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.