Advice, Thoughts, and Feelings for First Time Interns

I am interning at This is it Network and am on the social media team. Some of my tasks include, creating graphics for clients, writing captions, and engaging with our audience on social media.

What This Experience Has Taught me:
Going into this internship, I was super nervous as this was my first real world experience in a field, I’ve looked forward to working in for a while. I’ve learned countless things in a short amount of time that I know will benefit me moving forward.

1. Time management. Taking 18 credits along with having an internship calls for my time management skills to be very good. I’ve navigated how to effectively plan out my week to ensure all my work gets done. I’ve found that writing a to-do list each day with the tasks I want to complete that day has helped me the most. Also, each Sunday night I would look at all my tasks for the week to get an idea of how busy the week was looking.

2. Creativity. Being on the brand strategy and research track I prefer to be on the strategic side rather than creative side. However, this internship has taught me that I do find creating graphics to be enjoyable. Having to create graphics for two completely different clients has also pushed me outside of my comfort zone to come up with cool and new ideas. I have gotten to experiment a lot of with Canva and test out all the tools on there.

3. Communication Skills. This internship has enhanced my communication skills as I had to efficiently communicate with the content manager each week when it came to my tasks. Communication is such an important skill to have when going into the work field so having gotten to work on it now was super beneficial to me.

Advice:
As I mentioned above, I was super nervous going into my first internship. However, I encourage anyone going into their first internship to be as open-minded as possible. It is a scary feeling knowing people are relying on you to complete a task, but each person is there to help you succeed and answer any questions you have. Most times as an intern you aren’t left alone to figure everything out on your own.

Also, I’ve learned way more than I had even expected from this experience, so the nerves make it worth it. As you go through your internship, you will start to feel more comfortable and confident in yourself and your ability to complete the tasks well. Overall, any intern opportunity is amazing as it will give you insight into what your future career could look like!