Internships…Not As Intimidating As You Think

My name is Abby and I am a Senior here at Temple; I am studying Advertising with a concentration in Art Direction. This past semester, I worked as a Graphic Design intern at the Alumni Relations Office here on campus. Up until this past summer, I wasn’t entirely comfortable or confident in my designing abilities and as a result, hadn’t searched for a Graphic Design internship. The idea of going to an internship and creating work for someone other than myself or a professor really intimidated me. Now that I’ve completed my internship, I can happily say that I was worrying over nothing. Supervisors understand you are an intern and that you’re there to learn, not create award-winning work; as long as you’re trying your best, you have nothing to worry about.

My internship was absolutely amazing and that’s partly because of the people I worked with. I worked in the Alumni Relations Office, but I mainly created work for the Event Team within the office. I worked closely with my supervisor who is the Coordinator of Alumni Events and Operations and I also worked with the Graphic Designer in the office. Both were incredibly friendly, supportive, and understanding that I am a student and therefore, not an expert.

Since I interned on campus, I was given a lot of opportunities to create work that I later saw on campus which was exciting. It’s one thing to create a design on Adobe and be happy with it, but it’s another to see your design around campus or at Homecoming. A few of the projects I worked on that were printed and manufactured are the Homecoming tailgate map, Homecoming A-frame signs, Tyler Art Market Map, and a few t-shirts (one of which will be for this year’s GradFest).

Not only was I able to create and assist with projects that I got to see come to life, but I learned a great deal during my internship. The critiques on the work I uploaded were extremely helpful and valuable to my learning. Not only did I learn and grow from critiques but I was also introduced to and learned how to use a website. Each day I came in, the Graphic Designer would assign me projects on Asana. This site allowed me to upload work, be critiqued, as well as give me the opportunity to ask her questions without filling up my inbox.

Throughout this semester I worked hard, asked questions, and asked for work when I had none. I gave my all every day I stepped into the office because it was important to me that I do the best I could. My drive and hard work paid off and at the end of the internship, my supervisor and the designer asked if I could stay on board for the rest of 2018 as a part-time paid Graphic Designer. I happily accepted and couldn’t be more thrilled to know that hard work and determination truly do pay off. I look forward to continue to work for Alumni Relations and am extremely grateful for this experience.