It was another quiet day in the office, with most people having left by 1 pm. I got another assignment of color correcting/editing bathing suits and this took me the entire day since there were so many and the bathing suit tops were so intricate. The quiet day gave my supervisor and I some time to actually speak though and he assured/emphasized that even though I am only in the office on Fridays, he hopes to get me as involved as possible. I unfortunately miss the team’s daily meetings and brainstorming on projects, but he’s hoping to somehow incorporate me into those eventually.

I appreciated this talk with him because even after these past weeks, I admit I have not completely connected with the team/my supervisor. He not only told me that as the actual volleyball season arrives I will be assigned true design projects that will be displayed internationally, but that if I ever needed advice or had a question about anything, he was more than willing to help as he could. He told me that he even does freelance so if I ever had a question about that or how to possibly get a job after college, he could try his best to help me. This conversation was the most significant thing of my day because it helped me adjust to the idea that although this is an internship, it can also turn into networking and potential mentors. I’m looking forward to these future projects and everything else that the future may hold.

Today marks exactly fifty days until May 12, the day of  my graduation commencement ceremony. In a few hours, I will pick up my cap and gown. This also means that my year as a web intern with the Creative Arts department will soon come to an end, and it’s time to start looking forward.

Part of my work as the first year-long web intern has been to develop a schedule that details some of the reoccurring events about which future interns will also need to post: award ceremonies, contests announcements, Winter Break hours, and the like. This is advantageous in that there is no need to spend time every year deciding what needs to be posted when, so both the intern and the supervisors may benefit. I have found myself benefitting from this task as well.

Two semesters worth of projects, exhibitions, interviews, plays, and workshops have to be reviewed in order for me to create a comprehensive schedule of web posts. Therefore, this task has had an introspective nature, allowing me to consider my internship in its many pieces. I’ve interacted with people from all four disciplines falling under the umbrella of Creative Arts in a variety of ways, and my approach to web posts has changed over the year. Slowly, I was able to focus on adding in different features like links to outside websites, photos about the content , and excerpted quotes.

I hope that in the future, other interns modify the schedule of posts. My experience is just that: mine. It is a singular example of what can be done in this position. What I have encountered and learned may be similar to that of the next intern, but it will by no means be identical. For one thing, he or she will start the internship with a different set of skills and a unique perspective. Therefore, they will only be able to add to what I leave behind. I hope to come across the Creative Arts website a year from now and smile at how my successors have improved upon the work I once did.

This week, it was extremely and oddly quiet in the workspace; it was only one of my supervisors, the other intern for social media, and myself. The quiet environment did allow my one supervisor to really connect with me though and he emphasized the fact that he hopes I learn a lot while at Rox Volleyball and if there is anything he could help me with, he hopes I don’t hesitate to ask. For a majority of the day though, I continued to work on product photo editing jerseys, fixing slight edits that I was advised to do.

For about the last hour though, I actually continued to work on the social media project and I finished one of the quotes given to me. I checked their Instagram a few days later, and the edit I had done had in fact actually made it on their page! This was an awesome thing for me to see because it was the first project I could say where I created it from scratch and it made it onto a professional company’s social media page. This project has made me more interested in social media and how creative one can get, especially with on Instagram. On Instagram, one can manipulate photos themselves but can also play around with layouts. This project specifically has sparked an interest in me on pursuing more social media endeavors and it has given me more ideas on how to improve my own social media pages or possibly another company’s in the future.

Today, I continued the design assignment with the motivational quotes and I actually felt productive about it today unlike last week. I learned about social media and unique ideas about layouts for Instagram, which was beneficial not only for professional purposes but even for personal purposes also. As I worked on the assignment and got advice, I was taught one important lesson for any graphic designer: text is a pain.

Everything I thought I once knew about text and text layout flew right out the window as I worked on this assignment. Although I was capable of editing the background photo perfectly fine, it was the text that was difficult to get aligned, making sure that it fit perfectly and there was no empty space. Although I started to feel discouraged trying to get the text right, one of my supervisors reassured me and said that text is one of the biggest obstacles for any graphic designer and especially since this was my first time professionally working with text, it was all a learning experience. So even though text may be a pain, I’m glad to start this experience and to actually work on a more in-depth project that will be displayed publicly.

This past week, I learned another one of those best practices for the professional world that I will likely be carrying with me after graduation. Less to do with my work as a web intern, this lesson is applicable in every field.

I am currently applying to a few summer internships at NASA, and amongst the busyness of mid-semester assignments and post-graduation preparation, the application slipped from my main focus. I asked my faculty supervisor and on-site facilitator for a recommendation letter, but not until two weeks before it was due—much later than I normally would ask. Laura Glander, my facilitator, had a copy of a something like a performance appraisal for me from the prior semester I had interned. With some adjustments, they were able to send in a letter for me despite the time crunch.

Dr. Wolek, my faculty supervisor, explained to me the common practice of keeping such letters saved at the end of an internship or job. These recommendations are naturally easier to write before too much time has passed and the details of a student or worker begin to fade in one’s mind. that way, if an intern e-mails his or her internship director six months after they’ve left the experience, one’s not scraping the bottom of their memory to pull out some descriptions.

I will be keeping this in mind as I move forward into my career, both for future internships I may have and for the possibility of me one day facilitating an internship.

I started off the day this week by continuing to work on product photo editing jerseys, but I was told I would finally be assigned an actual assignment, so I prepped myself for that. My assignment ended up being turning motivational quotes into graphics for their social media pages. Although this is what I had prepared myself for as a Graphic Design Intern, my brain and creativity were just turned off on this day for some reason. I sat there for a majority of the morning just simply brainstorming and after staring at a computer screen for several hours, I felt like I had failed and disappointed in myself. I ended up only creating about three drafts for one motivational quote.

For the second half of the day though, I helped the department re-organize their filing cabinets and although they apologized it was mundane work, I actually felt relieved. After what seemed like such a long morning of me starting at a computer screen and not being productive, I felt like this break away was much needed. I realized during this time that creativity is not something that is constantly ‘on’. There are days and times when creating and thinking of ideas is just not meant to happen. I initially felt defeated when I could not come up with graphics but then I just told myself that this is a natural thing to happen and sometimes (a lot of the time), a break away from your task is necessary. You cannot force ideas and staring at a blank computer screen is not going to help anything either. So a reminder to myself is: take a break to restart, you cannot expect every day to be the greatest.

Well, let me just start this blog off by saying I wasn’t expecting that!!! The past two weeks I’ve been trying to set up good times to interview two professors for Stetson’s 60^th Anniversary of the SPREE and Honor’s program. As usual everyone is busy, and I’ve learned to adjust as needed. To be honest the rush and anticipation of this event has made me so excited. I’ve researched both programs, and prepared questions, but nothing makes an experience than physical engagement.

This past Monday Stetson hosted an Open House for the Honors Program. Prospective students and parents were taken on a tour of the school and engaged with the faculty. Well, being that marketing is covering a story on the Honors program I followed them around to capture B roll.  Due to my work schedule I was not able to participate that morning, but the latter part of the day yielded some frightful excitement. Casually going about the tour, shaking hands, introducing myself, and capturing others interacting, I heard someone say, “is that a snake in the pillow case in his back pocket?” I paused, looked around, and quietly said “what?” See I can do animals, but I am terrified of snakes. It is a struggle for me to watch them on television let alone be in same surroundings as them. Anyway, after I heard that I paid close attention to the Professors back pocket.  Before then I walked closely to him, capturing footage as he talked about a few science courses at Stetson. I honestly would’ve been ok if no one had mentioned the creepy crawler in the first place. Nevertheless, I kept my distance until we walked outside, and from there I knew what was getting ready to happen. I calmly freaked out but, shockingly I got close enough to capture footage on the snake. I kept telling myself “Phaedra you got this!” “You need this moment on camera, GET IT!” And I did just that! I wasn’t expecting to face my fears this week, I was just there to capture b-roll. We all had the opportunity to hold it, but I wasn’t ready for that yet, so I got what I needed and stepped back.

You know as I stated before, I wasn’t expecting to face a fear this week, but I’m glad I did. This brought back excitement to my internship. It’s so easy to show up for things because you have too, but when it becomes an experience that helps you cross a personal milestone, you that it’s worth it. I went home that day proud that I didn’t allow my fear to hold me back from an amazing opportunity. Sometimes we fail because we don’t try, so I just wanted to do something I wouldn’t have done before. To see passion and pride in the faculty’s eyes as they explained programs brought me joy.  I know they sacrifice a lot of time so that students can experience community. The fact that professors know your name matters, and I hope all who choose to attend Stetson sees that.

Overall, the tour was amazing, and it was exciting to see prospective students, parents, and faculty engage and rave about Stetson University.

This week is one I will never forget, and I hope the remainder of the semester brings on more excitement! (but I’m good on the snakes for now!)

Chances are that when you try something for the first time, you will learn from mistakes how to adjust your approach for the second try. After all, it’s practice (not first attempts) that makes perfect. When trying out a new approach for the profile features on the CREA website, I had to learn this lesson again.

The profiles have been very helpful due to their simplicity: a few basic questions set up in a Q&A structure. They can be e-mailed out with little fuss so the common issue of lining up two schedules does not become a problem, and viola! Add a photo and there’s a quick, on-deck post waiting to be published.  It’s almost too easy.

There was one pitfall. People tended to be brief in e-mails, and thus less content was present than would be garnered through an in-person interview. So I took the cue from my supervisor and conducted the most recent profile face-to-face. Asking the same questions, I received much lengthier answers just as we’d wanted.

However, I ran into a new problem. When speaking out loud, an individual can’t revise their words as one would with a written document like an e-mail. My most recent interviewee contacted me almost immediately after his profile went up, concerned that some of the word choice he’d made when speaking didn’t read as he’d meant it. Lesson learned: send a draft to the interviewer before publishing. This is a practice Dr. Wolek said was practiced by journalists. I suppose I had to learn from my first shot, but now I have the right approach for my next try.

During our morning meeting, I was surprisingly told that the work I’ve been doing has finally paid off and that the images I’ve been editing have been making their way onto the Rox Volleyball website. This was wonderful news for me to hear because it was a reassurance that the work I’m doing in this internship is truly contributing to the company and this is the first time I am able to see my work displayed to a public audience. I find it neat now that if someone sees these images on Rox Volleyball’s website or even if I show someone the website, I can say that I personally edited and finalized them.

Besides that news, I continued to work on editing more photos but I also was taught how to do product photo editing for items such as jerseys. This is more advanced and requires more attention to detail but my supervisors thought I was ready for it and could benefit from the challenge. They told me that typically the color-changing process takes weeks for typical interns to get the hang of, but that I had accomplished it within about two weeks and gotten quite well at it. So this week not only did I find out that my work is actually paying off, but that my skills are being noticed and appreciated. It was a humbling day at my internship and I can’t wait to continue advancing my skills and I hope to see even more of my work on their website in the future.