Opening new doors
Leaving college and getting a “big-boy” job is terribly intimidating. So I did an internship.
By Santiago Bonilla, Marketing and Design Intern
As my time here in college comes closer and closer to its end, I’ve had to sit down and really take a look around. I asked myself, “What do I want to come out of this whole college experience?” Leaving college and getting a big-boy job is terribly intimidating, so I pushed myself to look into getting some real experience before leaving.
With this in mind, I looked around for a way to gain experience. For the most part I was looking for job opportunities specifically in design. I attended a UNCA career fair, where I met NEMAC’s Caroline Dougherty. I applied. I then found myself interning for a group that I’d only vaguely heard of and knew even less about. I’ve never seen myself working in the marketing field, but this internship has changed all that.
“NEMAC? What’s that?”
— Everyone at UNCA
My Marketing and Design Internship at NEMAC has really opened my eyes to just how versatile my skillset actually is. Though I’m earning a degree in New Media, I see now that I’m not strictly limited to working with interactive media after I graduate. At NEMAC, for instance, I’ve worked primarily with social media. To say the least, it’s been a bit of an adventure into what makes online posts work.
I’ve learned that when creating content, you need to consider everything — from the platform’s audience to how current the post is. Add into the mix my terrible grammar, and the problems associated with that! Prior to interning at NEMAC, I did some social media work for my high school. That gave me something of a sense for how marketing works. After this internship, I would now really like to delve deeper into the field.
Check out NEMAC’s various social media feeds I’ve been working on:
To be honest, it’s been one heck of a learning experience. I’ve met so many new people, discovered what I like and don’t like doing, and learned about what it’s like to work in a professional environment. At times it’s been stressful, sometimes tremendously fun, sometimes quite boring…but through it all I feel that I’ve grown as a professional.
At the end of the day, that’s the neat thing about internships. You go into a real-world experience hoping to get as much learning out of it as possible. For me at least, this internship has really helped me narrow down what I would like to do and figure out which skills I need to improve upon.
If you yourself are a student, reading this, considering looking around at internships:
Go for it, even if you’re not sure that you’ll like it. You’ll never know what you might enjoy doing unless you try.
