Throughout this internship, I learned a few things, even though some things are not related to my major but in general. For example Multitasking, At my internship, I had to work on a task meanwhile also helping out in the office for the moving day so that meant packaging and file sorting and more. I also had to take work home and finish it up. Another thing was learning how to properly make calls. There was a process of making calls and getting people engaged in the conversation. We had a paper written step by step on what to say, but after reading you had to improvise and keep the conversation going to get them to donate or come to the event we were holding at that time. I never knew how certain things were printed back in the days and lucky enough the person that handles the printing press came by during the week and showed me how to operate it. Just looking at how fast it was able to print was amazing. Of course, I learned how to organize files, books, flyers and folders. Not only physically but on the computer too. I learned to be consistent in your work while working with other teammates. for example when editing photos we all split them evenly but at the end of the day, all the photos had to look like one person edited them. took a few trials until we got it right. I also learned to adapt to my internships style of work. When placing images and logos in the magazine layout, there was not much I could change since their layout has been the same for several years. This meant I had to work with what was given to me and make the best of it. Having a style helps the consumer recognize Women’s Press Collective.
A few Challenges were getting up early to make it on time. I live in Queens so my ride to my internship in Brooklyn took one 1 hour and 45 minutes. The biggest challenge was working with outdated software. For example, older versions of Adobe on older computer models can be tedious. The computer would either freeze, crash, and even not respond to some key shortcuts. Also, certain things I commonly used were hiding in the menu bar so it made work time consuming. The most common one would be clients because some think they know what they want and what works but they are not always on the right path. Another challenge would be time management because the body gets tired. I have school, my regular job and my internship, so I basically never had a day off to my self. What made it more challenging was when you have deadlines. I at times had to finish work at home and breaking night.
A few things I liked about this experience was the environment within the office. Lisa was friendly and welcoming, she always had a smile on her face and all the other interns were friendly as well. Another good experience would be the free restaurant food. Every day I had to go to my internship I knew the food was waiting for me as well as my favorite thing, coffee. I also liked the fact that if at any point I needed opinions on my work I could ask anyone there since all the interns have different majors so having a point of view from them helped. I found inspiration while heading to the internship since I’m not from Brooklyn I took pictures of wall art, bridges, architecture structures and even sunsets.
A few bad things as that the place did not have heaters. This meant in the office it always felt like it was below 50. Not only that but the male bathroom did not have hot water to clean your hands. Now the one thing everyone suffered without was the internet. At the office, there was no internet which meant no wifi. The internship was getting an internet connection from the office next door, but it only worked when they were in their own office.
