Now Looking Back On It...

As we had our conference calls this week I had a hard time answering what exactly I'm learning. As I reflected on what I have accomplished in my internship I started to realize I have learned a lot, not by textbook definition but I learned more about how the job is done, how to work with others in a professional setting where there are goals and mission statements to follow, how to prioritize which project comes first and the responsibility of getting tasks done on time and finished in a professional manner. I have learned a lot that is hard to explain because there are no textbooks or lectures that could teach me this, the experience alone has taught me a lot about working for a non-profit organization.
My internship has had its ups and downs and sometimes I focused more on the downs than ups but in the end, after reflecting on what I have already done and learned at my internship, I realized that those ups and downs had taught me more than any classroom. Without the stress I experienced, at times, at my internship I wouldn't have learned how to work through the stress to accomplish the goal. I will take these internship experiences and lessons with me to the next internship and then further to a career and job outside of college. In the end I have learned so much, but trying to define what exactly I have learned wouldn't suffice.

Last Week

This week I began writing personalized thank you cards. The cards are going out to families who have already chosen a student to host and have committed to the student. The cards are all hand written and just sending a nice message to all of the families. I really like this project because it's challenging me since I am very self conscious about my hand writing so writing over 40 thank you cards a day will help improve my handwriting and gain more confidence in my handwriting. It sounds like a miniscule thing but it is something that I am happy and excited for. I have also still been consistently writing the email highlighting students of the week which is a nice constancy to have in a work place. I have also been getting a long increasingly well with my coworkers and my supervisor which is making my internship go by really easily and effortlessly.

Week 7

Finally after struggling through some small technical difficulties we are now effectively using our social medias at Fitness Together. Through the services at FYI Tag we have a Youtube, Facebook and Twitter account that we can share information with to our followers and potential clients. This is exciting because now we can really start marketing more and it will become second nature to me. Also another cool thing is my first video I made to promote the business was finally added to the corporate website to promote this location. The fact that something I created is on an actual website is pretty cool and I hope it can help recruit more clients.

Along with that progression of events we are now going to dive into a new project. I told my supervisor after college I want to start pursuing a career in training athletes. He then suggested that we begin targeting local high schools and conduct work shops with their student athletes to promote proper training. If successful this project could really be my first experience in the business and something I could put in my portfolio as I advance in my career.

Last week

Last week at my internship I had the task of doing some more scanning of this book for the new project that the Cambridge Historical Society is working on. After that I was asked to walk around Cambridge marketing and advertising for this new event that they are holding. I walked around a small area of Cambridge and asked local shops and stores if I was able to put up some fliers or had a minute to talk to them about this event.

I ended up walking from my internship which is on Brattle Street all the way to Lesley before I ended up stopping at almost every store and briefly talked about what the event was about. I ended up handing out all of my fliers and the extra postcards that my supervisor gave me and finished up at Lesley University where I gave my last two fliers to the Student Activities director.

Great Week

During this past week, it has been the same ole same ole at my internship.  I have just been finishing up recent projects along with helping with payroll.  This coming up week, I will be working more with compliance and learning about the roll that it plays within NCAA athletics.

            One very positive thing that happened last week after we had the guest speaker come visit us, it that I found out what I would be doing after I graduate in May.  I have received a Graduate Assistant job at a school in Kansas.  I will be getting my masters tuition paid for while I work for their college for two years.  I am very excited and relieved that I now know what I will be doing for the next two years, however having the speaker come visit our class room and really shared some insight into what I need to get to where I want to be. 

And the Moral of the Story is.....Network

I realized after our in-class speaker that in such a competitive job market networking is the utmost important factor in obtaining a job. It's more of a fact that people like to have something in common with other people, so with networking you can have a "mutual friend" so to speak. At the end of the speakers presentation the last thing that tied the whole presentation together again was "knowing someone always helps." I couldn't stress enough to myself that networking was the best way to succeed in my career, word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful weapons in the job market and many people trust their colleagues or friends when it comes to opinions. I also recently realized that, especially in my industry, there are a lot of networks in the business world; many people know of event planners or corporations that hold positions for event planners. By creating a strong network before I leave college I can bring that network with my into my future pursuit of a career, as much as this sounds like common sense I didn't realize how important networking is to today's job market and to be noticed and picked out of thousands of resumes and cover letters. As much as their are many other factors into getting a job it is best to network and open up your perspectives and connections into such a large array of job options, sometimes it's good to keep your options and mind open to new ideas and jobs, which is what networking allows. That way you can't get discouraged but always find a new goal or motivation to look forward to.

Week Seven

This was another good week at my internship. It’s interesting because there are times where I feel so busy and swamped with projects and other times where I can’t find anything to do. 

On Thursday my main task was to make calls for a co-worker who’s division is “new business”. We have a division from our company (FuseIdeas) that focuses primarily on marketing for Academic organizations, called Forge Academia. I hadn’t known much about Forge Academia prior to this project so it was great to do some research about what they do. Next I was given a call list and I had to call each contact on the list to follow-up to an email we had previously sent, introducing ourselves (Forge) to them. This was scary to me because calling strangers is always a scary thing, but eventually I became more comfortable with the script I wrote for myself and got even more practice with speaking on the phone, which I think is a very important skill.

Some other projects I did included re-working an Excel document, proof-reading, and calling to confirm donations for our Coats for Kids school winners. Working on the Excel document included updating the information on it based on a string of emails, and I also changed the layout and colors to make it easier to read. I felt a little nervous about this because it was one of my fellow interns’ work, but I think it was what my supervisor was looking for so I did the best I could with it. I have also done a lot of proof-reading while I have been at Fuse and learned that it is one of my strengths. It was awkward at first to have to edit and suggest changes to my superiors, but now I understand that they have a lot on their plates and that everyone makes quick mistakes. I think that I have a good eye for grammar and spelling as well as noticing consistencies or a lack-thereof and I have glad to have discovered this strength. Another small project was to confirm some ice cream and pizza donations for our top-collectors in the Coats for Kids Campaign, but this was is less challenging as I get more comfortable on the phone.

Overall  I think that I am continuing to learn a lot and find my own strengths and weaknesses through this internship.

Slow Week

Although I took a week off from working for Spring break there seemed to be even less to do this week. My supervisor actually encouraged me to go away for my spring break rather than having me come in. So this week was very light with work. Right now my supervisor is actually going through some troubles with his developing partner and is really focused on that.
The picture of the wall that I put up last week came out nice however we were missing the placards. I was actually somewhat shocked that when I came in they still weren't up yet. It had been two weeks and the placards should have been up right after the pictures were up. I was a little surprised my supervisor hadn't taken care of it. I had decided to e-mail the artist and asked if he would like to extend the date since it took too long to put up the placards.
I also had received several resumes submitted for interns this week and we finally have a first interview. The interview will be taking place this coming Thursday before our conference call. My supervisor will obviously be taking care of the interview but I was excited to accomplish this. Overall the main duties and tasks of the week was just a lot of database entry for publication art blogs and more internship opportunities as well as arts organizations. We did however have to talk about some points that he needs to review my postings before they go up as things can get a little lost. Overall it was a very simplistic week.

Blog #8 Quiet Week

The office was extremely quiet last week. But I understand because there had been a lot going on in prior weeks: facilitating the sign-up sessions for spring sports, getting students' paper work and various forms prepared; such as physical forms, eligibility forms, parent consent forms etc. This week however, was very different since everything had already been taken cared of. My supervisor was rarely around because she had to go to a 'state-wide' athletic director conference. Every year, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) holds a five-day conference in which all athletic directors in MA have to attend. Therefore, she left work for me to do along with a list of instructions. As a result of her absence, the athletic department's secretary was appointed to supervise me for the remaining week. Although my athletic director was not present, she called regularly to see how things were in the office and if there had been any progress in my duties.

On my lunch break, as I was going through my hours, I realized that I have three weeks and twenty-six hours in total left at my internship! I cannot believe how fast time goes by. I was a bit relieved but at the same time a little sad because I'm having so much fun working here. I could definitely see a drastic change in myself from when I first started this internship: I communicate more with other workers, I'm not as shy and reserved, I'm always looking for more things to do, and I'm simply just a happy team player. I wish I didn't have to leave so soon. Is it possible I could go up to 180 hours? ( just kidding). For the mean time, I'm just going to continue working hard and there's no doubt that when my supervisor gets back next week the office is going to be “crazy” again! But I'm fully prepared.

Week After Spring Break

This week at my internship, I finished the newsletter that took quite a bit of time. However, I was happy that my supervisor let me have the responsibility to writing most of it. The last news letter I only contributed writing for about three different sections. In addition, there was a conference that my supervisor was apart of this past Tuesday, so I only was able to see her for ten minutes. I finished the newsletter earlier that day than everyone probably expected, and did not have any tasks to complete after I was done. I had over an hour with nothing to do, so I just killed time on the computer until I had to leave.
Another exciting event which had occurred this past week at my internship was the filming of the show called Gilded Lily's. There have been actors and props all throughout the Wang Theater Grand Lobby, because that is where the taping is. However, since there is filming, many of parts of the building are inaccessible, which is inconvenient. Tuesday morning, I received an email from my supervisor informing me that I was not allowed to use the normal entrance to get to my desk. Instead, I had to navigate my way around the building and wonder if I was allowed or not. It wasn't the funniest experience. Eventually, I recognized another co-worker in a different department and asked her to help me out. We wondered around the theater some more and eventually got to the Marketing Department. After some failed phone calls, my other co-workers in my department showed up and eventually we finally made our way to the office. It was quite the adventure to start my morning.

Personalized Mail

The week before spring break I did much of the same at my internship on the first day I was there. I did my usual email type up and jazzed it up with some educational pictures. I started trying to become a little bit more creative with the emails because I figured if they bored people to read them as much as it bored me to write them then there is a problem. I knew they needed to be brightened up and more attention grasping so I began spending more time on filler pictures about the countries where the students that are featured in the email are from. I also had a few random odd jobs to keep me busy such as searching for a cheap leprechaun costume and finding somewhere online that sells chocolates individually wrapped in a bulk order of 10,000. On Friday it was much of the same with these odd jobs that were keeping me busy for a few hours until they gave me a job that I thought would be simple and easy, and I was wrong. I should correct myself though, the job was easy and simple enough but easily the most time consuming project i've ever done. I had to put together a large envelope of a shirt, water bottle, sunglasses, and thank you letter. It was all so simple but I had to dig for specific sizes of shirts in a room that looked as if it came off the show Hoarders. I then had to unwrap the water bottle and sunglasses put the sunglasses in the water bottle wrap the water bottle into the shirt and put them into an envelope, easy enough but when doing 24 in a row it can become tedious. After I had the envelopes set up I was told I had to hand write the addresses on each envelope which meant emptying the envelopes so I could write on a flat surface and then repackaging them. In the end the project took me hours with little problems coming up in between the project making it drag on for a very long time. While the project was ongoing I was getting annoyed of being stuck with grunt work but realized I needed to take a step back and realize what it was I was truly doing. I was setting up thank you packages to go out to families as a simple gesture from the company just to say thank you for there time and hard work. I also took time to realize that me hand writing the address and names on the envelopes was a personalizing touch which made the thank you seem more sincere and genuine to the recipients. By taking time and stepping back and reevaluating my project it made me really appreciate the company for putting extra time and personalizing things. It also gave me a chance to see why it is I love non-profits so much more then a large corporation for the main reason they care about there customers more than they do the profit. This project at the time was horrible but I am now so happy I was able to do and reground my thoughts and to truly appreciate all the little projects that are done to make the families we help truly feel appreciated.

What a Spring Break!

So when everyone was out having a great time in Florida, Mexico, or their hometowns. I was at my internship site every single day. Loving it of course, I typed numbers of contacts on excel, went to open houses, contacted people, and attend a marketing seminar. This was by far the best week of my internship. After the conference call, communication lines between my supervisor and I have opened. We have come to a mutual agreement. Working with someone who has the same goals as you makes it easier to come to work. Hope you all are enjoying your sites and enjoyed your spring break.

Sixth Week

I was asked to go into the TR this last week and I had no idea what I was going to be doing, and to my surprise I had the most fun cleaning things than I ever have in my life. They have about 15 or so spinning bicycles in the TR... I had to take every bike apart, piece by piece, so that Maren could check the tension of the bikes and do some maintenance on them. I then cleaned the pieces and lubricated them with some silicone spray. After that I cleaned the chains and re-lubricated them. After that I put them back together and that was that.

If Maren would have done it by herself, it would have taken her about 8 hours to get all the bikes done. Luckily, we had Derek, Heidi and myself helping her out, so we knocked it all out in about 2 hours.

An email went out today regarding the summer bootcamp. I was CC-ed in it because my last internship supervisor (at the Somerville Recreation Center) is very important to the city of Somerville and might be able to help make it be a co-partnership with the TR and the city of Somerville.

Thanks

Week 6

The week before Spring Break went well. I was given a few assignments and had less free time than I normally do. There was many little things to do, like uploads and writing two articles. I enjoy my internship more when there are things to do. I feel as though I have put myself in a corner in regards to not having a lot to do because I did not come up with a specialization.

 I feel like I have too much free time when I am there sometimes, because there are no assignments for me. I am trying to change what I do with my free time. There was not too much for me to do yesterday, so I decided to write up a CD review on an artist that's coming to Boston soon. I was not sure if they needed a CD review, but I came across something relevant and wrote about it.

week 5

my internship course has taken a turn toward the more independent end of the work spectrum. I am not 100% on my own, but for the most part i am now aware of what needs to be done just by being in the building. I now am in charge of using an audio production suite to cut live performances from hours of recordings of radio shows. it's finally getting to the point where i am doing what i went there to do in the first place.
i enjoy the writing end of this internhip, but i went there to help with engineering and that's what i'm helping with now. Also i have been attending events and helping out the musical director with promoting shows.

Week 6

My last meeting before Spring Break was productive. This was the first week that we began to film what will hopefully be our exercise of the week footage. We are still in the developmental stages of what will work well so we are doing a little bit of experimenting. First I was in the video and then my supervisor was in the video to see what angles we liked best. Next it was deciding if we should show snippets of a workout or just focus on one exercise. I believe if done correctly, this will be something that our social media followers will be very attracted to.

The other part of my day consisted of planning ahead after my return from spring break. We talked about our Fitness day we are planning for April 28th and what exercise we might hold during the event. My supervisor also informed me of an upcoming event in June he would like me to help him plan for. Such as, what would be most informative to talk about at a health seminar. I am eager to start back up this week and and hoping for continued success.

The week before spring break

The week before spring break I was able to complete one of the project that I had been working on for a couple weeks, it was the scanning and cataloging of the letters from the revolutionary war period. I was happy to be able to finish it because my supervisor than asked me to copy them for a person who was looking to get the scans of the documents. I was happy that I finished one of my projects because it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I'm also happy that I finished it because I now will be able to focus more on my virtual tour and website project. It will be exciting to be able to finally work on them and try to complete it in time before the semester is over. Although I've laid out most of the stuff I need to complete it, I still will have to work hard to make sure its completed by the deadline. I believe that I'll be completely focused because I enjoy being under pressure while working on projects.

Blog #7 Great Week

What a wonderful week! I decided to work over the entire Spring Break. After all, I had no special plans this year so I thought it would be a great opportunity to put in some extra hours, gain more experience, and to overall do something constructive and worthwhile. Consequently, it came as no surprise that last week was much busier than prior weeks. So much happened, but of course unfortunately I'm only limited to a number of words on this blog. Other than the successful conference call, there was one particular day that I would never forget. So it was a long day at work, and my supervisor randomly came up to me and said, “Hey Saffie, you know what, put the papers down, and come with me. We're going for a stroll.” I was like, “ Err....okay sure.” ( A bit confused). So we hopped in her navy blue Subaru and left the school. Come to find out, she wanted me to follow her to run some errands and show me the different facilities and stadiums that were 15-20 minutes away from the school; which I knew existed but had never seen or visited before. I have been to the school's basketball courts for games but not the football stadium or soccer fields. I thought that was very nice of her! I could tell she wanted to reach out to me and find out more about my interests. Because working in the office gets so busy sometimes that my supervisor and I rarely have the time to discuss other things. We went to a place called Russell Field. Russell Field is a huge stadium where different home games for particular sports take place: lacrosse, football, rugby, softball, and baseball. It is one of the most state of the art athletic complexes in the state of Massachusetts. And on our way there, she began asking general questions about my family, and what my plans were after graduation, and how's my time at CRLS so far. As we conversed back and forth, I did the same by asking about her family, her experience as an athletic director, and what her plans were after retirement etc. I felt very appreciated this week. I appreciated the fact that my supervisor took the time out of her busy schedule to get to know me better as not just an intern or a student, but simply a person. Her tips on life lessons were very forthcoming and I will never forget this day.

I Wasn't Prepared for This!

Last week, at my internship, was different than any other week that I have experienced. Both on Monday and Friday I went to events instead of staying in the office and as much as they both ended up being great experiences, at the time they were extremely stressful and a bit chaotic. Monday was the day United Nations Association of Greater Boston held their own event and I couldn't have been happier to be able to be a part of it, as much as it was a long day, but the day was calm until an hour before the event when everything seemed to hit the office at once. I needed to print out 150 copies of the event program and with our luck the computer and printer would not coordinate with us. It came down to 15 minutes left and finally the printer began to work and everything fell into the right place as the event went smoothly and was successful. There's no way to learn or train for a stressful incident in the office but I realized that the calmer I was the calmer everyone else was; maintaining your confidence and staying poised is a huge help when you're working with a team.
On Friday I worked the model UN conference at Northeastern University with a few of my colleagues and some other students involved in United Nations Association at Northeastern. When I walked into the classrooms in the morning I wasn't prepared for what I was about to do, which ended up being me sitting in front of 30 students (each representing a country) and helping the head "chairman" as she ran the model UN conference. Not understand one bit of the conference or how it was run was extremely stressful and scared me completely. Although, as I learned on Monday, by keeping calm and simply taking things one step at a time I ended the conference with much more knowledge and appreciation for the program as well as helped the event be successful.

Week of Spring Break

After three 8+ work days in a row during this past spring break, I am pleased to announce that I have officially completed the required number of hours for this course! It is a great relief knowing that my schedule is much more flexible now; as school becomes much busier with projects in my other courses, I do not have to spend as much time at my internship now. I will still be going to my internship each week, but I do not need to put in full 8 hour days (so now my Friday's will be freed up completely).
This past week has been really busy, and it doesn't feel like I have been on vacation. However, the hard work has been paying off and I was able to complete a huge project this week. It required much research, reading, and writing; I literally felt as if I was completing a large writing assignment for school.After about a week and a half, however, this project is now done.
For this assignment, I wrote a long essay about the Colonial Theatre. Why? Well, recently, Citi Performing Arts Center acquired this historical building, which has been temporarily closed down. On our website, we have a new section for the Colonial Theatre. Like the other theatres, there is an historical overview, and seating chart, and directions to name a few. In the History part, however, there was only one brief paragraph about the Colonial. On the internet, there is not that much information about the history, either. I read an entire book about the Colonial, and had to summarize it. The shortened version of the summary would be the copy appearing on our website! After the long version was completed, it was ten pages long. After about thirty minutes of editing, the content was cut down to only 2 pages. I had to make it more user friendly for the website. I never had edited a paper that much before and it was more difficult than I originally imagined. However, the final product came out well and I am excited to see my work online!

Week Before Spring Break

*I will be posting about my experience this week before spring break since I will not be there next week.

So Wednesday I actually came straight in from NH to my internship. I got there a little early so I just kind of relaxed and took it easy for the first half hour. A lot of the day was just responding to e-mails and working on document database information for internship programs at different schools in the local area. I actually left early as I was feeling unwell so it was a short day.


Thursday was much more of a busy day. It was also beautiful out so I felt very energized, invigorated and in a good mood. I spent most of the day setting up our wall with more art than last week. I felt very much accomplished. It was a lot of work but out wall looks beautiful and is now the cover photo of our facebook page! :D

There was a lot of trial and error to set it up. An interesting tidbit I should probably include that I had my first disagreement of opinion with my manager. If you can see below the middle photo there are business cards pinned to the wall. I have seen artists do that from my experience at a gallery internship that I had.  He thought it better to put them in a card holder on a table by the cubicle. I didn't think it was a good idea because they didn't know which artist the business cards were associated with and I had seen artists do it. Unfortunately I did not bring up this info because it is his space and I felt I have already made a lot of calls since I have been here and thought I started to look bossy.

But beforehand he was not there for a few hours so I had a lot of time to set it up before he got there and then I also cleaned up our mini office on the bit. I think between Spring (spring cleaning fever) and the energy drink I had I was just so energetic to do things. He was quite pleased with the new look of the office. I didn't touch his desk because I felt it could be seen in a negative way. (But I will say he has a very messy desk) I forget which personality trait that falls under but I am somewhat the same way and we get along well.

I also took this photo up above and put it on facebook, our page on our website, and twitter. I offered to blog about our first full wall of work and talk about the artists but he is working with his programmer out in Atlanta to get all that information to do it. Overall, it was a great day and I actually stayed a bit late. I am really enjoying it there and thinking of continuing even after my internship time is over.

Interesting Week

This week at my internship I started to work on the same project I had been working on which was scanning pages from their proceedings which are like journals of the Society. I had been doing that for part of the day and I was able to go to the Longfellow House and help the society by dropping some stuff off and explain to them what I was dropping off.

On the next day of my internship I was going to continue to work on the proceedings but I was given the opportunity to work with letters that are from 1775 and mainly the time period during the revolutionary war. It was really interesting to see something that was over 200 years old, and to be reading and handling these documents.

Fifth Week

It's been pretty exciting stuff for the TR this week. The owners sent in a proposal for the location that we visited last week. They are going to go over the numbers with me and basically show me how they came up with them and the reason for how much they offered. Although we think the offer is going to get denied, there is no harm in trying. Instead of asking for the whole building, they want to lease the firs two floors, which have a lot of floor space and would be perfect for another TR.

I had some trouble "comp-ing" the clients I was supposed to do last week, but I am on it now and should have it done by Friday. Because of some family emergencies, I couldn't go into the TR, but this week we are already talking about meeting on Friday to go over the proposal.

My supervisors are very busy, but when they set up time for it, they give me their full attention and have no problem, essentially, teaching me everything I want to know about a small business. I look forward to this Friday and then the time off for Spring Break as well.

I am also still working on getting that list of contact for potential employees. If they expand they need to hire more employees to take care of the new clients they are going to have. That location has a very prime spot where I feel like they will be getting a lot more clients than they have now. Asking for two floors was very smart.

Thanks.

Responsibility

            So during my internship the rest of last week, I have started to look up past records of athletes that have attended Simmons College within the past five years.  It has been a lot of typing and gathering papers.  However it is nice to be apart of a organization helping people out.

            So the good thing about this week is that it is Simmons Spring Break period.  I get to work from my dorm room and complete tasks for my supervisor.  It is nice to be able to relax at your own place but still get the work done.  I like the respect and responsibility that my supervisor gives me, I know that she trusts me to get my work done.  

Pressure

This week at my internship I did what I do every week which is to make the campers of the week email. I've mentioned this email in past blogs and in class because it is one of the few projects I am given but it takes up most of my time that I am there. The email has between 10 and 16 students per week, depending on who the company wants to highlight that week. It tends to take me a full day and some of a second day to finish this email and I have gotten increasingly faster on how long it takes me to write this email. This past week my supervisor asked me to finish the email in one day, I only had 6 hours to complete the email that need 16 students to be highlighted in it  and I panicked that I wouldn't be able to finish it in time and I might let down my supervisor. I was especially worried because I had never been given a deadline by my supervisor before and I wanted to ensure I had my project done by the time given.
As I started the project immediately getting into my weekly routine I feel a little bit about the project and not so stressed about the situation. I also was relieved when I saw that I had already highlighted about 8 students in previous weeks and only had to rewrite the description about the and edit it a bit where the other students I need to start from scratch so it takes a bit longer. Even though I felt some ease towards my project now I still decided to work through my lunch and finish my project as soon as I could. Luckily I finished the project, was able to add extra pictures and giving the email more personality, and still had time to spare for my day. I was proud of myself for finishing the project so well and quickly and it gave me a boost of confidence. It made me realize that I can do projects when they are asked for and that I am able to write the emails quicker than I thought possible. I'm really happy my supervisor gave me a project that challenged me and I hope I am able to have more in the future.

Week 5

Last week at my internship we had about an hour long conference call with a man who has created his own website. His website allows small business owners like my supervisor to group and control all their social media on to one website. This was important because with my help my supervisor would like to use his social media outlets much more for promotion of the studio. The meeting went well and now we can begin to blog, tweet and post videos or photos for potential/current clients to view. The next step will now be to gain followers and begin posting to attract customers.

Along with that we began forming out more details for our Fitness Competition we will be putting together. Already we have picked a date (April 28th) and a possible location for the contest. We also came up with the idea of making into an actual whole day event with a barbecue after to show the studios appreciation to their hard working clients. My main job for the event will be to create marketing flyers and posters and help my supervisor come up with the actual details of the event. I may even get to try out the competition to test if it will be good for the participants. I am excited for this and hope it goes well.

For Spring Break I will continue to shoot fitness footage on my travels and upload to the site as I am away.

The Hanging

So this week at my internship was a little more interesting. On monday we actually had an expert discussion panel at the Microsoft Research Center and the topic was pro bono talent. A city counsel advisor ended up sitting next to me and we had a discussion for a little while. One of his colleagues is in the panel. Finally my supervisor got there and as the panel started we kind of realized that this was more of a marketing tool for the company rather than an informational panel.
 Wednesday rolls around and it is actually a short day for me. Today is the day that the artist that I picked to hang their work inside our office arrives. He arrives around 12pm. I thought my supervisor was in the lobby downstairs but it turned out he wasn't. I had not actually hung work on this wall as this was my first time so I just introduced myself to the client. I showed him around and gave him ideas of where we hang the work and showed him a tour of the office. I ended up letting him know I would be able to hang the work. There was also a bit of a dilemma in that the backs of the work were meant for nails and we can only use wire hanger to hang. I offered to fix this problem as  I had some gallery hanging experience. The rest of the short day I began to prepare the canvas with the right platforming to hang.
On Thursday I actually spent the first hour waiting for my supervisor as he was supposed to bring a wire cutter for the wire. When he got here we finally got to work and we actually found the original wire cutter laying around in the office :P. I pretty much spent the whole day working on canvasing the work and then hanging it on the office wall which was a big task requiring a ladder, wires, and strategic knots. I felt very accomplished that day. The organization actually had a big party event to celebrate a new year of MassChallenge. They had live music and tons of investors. It was kind of interesting to over here the presentation and music as well as see the event and have some of the food. The activity we did was actually recreate our logo out of markers on the white board painted wall in the main foyer of our floor in front of the elevators for those to see our name. Definitely fun and an accomplishing day. I actually offered to stay an extra half hour to do that giving me less time to make it to my next class but I made it! :)

Blog #6 Busy, Busy Week

As previously noted in my last blog, I had the week off from my internship about a week and a half ago. Nonetheless, I was able to make up for the loss hours this week. It came as no surprise that as a result, it has been very busy for me during the past few days; which is most likely expected. As a result of that, I had a lot more responsibilities and was given a great number of tasks than usual. Rather than just simply working on the school's athletic database, I participated in other assignments such as helping the secretary to design brochures for spring sporting events, taking phone-calls and delivering messages for various athletic staff members, and I also assisted the athletic director in organizing and storing all the sporting equipments into the storage room: basketballs, baseball bats, tennis balls, uniforms etc. I really enjoyed the fact that I had so much on my plate this week. I got a taste of what it's like working a full day on the job, and the experience of being on your feet for so long.

I have the utmost respect for my supervisor because she is such a hard worker. Now I could see why she is always busy. I have also developed a new skill this week. I call it......*drum roll* “The Art of Multitasking”. Oh Yes! Keeping busy and doing so many things at once is actually rewarding at the end. I feel a great sense of accomplishment. In actual fact, I am considering asking my supervisor if I could take on additional tasks other than what I am currently doing. I really want to get the feel of what it would be like being an extremely busy employee. And I feel like I haven't fully experienced that as yet; only half way there. In addition, as we may have all been aware, next week is Spring Break, and I am also going to ask my supervisor if I could work everyday of that week. I am looking forward to working this week.

This week at my internship we started the recruitment process.  We looked up real estate schools in the boston area, and the day and times they offer classes.  We picked out 3 times that me and my site supervisor throught we peak times where the most traffic would be entering and exiting the schools.  We created flyers and printed out business cards that me and my supervisor can hand out.  We are hoping to convince people to join our company once they finish their real estate schools.  We picked out some points about our company that put us ahead of the competition that would attract perspective students to join our company.      

Week off at Citi Performing Arts

This week, I did not go to my internship because I was sick. I usually do not get sick often and I do not like missing school/work. However, I felt that pushing myself too much this week would have been a bad idea; therefore taking it easy and not going to Citi would allow for me to sleep more and get better faster.

As I said before, I do not like missing work. Making up work or school is the worst. Luckily I have plenty of hours (about 70 at the moment) so I am not concerned about making up hours in the future. I plan to stay in the area during spring break so I can go to my internship for three 8 hour days.

Currently, however, I am finding it difficult to blog because I did not work this week.If I did go, I would have continued working on a large project my supervisor just gave me (finding 1,200 quotes about supporting the arts). I am hoping that I would be able to find about a hundred reasons every few hours; if I work at an even pace, the project will hopefully be finished soon. However, what I learned is that projects usually take longer than originally planned. It is also more difficult to complete a project when there is no definite due date attached to it. I assume that this is similar to the way the working world works and I have to get used to it.

Week 5

The opinion piece I wrote last week was published in the DigBoston circulation. I was glad to see that something I wrote was printed. At the same time, I was disappointed that some of the points I had made were edited to say something a bit different. This made me curious about how the editing process works at newspaper sites. Since most exchanges of articles are done through the internet, there's nothing personal about editing (it may be hard to pick up the writer's tone, if you do not know who the writer is). I am more interested in how publications work (the behind the scenes aspects of the field).
Things have been going well over the last week. I have not been assigned any big projects. I am learning the ins-and-outs of the website and now it doesn't take me as long to draft and format posts. I have realized that I try to actively listen (ask questions, clarify) to what my supervisors tell me. I want to be able to get the work done correctly the first time, so I do not cause delays on anyone else's end. I want to be able to be approached to do more work.

Week Five

This week at my internship was great because I was so busy. I think that I thrive much more by accomplishing many small projects rather than getting longer, more tedious projects. This week I had one on-going project which was to seek out press for the Coats for Kids campaign that we just ended. Since this was our agency’s first time doing the press for this event, we wanted to exceed the amount of press that it got last year for our report. So my job was to go searching for mentions of the campaign so that we had more examples. 

I got some other smaller projects this week that involved writing emails, making templates and making phone calls. This all seems like really small stuff but I feel like it is a little nerve wracking to be the one representing us in emails or phone calls, so it is a big accomplishment for me when I feel like I do it well.

Overall this week gave me a lot of confidence. I felt like I did a really great job on everything that was given to me. I feel even better about the relationships I am forming at the office and I think I am getting trusted with more and more responsibility which is a little scary but exactly what I need. I am enjoying the challenges and small successes I am getting.

The Art of the Telephone

The telephone at my work terrifies me when it rings, someone asking questions and answers I never know. Then trying to understand their name and asking them to spell it without the person getting annoyed or frustrated is another mission I rather avoid.
As we talked in class about how to be a good listener I realized it works the same way through the phone, most of the people that call my internship are frustrated or have many questions about the events that we organize, and as the receptionist (sometimes myself) answers the phones first they are even more annoyed that their questions can't be answered right away and that their time is being wasted. But I think I finally mastered the art of listening through the phone.
I have started to pick up the phone in an upbeat tone and allow the person to ramble on with their questions, although I am usually never able to answer their deep and complex questions. Once they finish talking I repeat what they just said and explain that I am an intern and ask them for their basic information so I can quickly find the appropriate person in the organization to answer them. Although this sounds very basic and you'd think everyone already does this, that is not the case. As I kept answering the phone in this manner I began to realize the pattern of people on the other line who seemed happy that I sincerely listened to their questions and want to have all of their questions answered. That is how I mastered the art of the telephone.