My first week and I’m already doing the Newsletter?!

I’m Amber Volponi, a senior and an intern at Temple University, College of Health Professions and Social Work in the Communications and Marketing Department. I got my own computer on my own desk, in my own office with my own key. But with that responsibility came jumping right into work very fast.

My first week and I’m already working on the newsletter. Not having a clue who anyone in the office is,  I set to the task at hand. I decide that I’m going to start with the template, and work from there first. I can at least just start to build the outline of the newsletter and get the information once I’m done. That took me all of 30 minutes to manipulate the previous version for my purposes. Christine Mora, the Communications and Marketing Director (and the only person who is actually in the Department of Communications and Marketing) sent me a few articles and ideas for the newsletter. After about an hour, I had a solid start. Since this was going to be the Graduation 2011 Edition (Congrats to all those graduates, by the way), I was going to have to do several pages of pictures from the two ceremonies, the main one and the College of Health Professions and Social Work one. That took me the most time while working on the newsletter. I did 3 and half pages in Adobe Photoshop, which Christine had gotten installed on my computer. I was very thankful to have some programs to work with that I was completely comfortable with.

After about 3 days of working on the newsletter, I finally had finished it. Only thing missing was the Dean’s Message, which Christine was going to add before she sent them out. I felt very accomplished to have my own work shared with the entire College on my very first week! I hadn’t expected that, at all; didn’t even enter my mind that my work would be seen. I don’t know why I would even think that, but I’m very happy with the end result. This newsletter gave me an insight on what  was important to those who worked in this office; they shared stories of what was happening within each of their own departments, sharing news of those receiving awards, and important news they thought needed to be shared with the rest of the office. It was interesting to see, even with the vast amount of departments, how everyone seemed to work independently, but also dependent on each other. I had worked within Temple before, and I was used to this kind of dynamic, but it was different. I only really had major interactions with Christine, but every now and then someone would stick their head in my door and have a 5 minute conversation with me (which is very distracting at times, because I get sidetracked easily).

I love working within a small department (seeing how Christine and I make up the entire Communications and Marketing Department), but I would prefer to work with a few more people. I feel more comfortable being in a smaller work community than a larger one. Its easier for me to feel comfortable and do my best work.