Rewarding Work Comes When You Push Yourself Outside of Your Comfort Zone
Being a dual major in Criminal Justice and Advertising with an Art Direction Concentration has proved rewarding yet confusing. Finding internships and jobs that fit one or both of my “titles” has proven complicated, but fun!
I am a junior Art Direction major at Klein and I absolutely love it. I am currently interning for a local Berkshire Hathaway branch. I do many things in this position including creating graphics, editing the website, doing home walkthrough videos, running social media, and doing trend research. I also help out with miscellaneous things that my coworkers need. The image above is one of the first local event graphics that I created for our social media pages. Business name and branding has been cropped out for privacy purposes.
This experience has taught me a lot about many things. It has not only showed me how to communicate with others when not working in an office, but also how to manage my time with so many other tasks needing attention. It has shown me what professionalism is and has given me newfound confidence in my work and abilities. Because of this internship, I now know that I am very passionate about graphic design and digital marketing. I have determined that at the very least, I would like to be doing graphic design and social media marketing as a freelancer on the side.
Through this business I have discovered many positive things. I have discovered new marketing tools and platforms that can be utilized to make, plan, and schedule content. I have taught myself so much as well. I learn every day how to research social media trends and how the real estate world should and does appear on these platforms. To me these skills are priceless.
I have met people that inspire me while working with Berkshire Hathaway. My boss is absolutely amazing. She is a hard-working and determined individual with so much intelligence. I value her opinion more than words can say and I truly enjoy working with her. She has been very generous and willing to give me any support that I need and she never fails to provide me with a challenge. I like being challenged so being presented with these tasks that my boss knows I can figure out and has faith in me to do is very rewarding.
This experience has differed from my original expectations. Although I am not quite sure what I was expecting, I sure wasn’t expecting to be working on the company website, doing video walkthroughs of homes, and using real estate platforms to market the company. I figured I would be simply running the social media accounts for the company, but what I am doing makes me genuinely excited and so happy that I have this opportunity.
If I could give anyone advice for looking for an internship or starting an internship it would be to keep an open mind and be willing to take on things that you might not know how to, but also be willing to ask for help when you need it. Internships tend to show up in unexpected places and in unexpected times, but that does not make the experience any less valuable. I have truly enjoyed my time with Berkshire Hathaway and look forward to continuing work with my boss in the future.
Hey Nicole, I would like to start by saying this is a great post! I think it’s extremely important to experience things outside of your comfort zone, especially when we’re at this critical point where we are trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives. This is why your title sort of hooked me. I find it very interesting that you ended up interning with a real estate company when that doesn’t seem like a intersection crossroad between your two majors. You’re high praise of your boss really cements the fact that it seems like you really enjoyed your time at Berkshire Hathaway. If you hadn’t stepped out of your comfort zone like you said then, you wouldn’t have had the great experience at Berkshire Hathaway. You end your post with some of the most important advice that anyone going into any field should heed. Keeping an open mind is extremely important in any situation. Being closed-minded can deny you many great things like new ideas, good experiences, and other things. I had to keep this in mind going into my first internship in this field and it turned out to be a great experience, so it was great to hear you say that. Again, great post!