.

I think the fact that we looked at personality types in the Meyers Brigs test helped me a lot because being able to determine what personalities I'm working with and how I can help mesh my personality as to maximize my effectiveness at my internship. That sentence was way too long.

Thanks.

sup homes

Working in real estate is exciting. This past Sunday my site supervisor and I went to speak with a woman at her home about the potential of selling her condo and purchasing another. Also we went to 3 open houses in the Cambridge area. Open houses are a great way to learn more about real estate. I like open houses because it allows you to walk into a space and for a brief moment decide if it's somewhere you could live or not.

Internship Week 2: Dig Boston

Things have been picking up at my internship as I am receiving more responsibilities. I am still not completely confident in the work that I have been doing, but I am becoming more comfortable in the environment. I have written a few brief articles, but only a few have been posted on the website. Here is the link to one of them. There was one instance where I had offered to help one of my supervisors out with a task to transcribe an interview, but I found out later on that I had not completed it diligently enough and ended up creating more work for her. This made me uncertain that I may be in the wrong field for my internship. The more I reflect about it, the more I realize that this is only my first internship and there are many aspects of it that I have yet to experience. I am considering ways that I can be more proactive and get the most out of this experience.

 I have learned that  I often have a difficult time speaking up and connecting to people I do not know well. I have also learned that in an environment with mostly writers, many people seem to keep to themselves. I believe that most people I am surrounded by are introverts which makes for a quiet environment. (There also seems to be more thinking than feeling types, because no one seems afraid to speak their mind). The environment is quiet, but it is not closed-off. The space is fairly open, people come and go as they please, and there are many collaborative efforts going on. The office is very "connected", as in everyone uses social media, so there is always a topic to discuss or a link to share. The overall environment is anabolic and there is a strong support system between workers and interns.

Internship Week 2

This past Friday was probably one of the most productive days at my internship; it was nice to finally feel like I was in to my work that I was doing.
During the first day of my internship, I was given a project that was quite large. My supervisor emailed me a list of about 130 art organizations around the Boston area in an Excel spreadsheet. I had to find out if they offered an in-school program, write a description, look up an address, phone number, and contact name of someone in either the marketing or education department. This obviously takes much time because each website is different; some sites are made better than others. That has been the most challenging part for this entire project.
I still have not finished this, and I have been at my internship now for almost an entire month. Data entry is not the most fun and interesting project to do, so I have been finding it difficult to sit in front of the computer for hours trying to complete it. However, this past Friday was different. For the first time, I was actually able to focus and get most of it completed. In addition, since I was on such a role, I wanted to stay past five to continue working on it. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to stay later because my supervisor was leaving. I plan on hopefully finishing the project tomorrow, and it will be a huge relief off my back. If I am able to focus on it tomorrow, it should be done in about an hour. Once this project is complete, I will certainly be a very happy camper.

Week Two

     This week at my internship was really great. Last week seemed to be kind of easing me into the job but now I finally feel like I am part of it. On my first day this week I was given a number of tasks that I would work on for both days. I had to call a number of businesses to try and coordinate pizza and ice cream donations for the prize winning schools in our Coats for Kids campaign. Another task was to edit certificates for all of the 250 schools that participated in the campaign. This task took me all of my two days in the office to finish. I also had to proof-read a few documents produced by both the CEO and my supervisor. This was an interesting task because it is a little nerve-wracking to correct your superiors’ work. As always another responsibility is to answer the phone, give messages, and make any calls anyone needs.

     This week was really important to me because I am finally feeling comfortable with everyone. I had a nice conversation with Dennis, the CEO on Friday and he told me that if I work hard and do a good job, this could be a possible job for me. This is both terrifying and very exciting. There are also other ways that I have felt comfortable with my co-workers; for example, having a casual conversation with my supervisor. I am so glad that I decided to do a full day (9-5) at my internship one day a week. I think that it has given me a greater opportunity to get a feel for the work day, and build stronger relationships with the people around me. I also hope that they see me doing a full day as making a commitment and taking responsibility. Overall it was a great week. I learned a lot, was given a lot of responsibility and feel more connected to my co-workers.