Genji On Ice 2016
Nearing the end of the semester, approaching my official graduation has been unreal. My internship as Genji’s graphic design intern consumed my life this semester, in the best way. This internship, and a pesky GenEd were all the credits I needed to fulfill in order to graduate this December. I worked at my internship 4 out of 5 days of the week, it felt like a real job. I think it really helped me transition from that college student mindset to the working adult mindset without me even realizing it.
Genji has this “Great Places To Work Initiative” set in place where every Friday they pick a movie and the employees can watch during their lunch break. Coincidentally, Friday was the one day of the week when I didn’t go into the office. But just because I always missed out on the movie, it didn’t make it any less of a great place to work. In fact, I always had a blast in the office. Two guys from the IT Department started a push-up contest where youc start at 1 on the first day, and each day after you have to do 1 more push-up than you did the day before. I joined in, enthusiastically at first, until I wasn’t.
There was that other time when me and the two guys from IT decided to go ice skating at Dilworth during our lunch break, calling it Genji On Ice. I feel like I’m finally starting to make a place for myself here, I’m making friends too, which is always important. But between the Starbucks/La Colombe coffee trips and going to the kitchen every half hour to see what snacks are up for grabs it’s still work, work, work. I’ve had my busy days where my project list is at least 20 items long.
A couple weeks ago the Creative team booked a conference room all day from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm to brainstorm new branding concepts for 2016 for our in-store visual merchandising. Our Creative Manager gave us a week to do our research on design trends for 2016 and then come up with mood boards based off of our different concepts. We put our ideas together the brainstormed the best design styles to move forward with for our drafts. Each creative team member was given a couple design concepts each, and from that we had to create mock-ups of in-store signage based off these styles. It was probably my favorite day so far. (and not just because breakfast and lunch was catered to us) but it was so much fun being able to brainstorm together as a team. There isn’t a lot of opportunity for us to work together because we are usually wrapped up on our own projects. I’m very thankful for my creative team though. As busy as they are, they have been nothing but patient and supportive with my questions.
Just as I’m starting to get the hang of everything, I’m not ready to leave. I believe there is a lot of opportunity for me to grow here. I’ve already grown so much as is. I have been offered a position here at Genji after I graduate and I was more than happy to accept.
I kept saying how lucky I was to have gotten this incredible internship and to have gotten offered a position after graduation. Along with that, I kept getting scolded by my friends, telling me it wasn’t luck. Reminding me how talented I am and the position that I am in is because I earned it. And they’re totally right.
