The Propulsion Media Lab Intern Experience

The Propulsion Media Lab Intern Experience

So far it’s been a pretty positive experience. This is my first internship experience ever and I’ve never worked in this type of job before and I’m finding the differences between an establishment such as this in comparison to the minimum wage jobs that I’ve worked in the past. The most major difference is that we are given the run of the building with a lot of freedom to follow employees or doing assigned tasks given to us by employees. There’s a lot of respect going around, where in contrast, I’ve worked at minimum wage jobs and there’s rarely any respect and even less communication. In the past I’ve seen workers get treated like cheap labor which reflects negatively on the company. Here, at Propulsion Media Labs, this is not the case. Everyone treats everyone with respect and there’s a very familial feeling. More often than not I feel like I’m at work with my friends, which is an amazing feeling. No more dreading to go to work each day. Each day I come here I look forward to the experiences that I’m about to have.

I’m a little older than most students at Temple and I’ve been on this planet a little longer so what I have experienced here are usually things I’ve only seldom experienced at past jobs that were in rare positive form. However, per my degree that I’m working towards, which is copywriting, I feel that this degree is more a way for me to get my foot in the door within the advertising field. In my opinion I feel that copywriting focuses on a small but crucially important role, but I feel that it is not enough. I feel like I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t take advantage of other things I could learn and not add these skills to my repertoire. A past professor of mine had given me advice, which was to stay multi-talented in this field. He had stated that many people in the field will strictly focus on one thing, usually whatever their degree would describe, whether it be media planning, broadcasting or just plain copywriting. He stated that many will not keep themselves multitalented, which is how I would describe myself on my resume and LinkedIn, also how I describe myself to potential employers. My degree when I graduate will be in writing copy, wordsmithing as I prefer to call it, but I am also driving to be proficient in other types of digitally based skills such as production, voiceovers, photography, videography, Adobe suites such as Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and After Effects. I haven’t really found a specific field that I would rather pursue, I just have a better idea of the type of environment that I would prefer to work in. Before my internship, I was pretty sure I wanted to work at an agency because I had heard about the wonders of agency life. I heard it was lax, better for the flow of creativity plus I don’t have to wear a suit. I can come wearing basically what I want within reason, of course. That’s kind of the way it is here at PML, with the exception that the creativity doesn’t flow like it does in an educational setting. It’s very easy to forget and just not inspire your own creativity, which is an important aspect to notice because creativity has to be king at the job. You have to be proficient at it because no one else will do it for you.

The experience has been everything I expected, at least at this specific establishment. PML has awesome reviews on their business side and intern side. I was only hoping that they would back that up when I physically got here and they did. No disappointments there. However, working with other interns has proven a challenge. Everyone does their assigned work for the most part but communication is lacking. I should clarify that this is not a PML issue on communication, their communication is perfect. Though I suppose you experience that everywhere because more often than not, everyone is bad at communicating. I feel it’s less something that comes with age or experience and more something that people need to improve on an individual level, as well as being set forth as a goal by those in charge when first coming into a new career position. There’s not really anything I wish I had done differently, at least not yet. I consider myself to be very methodical and I plan out my courses of action before I set my heart on the path. There will always be hiccups and small failures, what’s important is how you choose to handle them. I don’t see failures as failures, I see them as opportunities to learn and improve upon myself, which in the end makes me that much more proficient at my job and also makes me a much more valuable employee to the organization that I choose to work at. The best advice I would give to new interns is just relax, breathe, keep an open mind and above all communicate and be flexible. Be adaptable. This is a changing world and it pays to stay at the pinnacle of what you aspire to be.