There a lot of perks to living in a big city. One of them is having friends with cool internships. Because of this, once in a while I get the opportunity to partake in some cool intern activities.
One of my friends has an internship with Allied-THA, a marketing company that does things like research, advertising and promotions for different types of clients. On Thursday she texted me and asked if I would fill in for her doing a pre-screening of the movie “Here Comes The Boom.” All I had to do was show up to the Century 12 theater in Evanston an hour before the movie started and scan peoples tickets. After the movie I did a write-up on ten to fifteen scenes that the audience reacted to and that was it!
I got a free movie, a little bit of pocket cash, and got to see the movie about a month before it comes out in theaters!
The ticket's to the screening of "Here Comes The Boom"
I am excited to be back at Loyola University Chicago and blogging my experiences once again! I cannot believe that I am a junior. The past two year have flown by so fast!
My summer was definitely a busy one. I had the opportunity to intern at a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. called Words Beats & Life. This organization was unique because it bases its purpose in the positive values of hip-hop, professional development, youth development and the arts. My main project consisted of marketing their bi-annual peer-reviewed journal on hip-hop culture. I was able to work closely with three other marketing and communications interns by writing and editing press releases, facilitate a social media based fundraising campaign and be a set of helping hands at their annual teach-in.
Along with working retail to save up before school, I value the experience I had at Words Beats & Life greatly. I felt prepared with the courses I have taken so far at Loyola and I also felt the time and energy I put into projects given were worth while.
Now that I am in my third year, I have an inkling that it will be a busy, yet fulfilling one. I will continue to be involved with the Black Cultural Center as vice president, the African Student Alliance as president and co-choreographer of AfroDescent. I also look forward to working with the department of Student Diversity and Multicultural Affairs with the Empowerment Pipeline program for a second year. Being in my position and reflecting on the experiences I have had by being a leader, I am eager to pass on my knowledge and advice to those who have the potential to be future student leaders on Loyola’s campus as well!
My blog will again be my gateway to reflecting on my experiences this year. I do recognize that I am a student first, but I will try to squeeze in some me time and fun times!
I cannot wait to see what junior year has in store for me!
My apologies for being away for such a long while, however I am back now and excited to be back on the blogosphere. To start, let me catch up on my life and the fun activities I have been involved with.
Firstly, the first 6 weeks of summer I spent recovering from finals, catching up with friends, hanging out with family and eating the delicious foods home never ceases to offer.
Now though, I have started a new summer project, a project that will help me better appreciate this Loyola community that has brought me so much joy.
I have been fortuned with an internship opportunity here at school that allows me to meet with directors of various student development departments so that I understand their roles, and appreciate their service to the university. I also have the opportunity to work within two departments and assist with some projects they are working on. These two departments are the Center for Community Service and Action and Water Tower Campus Life.
As a student blogger and liaison to the flow of information here at Loyola, I will spend these next couple weeks blogging about the great people and great opportunities this university offers. I hope you can learn about all of the exciting events going on here at Loyola as I relay the information.
For my internship this week I was asked to profile the commencement speaker for the SoC graduation, Carol Marin. Marin is a local print and broadcast journalist.
She invited me to NBC studios right off Michigan Ave. for the interview and I got to sit in on a political meeting, met a number of important people,and saw some of the background operations.
The interview went well, and despite being a little nervous, she complimented me on my preparedness! Though my internship has allowed me to meet some really great people around campus, this was my “big story,” and I’m very excited to add it to my portfolio!
I’ll be sure to share the article once it is up on the SoC website.
Tonight I attended the School of Communication Career Fair. I was attending the fair for two reasons: I was hoping to make some good connections for a potential job, but I also have an article to write which involved interviewing the employers and recruiters. I think this added some pressure on my end to conduct a competent interview and then weave the conversation around to my interest in their open positions.
SoC offered a career week with workshops to prepare students for tonight’s event, including resume writing tips and even career fashion advice. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend these events, but I did take the initiative to spruce up my resume and cover letter.
I was pretty nervous to attend the fair, but after meeting with a couple of the employers, it was a lot more relaxed than I had anticipated. There was also a wide range of employers. There were several marketing and public relations firms, and some what I would call non-traditional communication career options, such as DJ’s.
Students were also given the chance to raffle a copy of their resume to get an interview with Groupon. Last year’s winner was actually hired for the position! Talking to these employers, I learned that many had hired Loyola students for intern positions and even jobs.
It was great to hear the positive feedback that these employers had to say about Loyola’s reputation and the qualifications of Loyola students.
I’m hoping to hear back and follow up with some of these employers soon.
One of the problems that I run into each semester is that I spread myself too thin.
It usually starts when the semester is in its infancy. The reason is that when the semester is just getting started, everything is still easy. Nothing major due in classes, plenty of syllabus days and getting let out early to pass the time. My job managing events takes a while to pick up, since there are few events when the semester starts. So naturally I look for more things to do with my time. The thought is, well, if this is so easy, I can advance some other parts of my life like my career or extra curricular activities.
But then all those classes start giving me more and more responsibility, and I have to start spending even more time in the office. Suddenly, before I know it, I’m swamped.
Currently I have four different “jobs” outside of being a student. I manage events for the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, I am a Jr. Marketing Specialist at The Plum Tree Group (a digital marketing and commerce development agency,) I am a special intern to the Dean of the School of Communications and I write this blog for the Undergraduate Admissions Department. Add to that the fact that recently a startup Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company just reached out to me because of my personal website; they are interested in working together on gamification and CRM.
So all of a sudden I have all these things starting to drag me down, and I have no idea how complicated it got.
But I have nobody to blame but myself. I think I have a tendency to overestimate my capabilities. But someone great once said, “When life gets harder it means you leveled up.”
So I think I’ll take that attitude on and decide that whatever I was going before wasn’t challenging enough, but that with practice and diligence I can rise to this occasion as well.
In fact, I’m also going to launch into a project for the Symposium on Digital Ethics run through the School of Communications. Monday I meet with the Dean, one of its organizers, to discuss submitting a paper on the best practices or ethics of gamification.
So let’s hope that my last 3 years of juggling responsibilities has prepared me well enough to buckle down and kick butt on all this stuff I have to do! Here comes the home stretch!
As I start this post, I must first note that it is seriously FREEZING outside! While walking from class to class today, I had to concentrate very hard on finding the motivation and willpower to leave from one building to the next. But alas, I am now in the safe and warm confines of my Baumhart Hall and now that my fingers are sufficiently warm, I will now proceed to share my tales from winter break and other current affairs.
Winter break seemed like a promising time to catch on some much needed rest and relaxation, but in all honesty, I have never seen four weeks go by so quickly. I definitely let myself slip into some bad habits. These habits include, but are not limited to… nocturnal sleep patterns (resulting in sleeping in to very unreasonable hours of the day), eating unjustified amounts of junk food and watching TLC.
Let me explain that last one. Normally I watch very little, in fact, almost no TV. As there isn’t much to do in my hometown, I began to explore the array of channels offered by our DISH and I stumbled upon TLC. This channel has some of the most terrifying shows I have ever seen. Examples include “Hoarding: Buried Alive,““Toddlers & Tiaras,” “Dance Moms“and many more! I would prefer not to go into much detail about each shows, as they are not all that pertinent, but I will say that they are very disturbing. And yet I could not change the channel.
Now that I am back at school, I can concentrate on the more practical aspects of life, studying! I also have started my spring internship as the School of Communication reporter. In fact, I have already finished my first article about an exhibit soon to be shown at the School of Communication. The exhibit, Too Young to Die, is a photography documentary series by a Chicago photographer, Carlos Javier Ortiz. Other than writing stories, one of my favorite aspects of being a journalism major is the opportunity to meet and interview so many interesting people.
As far as classes go, I am eager to begin some of my projects for my color theory course (I’m a studio art minor). The best part of taking an art class? The fun school supplies, of course! For color theory, I had to purchase a seriously large stack of colored papers (314 sheets of beautiful color, to be exact). But for now, my first assignment is to make a color wheel (It’s a little more serious than it sounds). Other than that, my other classes seem enjoyable enough. For now, however, I’m ready for the weekend!
As part of the journalism curriculum, students must obtain an internship to practice the various reporting skills obtained in the classroom. As procrastination and I are very good friends, I am now well into my senior year and scrambling to find a sweet internship for the upcoming semester so that I can graduate on time!
The process seemed a bit daunting at first as it requires resume writing, cover letters and writing samples. Writing samples I had on hand from my coursework, but my resume was very much out of date and I had no cover letter. I cannot excuse my behavior as Loyola consistently offers resume and cover letter workshops, and often times, professors are more than happy to edit these sorts of documents. The Career Development Center is a great resource if you need help with writing or revision. (Word to the wise—Start your resume now! Add experiences as you gain them, and by the time you graduate, you won’t be hard pressed to remember dates and details of your experiences!)
As I began the quest in search of the perfect internship, I first checked the School of Communication’s internship database, which has postings from most all news organizations in Chicago. Next, I went to Loyola’s RamblerLink, a very nifty site that has job and internship postings, AND lets you load your resume, cover letters, and writing samples so that you can just pick what organization you want to apply for and send in all your documents, without the hassle of loading them over and over again for each separate application. RamblerLink is also a great resource to find part-time jobs, work-study jobs and full-time jobs after you graduate.
So now that I’ve settled on a few places, it’s just a matter of hearing back!
A lot of people ask me why I went to Loyola, a private college in Chicago rather than a state college back home in Minnesota. Some argue that I would get the same degree and same education without having to pay so much.
What I tell them is that I’m not paying for the degree (which, by the way, I would argue isn’t at all the same education I would get at different college) but, rather, I’m paying for the connections. People at Loyola are well connected, and I had the feeling that if I went to school here, they would hold my hand and help ensure that I found employment after graduation.
This Tuesday my Digital Media Campaigns class was visited by Alecia Dantico, @danticoa, who is the Vice President for Edelman Digital, the digital facet of the largest private public relations firm in Chicago. She spent more than an hour talking to my Digital Media Class and ended by giving her card and telling us that we should contact her whenever we want or whenever we need advice.
Then the next day as I’m visiting my capstone professor for next semester, Herb Ritchell, he gives me the contact information for a Loyola Alum who also works for Edelman Digital. So I emailed her and set up a time to meet over coffee. As of writing I’m waiting in the Starbucks at the Aon Center to talk to her about post-graduate opportunities.
So the Rambler Network runs deeper than I thought; and if anything, it is what’ll put me in a better position to land a job after college.
