My time here as an intern at Mystic Waters Media has been an eye opening experience. In this blog post I want to reflect upon my time as an intern at MWM and share it with you.
To begin with, I've never had much of a taste for the "corporate structure". As a communications major, I have always thrived in an place where the people you work with are real and where you are treated as an individual, not just another employee. When I was looking for an internship, I avoided applying for the ones that wanted me to fit myself into a fill-in-the-blank space. I didn't want to be a paper in a stack of papers, because I knew the real me wasn't defined by an 8.5" by 11" slice of paper. That is what drew me to MWM. I wasn't asked to submit my resume or fill out a questionnaire. I was asked to simply get in contact. I got a personal interview where I could use my skills to impress my employer and I walked out of the interview with an internship.
Since then I have learned about things that I never knew existed. I have learned how the internet is a living, breathing organism with billions of connections that lead us to what we want to see. I now understand what the term "Web 2.0" means. I can tell you how Facebook knows what ads to put on my news feed. I can tell you that any business that wants to survive needs to be connected to social media sites like Twitter. My experience at MWM has revealed to me a world of opportunity that I never knew existed. Before MWM, things like posts, hashtags, tweets, and tags were just lingo to connect me to my friends. Now I know that there is so much more to it than that. These things are the lifeblood of any business that hopes to compete in this technological world.
At MWM my skills as a writer have been vastly altered. I was once accustomed to writing pieces for a letter grade. Now I know how to write like a reporter. I know that there are stories everywhere that need to be told, and I now have the skills to give those stories to the people. As an intern, I developed and wrote blogs as well as other social media documents. Before, I would never have thought that a blog was something of importance. Now I know that I'm not just writing blogs, I am making connections. I am advertising and channeling people to new locations through my blogs.
My time here at MWM is not over, but I have already learned more than I had imagined I would. I no longer see the internet as I once did. I know that I have only seen the tip of the iceberg that is the internet, and I can't wait to learn more.
What have you liked? Disliked?
I love being able to work from home and to have a schedule that is flexible enough to handle really any situation. It's also really nice having an employer who is real and understandable, that is really important to me. Disliked? Telecommuting is new to me. I don't have a clock in or clock out time so time can become very flexible. Really there isn't much that could be changed to fix that at this point. I guess it's just a trade off to not having to report to a place of work for the internship, which I am just fine with.
How can this internship improve?
Hmm...well for me, nothing. I like it just the way it is. Now I know that I am not like everyone. I am good with little structure and lots of flexibility, however I don't know if everyone will feel as I do. Maybe a more detailed plan of attack for those kinds of people?
