Before gathering my official roster of Fall 2020 classes, I had to talk to an advisor to get this specific course approved. The advisor that I spoke to knew me a bit and had asked if I knew any places I’d be applying to. I said not yet but I’d be applying dangerously throughout the summer in order to secure a spot. Fast forward a few months and summer has officially come to a close while I officially haven’t even started my search. The best part? Internship class had already started.
I didn’t think it would be a big deal waiting so long. I procrastinate a lot and had gone through a summer where each day I tried to make better than the last (but the pandemic stood in the way). It felt like a loop every single time I woke up. Part of this loop included telling myself to complete things that I knew had to be done but had always pushed back over and over. Initially I had given myself a challenge after the Spring 2019 semester to completely hand code a site on my own. I thought it wouldn’t be difficult considering I had just gotten out of Web Design 1 and retained a lot of the information to make something pretty. Little did I know how long I’d push the project back due to working retail, school, and just general lack of direction when it came to putting the site together. I got pretty far into making the layout and choosing the design but ended up stagnant when it came to figuring out how to integrate Instagram (which at the time I thought was crucial to have on the site). That one hurdle sent the entire project in the never-ending pile of unfinished work less than 6 months after starting.
One other thing I kept pushing back was revising my resume. Ever since Spring 2019, I have been a part of the Moving Pixels video club in City Tech. I was lucky enough to work as a cinematographer for a documentary called “The SoHo Memory Project” which, after finalizing in Winter 2019, had won numerous awards since. I honestly didn’t know how far this documentary would take me and the group but it’s done wonders. Even with this, the main thing I have heard from the members and professors would be “this is great for your resume”. I had never won awards to this extent for any project I’ve ever worked on and had no clue how to add it to the resume. I knew I had to update my resume at some point but never figured out when that point would come.
By now, I needed to start signing up for internships ASAP but needed to fully revise and complete both my portfolio and resume. Who knows how long it would really take to get from nothing to an internship. This is where I needed to force myself to get serious.
The first order in business was getting a portfolio up that would be fast, easy, and most importantly good looking. I talked to a few of my friends and they mentioned using Adobe Portfolio as their platform. I was skeptical as to how good it would really be in helping me get what I wanted. But in the end, I managed to get my portfolio to look clean and unique (least I think so). It took roughly 2 weeks to go from nothing to something as I had spent a week research and developing under different preset themes. The other week was spent finalizing the design, tabs, and getting general feedback from my friends and portfolio professor (this was a 2 birds, one stone situation). All in all, I’m really digging how easy it was to get what I needed. Here’s how it came out:
You can view the functioning website at jonathanbaezart.com
Lastly, I needed to update my resume. I essentially took 2 weeks to do this after the website as I had to run it by multiple professors. I adjusted the formatting, erased some parts, and added in the awards plus some updated information. It didn’t look too different to what it was before but it definitely was more oriented towards my specialties.
I finally reached a point where both the portfolio and resume were revised and finished. It was basically the third week of October at this point and I was playing with fire as I had yet to begin my search. If I had planned to do this during the summer like what I should have done in the first place, I’d probably have an internship by now. This is where things begin to pick up speed.
