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Month: November 2017

My Internship in Rome (Week 8)

My Internship in Rome (Week 8)

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This semester in Rome, I was fortunate enough to get hired as a marketing intern for a company called The Roman Guy. The Roman Guy specializes in various VIP tours of different tourist attractions all around Rome, as well as several local food tours in different areas. As an assignment for my class ROST 370, I am required to reflect on my experience of working as an intern for this company.

This week at the Roman Guy, I was assigned multiple tasks that I had to complete by a specific time. Some of these tasks were similar to what I have completed in the past, and some others were brand new. Some of the tasks that I accomplished this week we’re finding TripAdvisor reviews and posting them to our website, editing several blog posts using the Blog Life Cycle, writing about The Vatican Museums for our Vatican Tours, posting three instagram pictures and two stories, inviting people on Facebook to like our page, and finding 10 different photos that I will use to help create a video for our Facebook page. Previous classroom knowledge has helped me because a lot of what I learned, such as tactics for gaining followers, in my previous marketing class is being used during this internship as well. Before starting my internship, I created a learning objectives that I wanted to achieve by the end of my internship. One of my learning objectives that I have been working towards completing is to improve my writing skills for blog posts, various social media apps, and articles. I am working towards achieving this objective, because every week I am assigned a different tourism site in Rome and I have to research it extensively and write a small article about it. After I am done writing it, I send it for my boss to be looked over which will then be posted to The Roman Guy’s website when it is complete. I have also been working on improving my writing, because I have to edit several blogs using rules from the Blog Life Cycle. This challenges me because I have to know how to not use a passive voice, use better transitions, and reword sentences to make them shorter because ultimately that is what helps make a blog post good. A challenge that I have been recently facing regarding my internship is transportation. This past week, getting to work was rough because I missed my train and it was delayed a couple of times, and I also had to deal with a crazy Italian lady that was on the train one day that was giving me a hard time for being an American. Although I can’t control other people’s actions, I am going to fix the other problem by leaving an extra 10 minutes early so that I can hopefully avoid missing the train and dealing with delays. So far, one of the most impressive things about my internship to date is how creative my coworkers are. They can come up with really neat ideas involving photography, video, and content posting, and they push me to think more outside of the box in order to make our content be different and catch peoples attention. For the following weeks, I am expected to take full control of our company’s Instagram, The Roman Foodie, and incorporate creative pictures onto the profile and post more frequently. I will also be working on more creative projects that involve creating and editing videos for our Facebook and Instagram page. Besides that as of now, I am expected to keep interacting with followers, writing and editing blog posts, and marketing our social media to followers. So far I have been loving my internship and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for me. Ciao for now!

Cars on the Wrong Side of the Road

Cars on the Wrong Side of the Road

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Ciao!

These past two weekends, I traveled to Ireland and the United Kingdom. Both areas were beautiful yet strange since cars drive on the opposite side of the road. On the ground, there are signs that tell passerby’s exactly which direction to look in. It would have been helpful if I had used it, yet I wasn’t always looking at the ground when crossing a street. I almost died a few times. An easy way to tell a tourist is which way a person looks when crossing the street. Although Ireland is in the European Union, they use the same type of charger shape as the United Kingdom.

Outside of St. Patrick’s Catherdel.

I traveled to Dublin, Ireland with two of my friends. The trip had a stressful start leaving the Rome Campus and taking a taxi to the airport. My friends and I made our flight by nine minutes. It took an hour to get to the airport with Rome’s terrible traffic. Many thoughts flooded my mind on what I would do if I missed my flight. It was a good thing we did not. Upon arriving in Dublin, the first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane was the cold. Rome is a tropical climate and Rome’s cold is nothing compared to Ireland’s. For the better part of the weekend, it rained almost the entire time. I was stuffed into layers and layers of clothes. I never left the hostel without a hat, scarf and pair of gloves.

Street in Dublin

The Irish accent is something both merry and vulgar. The taxi drivers were the most hilarious people I encountered. The pubs were endless. If we didn’t like the first pub we walked into, we just walked to the one right next door or down the street. No one every ordered wine, beer was the substance of the Irish people. It was a good stress relief to come to the pub after a long day of touring through freezing cold rain or windy chills. We went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, St. Patrick’s, Christ Church, Castle of Dublin, and shopped till we dropped. The most popular things to buy in Ireland were wool and Claddagh rings. I purchased a couple of both.

National Park in Ireland

I also went with a tour to the Cliffs of Moher and Galway. It was the worst possible weather day to travel because of endless rain and chilly winds. Upon arriving at the cliffs, it was so foggy that I couldn’t even see the cliff’s I’d paid to see. It was fun despite the weather conditions because I was with a good group of people. We were mainly on the bus because it took three hours to get to the cliffs of Dublin. Then two hours north to get to Galway, then three hours back to Dublin. On the last day, we went started the day with an Irish breakfast and went to the Guinness Factory had toured the museum. I loved Ireland!

Dublin Pub

The next weekend, I went London to visit my cousin who is studying abroad there. I left Rome Thursday evening, and went shopping the entire day Friday. She let me stay in her apartment and took me around London to all the sites on Saturday along with her sister who flew in from Boston Saturday morning. Saturday was rainy and wet, but it was not as miserable as Ireland. I really did enjoy my time in London. I ate a lot of Indian food because as Mexican food is popular in the United States, Indian food is popular in the United Kingdom.

Tower Bridge London

One thing I was unprepared for but loved was how big and familiar London felt to Chicago. Everything is in English and there are familiar food chains. London has some very huge markets, two of which I shopped at. I went to Camden Market and Portobello Market that is on Notting Hill. I saw the Tower Bridge at night and during the day. London is an hour behind Rome so it got dark very early. Everyone I encountered was very friendly and welcoming. I had no idea that London was bigger than New York! The tube was easy and quick to use. One of my favorite thing was cooking food in, especially breakfast because breakfast is not a thing in Rome. I had avocado toast and eggs every morning!

Queens Palace

Ciao for now, next stop will be Vienna Austria!

My Internship in Rome (Week 9)

My Internship in Rome (Week 9)

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This semester in Rome, I was fortunate enough to get hired as a marketing intern for a company called The Roman Guy. The Roman Guy specializes in various VIP tours of different tourist attractions all around Rome, as well as several local food tours in different areas. As an assignment for my class ROST 370, I am required to reflect on my experience of working as an intern for this company.

This week at the Roman Guy, my boss assigned me several tasks that I had to complete by the end of the week. Some of these tasks were my usual assignments, like finding TripAdvisor reviews and posting them to our website, editing several blogs using the Blog Life Cycle rules, writing a small article about Palatine Hill for our Rome Key Attraction page, and posting three instagram pictures and two stories. Some tasks that I had to do this week that were brand new to me was that my boss, Sian, assigned me two challenges that I had to complete in a specific amount of time. The two challenges that Sian assigned me was that I had to come up with 10 different poll ideas for our Facebook page and try to find pictures for each idea, and the other challenge was that I had to think of two video ideas involving the Vatican and The Colosseum and try to find pictures and create quotes that I could include. Previous classroom knowledge has been helping me so far with my internship because in my previous marketing class that I took last semester, we learned how to create content that will attract followers and other tactics for marketing that I learned are also being used during this internship as well. Before starting my internship, I created three learning objectives that I wanted to achieve by the end of my internship. One of the learning objectives that I set for myself was to learn how to monitor my followers activity involving my content and overall learn how to market more successfully. I have been working towards achieving this learning objective because a lot of my work lately has been focused on instagram and creating content that helps attract more followers. This past week, I learned how to find other bloggers pictures on instagram and reblog them to our page. That way I am giving more attention to the blogger by using their picture on The Roman Foodie’s page and I am also building a relationship with the blogger. Some challenges that I have been facing recently regarding this internship is transportation and schoolwork. I usually have quite difficulty with transportation, because I always just miss the train by a minute and I have to wait another 15 minutes for a new one to come and sometimes that can almost cause me to be late. I am going to fix this for next week by researching the times that the train is coming and make sure that I am at the train station at that time. Another challenge that I have been facing is trying to balance my schoolwork with my internship. This has been kind of difficult for me recently because the end of the semester is coming which means that there are a ton of due dates coming up. I can admit that it can be really hard to balance school and my internship together, but I have been resolving this by working on projects ahead of time and also staying up a little later at night than usual to complete school work after my internship. So far, one of the most impressive things about my internship to date is how much it has been pushing me to be better in marketing and in writing. Before starting my internship, I was nervous that I would not be able to complete the tasks that were giving to me because I didn’t really believe in myself and it all seemed so overwhelming. I am really proud of myself because I have been pushing myself out of my comfort zone and I have been completing all of the tasks that are assigned to me. I am also impressed with how this internship has been helping me with my writing skills, because a lot of my professors have said that they have noticed a difference in my writing compared to the beginning of the semester and I owe it all to this internship. Sadly, next week is my last week working as an intern for The Roman Guy. My expectation for next week is that after learning how to edit other creator’s blogs, I am expected to write my own blog about my experience in Rome and all of the places that have I traveled to. I am also expected to use my own pictures from my experiences here in Italy for this blog. Some other work that I will be expected to do is to keep posting on the Roman Foodie’s instagram page, create more Facebook video ideas, and edit more blogs. So far I have been loving my internship and I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for me. Ciao for now!