Small Team, Big Lessons

Hello, My name is Oscar Kyron Holloway. I’m a senior advertising major with concentrations in media planning and account management. In my bittersweet final semester as a college student, I interned with the Cleveland Dairy Queen marketing team. Dairy Queen has always been a massive part of my life. My parents have been franchisees for years, so I could not think of a better way to wrap up this part of my journey than returning to DQ. 

This was my first internship as a college student, and I imagine this was not the most regular internship experience. I did remote marketing for local businesses, worked scheduled hours but also completed tasks on weekends as I found the time, and completed assignments from digital design to market research to consulting for franchisees running their own social medias. This internship was full of surprises and unorthodox work, but most importantly, fun and fulfillment. 

There were a lot of firsts and fears that I had to conquer when starting in this position, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. My biggest concern about working in advertising was the monotonous daily work on the same brands over and over again. That working for one client and on one campaign at a time would be a boring way to live for the next 60 years. That concern was tenfold when I decided to intern in-house. To my surprise, that concern disappeared on day one. 

The team was like a family, and funny enough, some of them literally were for me. Working on a small team and seeing the same people day in and day out really builds deep connections quickly. There was no shame or blame, but a group of people empowering each other to be the best versions of themselves they could be. I soon found myself not as an intern but as a valued part of the team, and that made every day so much more fun. As I said, I was concerned about the monotony of the work in-house, and so was everyone else. The team wasn’t just trying to get their job done; they were trying to make it fun. They would come into work every day with a smile, excited to come up with something new and refreshing because they understood that their passion would shine through in their work. That was a big lesson to learn, not just in the workforce but in life. 

I can approach every day as a student, a son, or an employee with this mindset of dreading the day ahead of me, or I can choose to attack the day to find joy and purpose. I know this is a lesson of a children’s book, but sometimes we really need to experience something in order to understand it. So, I learned some good and bad things. The bad thing is that every day can be boring and monotonous if I let it. The good thing is that I have a choice every single morning. The choice to be positive, the choice to be creative, the choice to pursue passion and love, and the choice to take risks. At first, choosing to put on a smile when I go to work didn’t seem like a risk, but eventually, I understood that it took a certain kind of person to do that every single day. 

So, if there’s one thing I really gathered from this internship and one thing I want you to take away from this blog post, it’s to be active in your life every single day. It is so easy to get lost in the routine of our everyday lives and only see the bad. So, I challenge myself and anybody who reads this to make a choice every day, no matter how small. Choose to put on a smile, choose to wake up early and get a coffee before work to start the day right, choose to take a risk and try something new, and choose to find happiness and fulfillment in every moment.