What It’s Like Working at the Place You Go to School
This year, I had the opportunity to work for Temple’s Information Technology Services as a Marketing and Communications intern. As part of a small Marketing team (only 4 of us including myself), my work was definitely cut out for me. Bonus points for having to create content for my peers, professors, and university-wide. Kinda intimidating, but not too bad.
While applying for this position, I was on a wild internship goose chase. Going into my junior year, securing my first internship seemed like the end-all and be-all of decisions. (But to those of you applying now, don’t stress too much – life has a way of making things work out). The process was fairly standard: apply, wait a little and freak out a tad, interview, wait some more, accept the position. I knew going into this that I was passionate about the tech industry and wanted some real-world experience working for an office like this. When I received my internship offer, I was extremely excited.
As a Marketing and Communications intern, my main task is to design social media graphics pushed out on our three main platforms. As the internship progressed, my responsibilities went from just design to gathering and analyzing data for monthly analytics reports, taking a swing at copy and generating social media captions for posts, writing Tech Bit emails sent to students and faculty (yes, I help write those so please read them or admire the headers I designed 🙂 ), and designing desktop wallpapers displayed at the TECH Center. This position was pretty wide-scale and I got the chance to work on projects ranging a variety of skills. I’ve grown a lot since the beginning of the year and am confident to take on new tasks outside of my comfort zone.
It didn’t hit me at first but as I continued to work during my internship, I realized that all the content I was designing was being seen by my peers and mentors. I could walk in to the TECH Center one day and see something I designed, or open my inbox and see something I helped write. It all became very real, but I was excited to see my hard work paying off and being put to use.
For those of you applying to internships, don’t forget to look for jobs at Temple too. Overall, I’ve loved working on the team at ITS. I get to collaborate with a great team of talented, caring, and dedicated individuals who are working towards putting together the best experiences for us at Temple. Plus, I get the inside scoop before it goes public which makes me feel a little more cool. I wouldn’t trade my experience at Temple ITS for anything and I’m excited to continue using the skills I’ve learned here in future projects. So thank you, Temple. You really did give me the best of both worlds.
Hi Maya,
First off, kudos to you for interning at Temple. I know there’s some great programs but I don’t know if I would do it. Your internship with ITS seems like it allowed for you to do a lot of creative things and develop skills that you weren’t expecting and that you can take with you further in your career. I’ve definitely grown to understand that feeling you describe of having your peers or mentors see your work and being proud of what you’ve put out for them to see. I’ll also make sure I check out the emails sent by Temple ITS to see some of the things you have worked on.
I really enjoyed reading about your experience with working with Temple’s Information Technology Services. It was interesting to read about your “behind the scenes” experiences, and I hope more students will pursue Temple University internships in the future as well.
Congratulations on the internship opportunity! Your experience sounds so unique, I never thought twice about who designs Temple ITS emails, but I will certainly appreciate them more after reading this. I also had a chance to write copy, and as a brand strategy and research concentration is felt so foreign, but the opportunity has only improved my writing skills. It must be so cool working for a brand you already know and live in! Best of luck with whatever path you take next.
Hey Maya!
I love that you got to work at Temple and be involved in so much that goes into our everyday lives as students and it sounds so cool! Sounds like you got a well-rounded experience and that is everything you could ask for and more. Congrats again! Can’t wait to see the future!
Hi Maya!
Congratulations on the internship! I also got the chance to work for Temple as a social media intern for the epibio dept. I loved the fact that my content would be seen by my peers as well. Thank you for pointing out to look at Temple for internships/ jobs as well because I think we forget to look at our own school. This was a great blog post; I really enjoyed reading it!