Objective #1
My first objective going into this internship was for me to gain recognition for my great work ethic and for being a good, respectful co-worker. I chose this to be my first objective because what do employers want to see more than an employee who is a hard-worker and is also a respectful co-worker. An employee who is a hard-worker will save the money a lot of money as well as bring them in more money since he will likely stay with the company longer since hard-work never goes unnoticed. Also, an employee who is respectful will save the company trouble since it will decrease the number sexual harassment claims and it will make your work environment that much better.
I am a hard-worker. I like to get the job done fast but I always make sure that the job is done correctly and that it is done in great quality. I knew I would get recognized for my hard-work because I never take a day off; I always come into work wanting to work, I come wanting to get the job done and I think that’s what separates me from everyone else. With GRT being a small company, it is very easy for people to notice your work and how hard you work at things. GRT has different departments within itself but we all act like an assembly line and help each other get the job done. There have been a couple of scenarios were Ben Cottrell, one of the interns that has been there for a year, needed some work to be completed right away. Ben, instead of asking someone else to do it, came personally to me and asked me if I could help him because he needed it right away. Things like that are things that I thrive on and make me feel like I am doing the job correctly.
Another way I was able to show my hard-work was when our supervisor, Billee Jo, assigned a tricky project in which she wanted the person that accepted it to work with Amrit, who actually graduated from Loras and is the Web Applications Developer. I took on this task and I was able to work with Amrit and learn more about HTML coding as well as different things I could do with EZS3 which is a media service for independent producers who have their own Amazon S3 account and want to spend more time deploying their video & audio and less time programming. This was one of the key applications that I used once I was assigned my own projects.
I believe that I met my first objective and I believe I met this objective when Amrit told Billee Jo that I had solved a problem regarding HTML coding and videos that he couldn’t figure out. Billee Jo was very impressed that she began assigning me my own projects and she also let my colleagues know that if they had any projects that dealt with video files or other media files that they should send those projects right to me. This can be shown when I talked about it in my journal for the week of July 22nd.
“...My supervisor has even started giving me my own projects as well as ordering the technician to put some new software on my computer, Raptivity and Math Type. She has also told everyone at GRL if they have any projects dealing with videos or if they have videos that need to be converted into a particular format that they can assign it to me…”
Thanks to my hard work I was chosen by Loras College admissions to be their “poster child” for this year’s internship experience.
More sample Work can be seen under the Sample Work tab in my blogspot. All of my sample work is extremely representative of my objectives as well as the amount of time and dedication I put into these projects.
Objective #2
My second objective was to gain the experience necessary for me to excel at other future employment. I chose this objective because I think this will be a tremendous skill to acquire. The way I see it, you can never learn too much information, you can always learn a little about anything any day in order to increase your value as you apply for other positions. Although this was an internship at a publishing company, I still learned a lot of information that will be helpful for me in the future. I learned how to behave at an office environment; I learned how to better behave myself around women especially women in a professional setting and I also learned how different people handle different situations, myself included.
I have a good feeling that I accomplished this objective because I now feel like I can attack any job that I may encounter in the future. Having to deal with deadlines, unsure authors and professors as well as working in the busiest time of year for a publishing company I am very confident that I can do any job thrown at me. This internship has given me a new motivation to continue doing well at school and taking advantage of opportunities presented to me. Seeing how much I grew from the start of the internship to the end of it, is something I take pride in. I started out reading books and doing copy edits which are corrections the authors have made to their work; by the end of the internship I was working on my own projects and I had colleagues who have been there for 4 plus years come to me for help on certain things.
Journal from week of June 3rd
“…On my first week at the job I met everyone and became a fun co-worker to be around. My first 2 days I spent time reading 3 books that all interns at GRT have to read. The books were books that had very important information on how GRT carries itself and how GRT wants its workers to carry themselves as well as represent the company. On the third day I attended a GRT conference meeting in were we went over the amount of projects we had done during that month and compared them to previous numbers as well as expectations made early in the month. I also learned how to use all the servers which I learned in 2 days and I was also trained by the other interns on how to use Webcom 2 (which is our main server). My first two weeks at GRT, the Web Project Editing team and I worked on some interesting projects. We worked on a project for a summer course at Michigan State titled "Wine and other Hospitality Beverages" and a project for a summer course at Sonoma State titled "Big Ideas in Cosmology". We also worked on a summer course titled "Introductory Physics 102" and this project was for the author Wathiq Abdul – Razzaq and we worked on these projects all week during my first week. This week, we worked on a summer course at New Mexico State titled "Concepts in Physics - 212", a summer course at the University of South Alabama titled "Psychology", a summer course at Washington State University titled "Environmental Science and Sustainability Solutions". All of these projects are very time consuming but with great time management and once you learn the servers it will go very quickly…”
As you can see, I learned the material real quick and was able to contribute to GRT right away. My quick learning skills and hard-work allowed me to accomplish this and Billee Jo was quite impressed with how fast I learned the material. According to Ben, I am the second best intern at GRT behind him. He said that I learned the servers and material quickly. He also stated that another reason that he thought I was the second best intern was because he enjoys working with me because I am quick with my work and I provide great quality work. All of my hard work and dedication has allowed me to gain many skills and experience that I will use once I graduate from college and begin my career in the real world.
Objective #3
My third objective that I looked to accomplish was to improve my communication skills (written, verbal, interacting one-on-one or in speaking to a larger group). The reason why I chose this objective is because although I have good communication skills, you can never really master them since there are different people out there that communicate in different ways. My goal for this objective was to gain as much expertise as possible in order to improve my communication skills for this upcoming school year and hopefully for my career after college.
I was a bit nervous my first couple of weeks at GRT, I usually kept to myself and stayed in my cubicle while I did my work. But as time passed by came accustomed to the atmosphere at GRT and to how people acted, I began making small talk with the people around me and by the 3rd or 4th week I found myself walking over to my colleagues cubicles and saying jokes or talking about how this year’s baseball season hasn’t been that great to the city of Chicago.
By the time I had a month with the company people were stopping me in the hall way asking me how my day was going. A few even invited me to go to the bars with them but unfortunately since I was not 21 at the time I could not go with them. I have kept in touch with a few of my colleagues and we plan on hanging out the weekend after school starts.
When I was having my final evaluation meeting with Billee Jo and Faye Finnegan I mentioned how I didn’t know if I had accomplished my objective of improving my communication skills and Billee Jo commented on it saying that she does not think I need to work on my communication skills at all. She said that she was impressed with my communication skills and how well I got a long with my colleagues and how my colleagues liked working with me. Faye then commented and said that communication skills isn’t something that you can master in 150 credit hours, it takes years of experience to get really good at it and that is exactly what I would like to do. A quick statement that Billee Jo made really stood out to me and it was when she stated that my emails were very professional for me just being an intern and a senior in college. That comment will definitely stay with me for a while, knowing that although it might just be an email, she still notices that little things.
Although I don’t have sample work to show this, Faye wrote down some notes during our meeting with Billee Jo. If I remember correctly, she wrote down a few notes while we were talking about communication skills.
Objective #4
The fourth objective that I chose was to improve my analytical and problem solving-skills. I think these are two great skills to have and not only will they help me in my future position(s) but it will also help me when I start my first semester of senior year. Having strong analytical skills means that you are able to view and look into a situation from a very logical, methodical perspective. Not everyone carries such characteristic. It is a good quality to have but only to a certain extend. People that possess very high analytical skills usually lack personal skills and tend to be more technical and math oriented which is something I do not want to do. I want be analytical but not to the extend were I lack personal skills.
Problem solving skills, on the other hand, actually go hand-in-hand with analytical skills. After analyzing a certain issue, you will be able to find a good solution, rather fast or within timely manner. By having good problem solving skills you can help the company save money as well as better yourself and improve your value once you end up looking at career opportunities.
In my opinion, I was able to enhance both of these skills and I am proud of myself for doing so. I was able to do so by continuing to work on the projects that were assigned to me as well as making sure I made the most out of the material that was given to me. I was able to make quick decisions when they needed to be made and I was able to think things through and come up with the best option. Whether it was while working on Raptivities or working on web pages, problems found a way to find me but I slayed the dragon and it all worked out at the end
Problem solving skills, on the other hand, actually go hand-in-hand with analytical skills. After analyzing a certain issue, you will be able to find a good solution, rather fast or within timely manner. By having good problem solving skills you can help the company save money as well as better yourself and improve your value once you end up looking at career opportunities.
In my opinion, I was able to enhance both of these skills and I am proud of myself for doing so. I was able to do so by continuing to work on the projects that were assigned to me as well as making sure I made the most out of the material that was given to me. I was able to make quick decisions when they needed to be made and I was able to think things through and come up with the best option. Whether it was while working on Raptivities or working on web pages, problems found a way to find me but I slayed the dragon and it all worked out at the end
Journal from the week of June 10th
“…There was a situation in which I was assigned a project in were I had to create a chapter for a webpage and the chapter had sub-links as well as baby-links. It was a big project but I was ready to take on it. Well to get to the point, the text the author wanted me to put on the webpage for the chapter included pictures and the way they were set up on the word document is that the words where on the left and pictures were on the right. Well I tried doing that but every time I did, the picture will be messed up and it would be on the opposite side so I went to one of the interns that have been there for 3 years to ask them for help. He didn't know much about my situation but he was very helpful and I kind of got it but the way it looked on our server, it did not look like that on the webpage. The text was everywhere and that pictures where everywhere. So, what I did was I made a table with 1 column and 1 row and I placed the text on one box and the picture on the other. I showed the intern that tried to help me and he was impressed with the work I did. I finished the project and sent it in to the person that assigned it to me and she was impressed at how fast I got it done as well as how nice it looked. She actually sent me an email showing her appreciation for the job I had done…”
“…There was another situation in were my supervisor sent out a project and I was the first one to notice it so I picked it up. She said it was urgent so I assumed that it was a very important project. The project was basically to set up the grade book for two summer courses that someone had forgot to do. The professor was angry with GRT so my supervisor tried to get it done as soon as possible. I did not know what I was doing so I asked the same intern that helped me last time where the project was and when he showed me it clicked to me and I suddenly knew what to do because I remembered doing a similar thing earlier in the week. I got the grade books done in 19 minutes each so a total of 38 minutes. My supervisor saw that they were done and what proceeded next made me feel good about myself and the job I had done. I'll let you take a look at it and see what she said…”
Journal from the week of June 17th
“…This past week was great for me in regards to work, the projects I helped design and the projects I was assigned. I took a big step in my internship when my supervisor assigned me with my own personal project that I had to start from scratch. The project is for a class about learning English and so far it has gone great. I have spent 23 hours working on the project and it is still not done. But the fun wasn't done yet, since my supervisor saw a glimpse of the project I was working on, she liked it so much she gave me another project to do. That project is for a Spanish class which is awesome because Spanish is my first language. I am excited to start that project as well as finish both projects. In my opinion, these projects could be the start of something new…”
Journal from the week of July 22nd
“…A challenge I was presented with was getting assigned two long projects. One of the projects was for an Italian author at Santa Rosa Junior College by the name of Frongia and the other project is for a professor at Prince George's Community College by the name of Elaine Kass. I just actually finished doing over 100 mini eLearning content projects for Frongia using a program called Raptivity. It's pretty easy stuff once you get used to it but it will definitely keep you busy. My goal for this specific project was to make sure I did quality work and took my time making sure I spelled every word correctly since it was all in Italian. The other project I had involved me doing 2 web pages, one for her U.S.A Spoken English class and the other for her Speaking American English class. For this project, I started from scratch and created both web pages. I had to also crop audio from the CD that she provided us. I had to make sure I placed them in the right spot and I also had to make sure I added the videos to the web pages. It actually turned out great and I made the most of the material that was given to me. I believe that the only thing I would do differently is ask the author for better material as the PDF files that were given to me were not that great and it was kind of hard to make out the words and images. I also would have probably maybe taken a little longer creating the web pages but I think I did a great job with them. You can be the judge of them as well but just and FYI this is not the complete version as the author needs to approve the web pages…”
Here are the links to the project mentioned above
Objective #5
My fifth objective that I chose was networking. In networking it’s not what you know, but who you know. Who you know can mean the difference in whether or not you end up reaching your future dreams and goals. There are so many reasons why networking is important, personally and professionally. Whether you want to stand out from the crowd during your job search, raise the ranks at your current company or just have a good support network to be there for you when you need it.
Networking helped me land this internship and if I decide to stick with it after college, it could become my first job straight out of college. Networking doesn’t have to be business related necessarily; it can be maybe you have a group of friends that you like to go to when you are facing tough times. No matter where you are in life, you can’t get around the fact that networking is crucial to your success and personal well-being.
Networking helped me land this internship and if I decide to stick with it after college, it could become my first job straight out of college. Networking doesn’t have to be business related necessarily; it can be maybe you have a group of friends that you like to go to when you are facing tough times. No matter where you are in life, you can’t get around the fact that networking is crucial to your success and personal well-being.
Information interviewing is a piece of the networking process. In an information interview you have the opportunity to explore your field of interest through a structured, longer conversation with someone already working in that field. I actually had a chance to do an informational interview with Amrit Khadka, the Web Application Developer. The interview can be seen under the “Informational Interview” tab or by simply clicking the following link, I.I.
Networking is a vital part in today’s world and thanks to networking I was chosen by admissions to us my internship as an example of students doing some interesting and engaging things outside the classroom. In the following images, you can see the conversation Chris Comstock and I had on Facebook.
My networking has improved tremendously and I plan on using that to my advantage. Billee Jo, John Vail, and Amrit, just to name a few, are behind me one hundred percent and have encouraged me to continue my success in school as well as encouraging me to come back to GRT to continue working there. Hopefully I can turn to them once I begin getting job offers so that they can perhaps write me letter of recommendations. I also boosted my networking by working with Faye Finnegan as well as Chris Comstock.
Objective #6
My sixth and final objective was to gain knowledge of what it feels like to work for a publishing company. The reason why I wanted to make this one of my objectives was so that I will be able to relate to something once I end up getting my first job out of school. I would like to have something other than my high school working experience at a factory working maintenance to compare my first job to. Although they might be in different industries I would still like something professional to compare it to.
In a publishing company the publisher typically controls the advertising and other marketing tasks, but may mandate various aspects of the process to professional publisher marketing agencies. In many businesses, editing, copy editing, layout, design and additional features of the production process are done by suppliers. Having worked at GRT, I also noticed that the busiest time of the year for a publishing company is between July and August. So in other words, the busiest time of year is during the summer because the beginning of school is right around the corner. That is one of the reasons why Billee Jo appreciated my help; she enjoyed having me there during the busiest time of year and enjoyed my quality work during the busiest time of year.
Even though I have not gained that much knowledge about the publishing industry, I still know some things and the things I know are perfect if I have to explain what it feels like to work at a publishing company.
Working at a publishing company I noticed that in order to run a successful business you have to have all parts working together and working together well. You cannot run a company without having people get along with each other. At GRT, everyone gets along with everyone and like I mentioned before, at GRT we work kind of in an assembly line. You have the designers, the web application managers, the interns, the sales people, the vice president, the manager, and then you have web support. All of these positions need to be in sync or else your company won’t work out and that is what is so great about GRT. If you ask someone for help they will help you, you ask someone a question and they will answer it; those are just the type of people that work at GRT.
Having worked there I will tell you this, if every company in the publishing business runs their business like GRT runs their business then they are in for many years of success. GRT is the prime example of a positive work environment that leads to success. GRT is also a great example of vertical and horizontal growth, Billee Jo started out as an intern and here she is the Web Development Manager of GRT. Sheena Reed used to work on projects with the design team but now she is the Author Relations Coordinator at GRT.
Even though I have not gained that much knowledge about the publishing industry, I still know some things and the things I know are perfect if I have to explain what it feels like to work at a publishing company.
Working at a publishing company I noticed that in order to run a successful business you have to have all parts working together and working together well. You cannot run a company without having people get along with each other. At GRT, everyone gets along with everyone and like I mentioned before, at GRT we work kind of in an assembly line. You have the designers, the web application managers, the interns, the sales people, the vice president, the manager, and then you have web support. All of these positions need to be in sync or else your company won’t work out and that is what is so great about GRT. If you ask someone for help they will help you, you ask someone a question and they will answer it; those are just the type of people that work at GRT.
Having worked there I will tell you this, if every company in the publishing business runs their business like GRT runs their business then they are in for many years of success. GRT is the prime example of a positive work environment that leads to success. GRT is also a great example of vertical and horizontal growth, Billee Jo started out as an intern and here she is the Web Development Manager of GRT. Sheena Reed used to work on projects with the design team but now she is the Author Relations Coordinator at GRT.
Like I stated before, I do not know much about the publishing industry but what I have learned at GRT has been more than what I knew in the beginning of the internship. Having spent time with some great people at GRT I would definitely recommend my friends to take an internship at a publishing company. I can now put in my résumé that I worked at a publishing company which will definitely expand my horizons. Once they see that GRT deals with technology as well that will be another great boost to my value in the real world job market once I graduate. This was a great experience for me and I wish I would’ve done it earlier in my career because who knows how much I would know and how much I would’ve learned if I had done this internship from my sophomore year until this year.
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