For my internship course, I was assigned to write a weekly blog about my job search and experience during the semester. But the semester turned out to be very challenging on a professional and personal level, and this part of the course took the biggest hit because of those difficulties. I found myself taking notes every week, but they were never quite enough for a full blog entry. This post is a summary of the whole semester; an extended report from the notes taken throughout.
The First Few Weeks
This semester was my second attempt at Internship. Back in the Fall 2021 semester, I enrolled but could not find an internship in time to make the necessary hours. I didn’t have any relevant job experience on my resume, which was concerning, but the main thing holding me back from finding a job was my portfolio. I had trouble putting in the necessary time to update my work or the portfolio site itself. Balancing full-time care of a disabled relative at home with course work has always been an issue for me, especially in the higher-level classes where projects were more involved.
Over the winter break and in the first few weeks of this semester, I was able to make some updates to my portfolio. I bought a domain name, and added some custom background graphics, an avatar and a bio to my portfolio site. I formatted my resume to match it after adding some more information to it. Taking these steps before job hunting made me feel slightly more prepared. I still did not feel that my work was enough for a good internship, and it would take much longer than a semester to fix that. But this was the only class left that I needed to take in order to graduate so I decided to try my best and hope for a passing grade.
Getting Covid
On February 16, after feeling sick for a few days, I was tested for and diagnosed with Covid-19. I was already struggling for the first few weeks of class. Because my portfolio and resume needed so much work, I had to wait to start my job search and I knew the deadline to find an internship was approaching. When I tested positive, I knew I would have to take some time away from class work to recover. I was already worried about my performance and productivity, and getting the virus added to that anxiety. Luckily, I was fully vaccinated and boosted so I was only hospitalized for a few hours and felt mostly recovered after about two weeks. I tested negative on March 3. The symptoms were mostly gone, but the lethargy and “brain fog” persisted for another few weeks. Some symptoms came back during the internship a few weeks later, but luckily those didn’t last as long.
Getting the Job
On March 8, after getting recommended by a friend, I interviewed with Daisy Khan. She is an author who runs her own non-profit organization called the “Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE)”. WISE has a goal to combat the discrimination of Muslim people. This goal was to be accomplished through content targeting Muslim women, in order to educate them about their rights in modern society and encourage them to speak out against the injustices they face. I was officially hired with the title of “Graphic Designer” on March 14. Signing the paperwork and being able to submit it on time was a huge relief.
The interview went well. Daisy referred to herself as “mentor” of sorts, someone who really enjoyed working with interns who needed more guidance and time to learn how the design field works outside of school. She had an artistic background herself and complimented my work multiple times, which made me feel more confident in my portfolio. I was told she was happy to connect with someone with my skills and seemed genuinely excited to work with me. Initially, she only needed a graphic designer to work on some social media posts and page layouts for a book she was writing. The cover was already done, so I knew the style I had to match. But as she continued to look over my portfolio, Daisy’s excitement about having me join the team led her to adding more advanced possible projects to my list of duties. These included a fundraising video project as well as illustrations for a children’s book she was in the process of writing. I was looking forward to getting started with this internship and working so many different projects.
On the Job
The excitement about this new opportunity was short lived. Onboarding was a complicated process. After signing the official paperwork, I spent the first two weeks of the internship learning how to use two programs that were entirely new to me, Microsoft Teams and Canva. I was used to using the Google suite to send emails and transfer files. Zoom was the standard for virtual meetings. Using Teams was less reliable. File transfers were slower, screen shares were glitchy, and the user interface was confusing.
Canva might have been even more frustrating to use. Canva is a valuable tool for non-designers to handle their own creative needs. Because of that, the capabilities of this program are very limited. As someone with actual design training, I find Canva’s limitations stifling. I’m used to using the Adobe Creative Cloud for all my projects. The Adobe CC suite has multiple programs with many more tools that help me accomplish my creative goals for my work. I’ve heard and seen many jokes about Canva being considered “below” others in my field, and now I know why. Shorter projects that would normally take a day of work took multiple drafts and revisions when trying to use Canva to complete them.
The work assigned to me in these first two weeks on the job was also not what I was expecting. During a meeting, I noticed that Daisy’s Microsoft Teams file folders could use some reorganizing. She had trouble locating a few of the files she was supposed to send me for the book project, but she lost a few in her various folders. Most weren’t found until later in the week, which stalled my work on it. I didn’t want this to happen again, so I suggested in our follow-up email that I reorganize them for her before I get to work on the bigger projects, as it would be beneficial to us both. That offer wasn’t responded to. Instead, I was sent a list of files that needed to be replaced or updated for a trip she was taking in a few days.
Her business cards and letterhead just needed to be updated with her new address and email. But the working template files were lost somewhere in her system, so I had to recreate them from scratch. A problem that would take me an hour to fix took days. Because she needed them for a trip, the process was rushed. I got them done just in time, only for her to call me at the airport at 10:00PM to edit one last file she realized she didn’t have. I was frustrated, but I hoped that this would not be the norm, that more interesting and planned out work would come. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case.
The first large project that came up at WISE was the fundraising video. Daisy and I would meet about the idea, I would make suggestions that wouldn’t get accepted if they were different than her ideas, and I would be provided very little information or source material at the start. Early on, I suggested that she record video as well as audio to use as a base along with whatever additional visuals she had. The footage was all from her trip, so if there wasn’t a chance to go back and reshoot if more was needed. Daisy did not take my suggestion and decided to record two minutes of audio only. It took a while for that to be sent to me, and I couldn’t sync visuals to audio I didn’t have. When the trip footage was edited to her liking, only a minute of visuals remained. April’s meetings were unproductive because of these delays. When Daisy saw the resulting half blank video, she decided to rewrite and re-record her entire video script, this time on camera. This made the work I did useless. In the following week, she found much more footage and photos that could have been used in the initial video. When there wasn’t enough progress, meetings were unproductive, and nothing was ever finished.
In the Meantime
I managed to fulfill the mandatory number of hours for my internship, even though I am not proud of the work I did during it. Luckily, I was able to do outside design work during less productive weeks. In February I was accepted into the AIGA New York Mentorship Program. After the virtual introduction meeting, I was paired with Leanne, a great mentor who has been giving me feedback on my portfolio and ideas for how to strengthen it. Working with her has been helpful and now that I am done with the internship, I can fully dedicate myself to the assignments she’s given me. I also took a paid logo design gig and created some art for a few friends this semester. Those projects went more smoothly, mainly because I had a better relationship with everyone else than with Daisy.
I will admit that Daisy’s lack of organization or guidance made me dislike working with her from the beginning of the internship, which showed up as me putting less effort into my work as time passed. Now that I realize that I can let personal issues with other people effect my work, it will be something I look out for in my future jobs. I have also learned that full-time design is not a job that I’m currently ready for. I took and stayed with this internship to fulfill the requirements to earn my degree, not because I truly feel ready for the workplace. There was a level of desperation attached to this process that will not be enjoyable to repeat. I need time to develop my portfolio and my creative confidence before I feel confident pursuing a career in design. With school being over, I now have that time to take.
