I didn’t anticipate learning about website security through my internship, but I’m glad to say I have. Most of my efforts so far have been focused on content. I’ve met with individuals on a few occasions, like the interviews I conducted for the FEIA and “Sticking it to the Man” articles. In other instances, I have gathered information through e-mail conversations or typical online research. My focus has been more on the department website’s material than the ‘web’ side of things.

I had a learning opportunity a few weeks back when a notification arrived in my e-mail inbox. It was a comment on my most recently posted article, and WordPress was requesting my approval for the comment to be posted. That seemed harmless enough to me, but as with anything new, I figured I should ask Dr. Wolek first before taking an action. I waited until our next meeting to bring it up.

As I should have expected, it wasn’t so simple as clicking approve. Dr. Wolek explained to me how comments can be used to gain greater access to a website, and therefore threaten the website’s security. Sure enough, the one that had appeared in my inbox seemed to match the description he’d given me of security-threatening comments. With a far stronger background in the writing aspect of my work than the web aspect, this was all news to me. As the internship expands, I hope to expand my understanding of how websites function.

I’ve always thought that being a web designer or a journalist would be an independent job. With so much of the work being done on a computer—be it typing, editing, or working in a program like Photoshop—very little involves human interaction. Thus, I thought my work as a web intern would be relatively independent as well. 

The past few weeks have taught me otherwise. 

When my supervisor, Dr. Nathan Wolek, was out of the office sick, I still met with my faculty advisor, Laura Glander. The meeting was productive and concise. We listed a few tasks, I took notes, and that week’s job got done. But parts of the system I had grown familiar with fell apart. There were areas outside of Laura’s expertise that I needed to question Dr. Wolek about. I realized quickly that I was far from self-sufficient. My tasks were not going to get done unless I figured something out of my own, did a bit of trouble-shooting, and carved a path to the answers I needed. 

The following week, Laura was out of town. Then the week after that, Dr. Wolek was unable to attend our weekly meeting. 

My faculty adviser and supervisor are back, and I’m thankful. More gets done at a meeting and time is used more efficiently. We can plan ahead for future projects and there’s room for me to ask questions about improvement, both things that cannot do on my own. As much as my mix of journalism and web work is a solo job, I’m coming to understand how valuable a team can be. 

Well, the critiques are in and I must say that I am shocked at the positive feedback! Being a complete novice at videography I was expecting harsh reviews, but thank goodness, I was wrong. I chose to capture stories in the Digital Arts because it’s my major, and I knew this would keep my attention throughout pre-and post-production. Once things got going and I became more comfortable with interviewing the editing process presented challenges for me. I never knew how many hours could go into editing, but now I’m appreciative to those working diligently to provide us with entertainment.

I spent 10-19 hours a week in post-production trying to produce quality videos.  I tried out both Windows Movie Maker and Premier to compare which software would produce the best outcome. While Windows Movie Maker is decent for beginners, it doesn’t deliver better quality than Premier. I found it complicated to add and edit audio, and when adding background music to videos the monologues were drowned out completely. I did the best I could with Windows Movie Maker, but when I began edits in Premier I was in heaven. The way things are organized there made my work flow much easier. Now, I learn some things the hard way when I first started with Premier, but once I got a hang of it, it was smooth sailing.

After submitting my final edits to my supervisor, he informed to incorporate more B-roll, increase the audio levels, record more steady takes, and pay attention to better lighting. The interviews were great but there were ways to make it better. With that said, I opted to redo them all and present a better product. Amid this, I received an amazing opportunity to edit a video for a possible news story, EXCITING! I’ve submitted a final product for that, but now I want to take that three-minute video and turn it into 20 seconds. I honestly feel more comfortable with editing and I’m learning to relax and have fun. A lot of times I miss the opportunity to be creative because I overthink things, and it’s an honor to have leadership that encourages you to relax and view things from a positive perspective.

I don’t know where this internship will lead but, I’m thankful that I said yes, and I have to ability to learn something new each day.

The Process

Well I’m a month into my internship and I’m getting settled into videography. When I accepted this position I thought to myself, “this won’t be too hard!” I’m not ashamed to admit I was wrong. I’ve quickly learned there is more to videography than recording content. This process involves research, journalism, time management, and graphic design. As I began to research possible stories to cover I was amazed at all the things going on at Stetson. I pitched my ideas to Michael, settle on 3 stories to cover, and went to work immediately. This my friends is where the real work began.

I began contacting my sources, scheduling interviews, and researching the proper equipment needed to capture my content. This was exciting but it was a lot for a person who has absolutely no experience in videography. Nevertheless I persevered to deliver the best content possible.

There were times I felt rushed, but I paced myself and focused on one event at a time. The best thing about this internship is most of my work is done out the office, and once I get going I can juggle multiple stories at once. I proud to say that my first interview is captured and in the editing process, and I’m on to cover my second story! Now to an experienced videographer this is minimal work, but for me this is encouraging. The mistakes I made in the first interview are things I can perfect in my next story.  Thing such as camera angles and lighting are details I will pay much more attention to so that the final results would be more professional.

Overall I know the purpose of internships is to gain experience and become professional at your skillset. I’m not only learning on my own, but I receive feedback from management as well as interviewees. This process is all about being open to constructive criticism, and if it’s going to make me better I’m all for it.

An overarching theme has become apparent in what I’ve learned thus far through my internship: interconnectedness. Perhaps the word “internet” should have made this particular lesson a no-brainer, but I had not realized how much of a good web presence depended on linking to other websites. I am becoming more and more aware of the true network that underlies all that is posted on the internet. 

In the article I posted most recently, I included links imbedded into words for the first time. This was a suggestion from my faculty supervisor, who explained that it was a way I could avoid congesting the article with too many URLs while still providing helpful links. More links means more connections. 

A second learning opportunity came up when a pingback arrived in my e-mail. Because the Creative Arts Department regulates the website’s comment section, comments must be approved before they can show up on the site. This precaution helps to prevent someone with ill-intent from gaining greater access to the website. While we want to prevent bad comments from showing up on the site, it’s important to also increase the connectedness of the site. This is why pingbacks and retweets are significant. They create more avenues of access.  

I have a feeling my awareness of these connections will only continue to grow the more time I spend in this internship.  

Well about a month into the semester I officially began my internship with Stetson’s University Marketing team yesterday. I know it’s late compared to others but, Hurricane Irma had plans of her own. Expecting to have a huge assignment on my first day I arrived eagered and ready to work only to find that wasn’t the case. The aftermath of the hurricane from what I could see put the majority of the marketing team behind! As you can imagine they were busy catching up.

So what was there for me to do on my “official” first day? Well after being reintroduced to the staff, I was given a few assignments to complete by next week. As a videographer it’s my job to pitch ideas of potential stories to produce. Therefore my first day was spent becoming familiar with Stetson Today, Stetson University Magazine, and various activities happening around campus. As a non traditional student I rarely have time to engage in campus activities, and my first day gave me the opportunity engage with fellow Hatters. The journey around campus gave me several ideas, and I’m hoping to produce exciting videos in the days to come.

I wish I had something more exciting to blog about but for now this has been my experience. To be honest for me my first day was perfect because it made me aware of the awesome activities  on campus. I began to imagine all the things students are possibly overlooking, and I grew excited knowing that I could bring about a change in that.

So I’m looking forward to pitching my ideas next week to soon capture on video! Stay tuned, it’s going to be an amazing ride!

I had planned to post my first blog two weeks ago. It seemed like a good place to start: give myself enough time to become acquainted with the intern position and WordPress, but post early enough in the semester that I had a truly fresh take on the work.
That didn’t happen.
Despite it being a whole month into the semester, I only have one article up on the department webpage. Like most students trying to readjust post-hurricane, I feel a bit behind. Maybe, though, this is my first real-world learning opportunity for the internship. The learning objectives I’d listed at the onset of the semester were focused on more technical skills, but right now, I’m learning about how to deal with unexpected hurdles.
This past summer, I interned with an insurance company for eleven weeks in their cubicle-style office. Needless to say, it was a very different experience. I clocked in at 8 A.M. and was given a daily schedule that I followed until clocking out nine hours later.
Working with the Creative Arts department, there is no time sheet and no head popping around the corner to ask how my task is going. I am the one making the work schedule, determining when and for how long my time must be allotted. I may not have anticipated it on the onset, but perhaps one of my greatest learning opportunities will be to develop time management between many different tasks.
Unlike my summer internship where long hours were focused on one subject, I am currently dedicated to my classes, senior research, a work study job, studying for the Law School Admissions Test, and the internship. The hurricane was an unexpected twist that had me hitting the reset button and trying to get back into the rhythm on campus. One week in, I’m glad to say that the stress of rerouting has dwindled and taught me that focus can overcome frenzy.

For each of the trade shows that we attend as a company, our Sales, Shipping, Product Development, Trend, and Design teams all collaborate to make our show a success. As a Product Development Team, we constructed what product would be showcased at each specific show as well as the display and accessibility of each product to our customers. While in the product line display and design process, we create a tool called a plannogram. This plannogram is basically a blueprint for our display set. It is created in adobe illustrator to ensure that we have exact proportions to scale in order to avoid any unexpected placement issues when designing our sets. Once our Plannogram is up to date and made, we continue on by ordering all of the product we need for the tradeshow. Once it is in our position we will do a “soft set” of our plannogram. This is where we roughly set up a mock set to double check for any sizing mistakes or packaging damages. Once we have conquered our soft set and fixed any problems we may have we go to our final “Hard reset” which is like a dress rehearsal for our trade show displays. This is where we make sure we have all of our hanging materials, packaging materials and even installation materials. This is where we will set up exactly what we will have in our tradeshow but at our home office. After all is set and perfect, we will package the display and send our display to the tradeshow while our company will fly to meet it, set up, and begin networking.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, my company Darice sells art supplies. Therefore commonly we need to test our product by creating new crafts. This process will happen in one of two ways. The first option will be that we get in new product and we need Packaging photos. If we need packaging photos we will first take a picture of the individual product, then we will find a way to use our product in a craft. Crafts like this can range anywhere from Popsicle stick houses to 4ft canvases full of acrylic paint. This method spirited a lot of crafts but I was lucky enough to work on this summer. My favorite being a large canvas that was 78 inches by 60 inches with a new technique called pouring that we are researching for our Trend Department. We are working on a new line called studio71 which provides classic artist materials instead of crafting. I have attached photos of this canvas to the bottom of my post. The second option to Spirit our crafts this summer was our renovation and new design implements in our showroom at the Strongsville and Atlanta headquarters. In order to make our showroom and products more appealing to our large buyers, we decided to redesign our entire showroom. A showroom in our company is a mock version of what you will see when you put our products in your store. Our redesign featured Spring Garden and several other holiday featured product. In order to keep our store fresh and Innovative we crafted more than half of our display for the new showroom look. From this we created multiple crafts such as new signage banners from our product, new pallet signs from our product, and even built brand new shelving units and stained them with our product.  As mentioned in the past our company likes to create a very comfortable and family-oriented work environment. This being said another way of crafting at our Corporation is stemmed from Health Wellness days. During this time, our project managers who do the majority of crafting, will lead the entire department in a group crafting day. That day will consist of an openoffice forum in their crafting room for anyone in the creative Department to come by and relieve stress or to find therapy in making crafts with our product.

As stated in a previous post, when creating anything for marketing that the public is going to see you usually have to go through the Creative Department. So when my boss, David Wood, asked me to create a logo for “Summer at Stetson 2018” I knew I needed to do things through them.

First I talked to Joel Jones, head of the Creative Department. I told him David asked me to make a logo, and in return, Joel asked me what my process for making a logo was. Having taken a Graphic Design course this past spring I had a basic idea of what my process was.

First I did research. I looked up different summer logos, camping logos, school logos, etc. Normally I use Google and Pinterest, but this time I also used a site Brittany Strozzo told me about called Behance. It actually helped me more than Google and Pinterest ever did. I highly recommend it.

After doing research, I started sketching. I knew I wanted to do something with palm trees. Since Stetson has palm court and it would be for summer, I thought a palm tree would be fitting.

Once I had a few sketches done I set up a meeting with Joel. We looked over the sketches, he gave me some input, and said I could go ahead with digitally making the logo.

–

See I thought that making a logo would be this HUGE process and would be so difficult, but it was actually really easy.

Going into this internship, I was under the impression that with marketing and media you have to jump through hoops to get anything done; but actually, it’s super simple! Yes you have to check that everything is in line with your message and is professional, but you don’t have to check with 20 different people before you make a post on Instagram.

So to anyone that’s going out and wanting to do Digital Arts with Marketing, be confident with what you’re doing, stay within your values, and “it’s better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.”