When you assume…

Before I even my internship at D4 Creative Group I had preconceived notions about what my tasks would entail. Coming from another internship at Red Tettemer + Partners I assumed that every agency runs under the same set of blue prints and just tweaks them a little to fit their needs. Well I was seriously mistaken. While over at Red Tettemer + Partners job jackets ruled the world. It was the very first thing that you learned how to do when starting an internship with them. By the end of your first week you were able to properly label them, organize them, and file them away in the proper order. Some of us were even schooled on how the job jackets were filed electronically into their client server. So, as I began my first day with D4 Creative I figured that I was already at an advantage because I knew how the client job system worked. Well their system was vastly different. In fact it looked nothing like the system that I was used to. The only thing that remained a constant was the fact that each job was attached with a number, and even that numbering system was quite different. It was a less regimented system with less structured organization. I could not wrap my head around how they were able to keep track of all of their jobs. This at first immediately frustrated me because like the account managers at Red Tettemer + Partners prefer to have everything in a very concise organized matter. But, I soon realized that this system worked just fine for their agency. At D4 Creative the number of employees is much less than at Red Tettemer. Therefore, most times you are working one on one with your creative team and they are most likely checking in on you and the job that you handing them throughout the day. Due to this regular conversation and smaller atmosphere less things fall through the cracks and then therefore it’s perfectly acceptable to have a less regimented form of organization for job tracking. This experience has helped me realize that you have to come into every agency with an open mind and not just assume that you are going to know and understand how things are ran when you first walk into the door. Just because you feel like a certain method is not the best option doesn’t necessarily make it true. You need to give yourself time to mold into your new surroundings and then you will most likely be able to have a greater understanding for how things work at the agency and things that once might have seemed strange will suddenly make sense.