Jasmine Lee's Fairwell

While many of my fellow bloggers are finishing their internships, I will just be starting mine! I’m excited to start a new chapter and learn more about leadership and HR practices through my internship this summer. What I’ve done so far has been such a great learning experience, but doing it from a distance has been tough, like anything, so being in the office more and being a part of that office culture is what I’m most excited for.

 

From only doing this internship a few hours a week this past semester has taught me so many things. I’ve learned more about the importance of networking and how to do it. I’ve learned more about myself and my likes and dislikes. I’ve become more comfortable in a professional setting and have grown professionally. I’ve even learned how to jump-start a car and maintain it (that’s a long story). So by learning all this in such a short amount of time, I can’t even imagine what I’ll get to experience this summer.

 

So, with all that being said, it’s been a memorable semester, and I’ve enjoyed learning about other student’s internships through this blog. And I hope you learned some more about internships and how great they are too!

Ellen Dodor's Final Goodbye

I can’t believe my blogging days are slowly coming to an end. My career at the radio station is as well, and I have to say it’s been a great experience being able to reflect on everything I’ve learned in the past year and a half. I still remember my first say at the station pulling in at 5:15am and being so nervous my palms were sweating and I was abnormally shy. For the next few months I was made fun of and it took me a while to come out of my shell. I started to come out of my shell when summer came and that’s when everything started to feel natural. Everything from running the board, to designing, and speaking on air became natural and that’s why I believe I’ve had the opportunity to work there for as long as I have.

I’ve become friends with the people I work with and they have also become my mentors. They are genuine, creative, honest, and overall great people to have in your life.  The skills I’ve learned from my internship expand beyond the technical. The right internship can help you to grow professionally and personally. What I’ve learned through my internship is that I love being on air, but I like doing social media and design work more. It doesn’t mean that I would never work in radio again; I just have found my niche and a central focus which will help me when applying for jobs after graduation.

For future radio intern my advice for you is to be fearless. It’s ok to make mistakes but you’ll be making a bigger mistake if you don’t ask questions. Put yourself out there at your internship and ask as many questions as you can. There is no penalty for being curious. School won’t teach you everything and in a field that’s evolving everyday it’s important to be thinking on your feet and to be asking questions. You won’t learn anything if you don’t push your limits. I pushed my limits just by applying for this internship!

In a couple of weeks I will be leaving this internship and starting a new one. I will always be thinking of the time I spent on air as “Intern Ellen” but I do think I’ve learned everything I can and now I can put those skills to use in my new job. This station will always be special to me and I hope for future interns that work there that they embrace it as much as I did.

Developing Relationships by Jasmine Lee

By Jasmine Lee

 

This past week has been all about developing relationships and experiencing the culture of the office. The most important aspect from a recruiter’s point of view is making interns comfortable in their office setting and making sure the culture is the right fit for them. Internships are all about exploring yourself and your likes and dislikes. They give you a chance to basically find out what you want to do and what kinds of people you want to be around, and the opposite holds true as well. My employer is all about gaining experiences; his philosophy is that internships are a chance to find out what you don’t want out of a career.

This may sound funny since we students generally think of internships as an “in” with a company and hopefully a chance for a lifetime career after graduation. However, I’m beginning to agree with his philosophy. I mean, when we’re only 20 years old, do most of us really know what we want to be doing and what kind of company we want to end up with? It’s good to explore your options by talking to as many people as you can and getting as many experiences with different companies as you can.

So what this company does to help students explore themselves and help them see if they are the right company fit for them is they hold weekly classroom seminars for students looking to get into the financial industry. This way, they get a closer look at the recruits, and the recruits get to experience the culture of the office and learn more about what they will be doing as financial advisors before actually committing.

They talk to as many advisors as they can and develop relationships with the recruiter as well as among themselves. Thus far, I’ve really enjoyed meeting everyone in the office and developing those relationships

Ellen Dodor Helps Other Students Develop Success

Written By: Ellen Dodor

At my internship we always have turnover, every semester we get some rookies coming in to screen calls and at first I was annoyed because I thought I was being replaced. But then I began to step back from my bubble and observe the people around me. The station I work for really gives back to college students by offering internships all year long. The interview process was simple, have a personality and get the internship! I remember my boss telling me that it was the effort that I put forth that would determine what I would get out of it. Since I’ve began my internship last January I’ve seen a handful of interns come and go. Some find something else and leave, others deciding that their Thursday nights downtown were more important, none the less I’ve managed to stick around and to work hard so that when I do leave, I will be able to use my boss as a reference.

My other goal as a senior intern is to prepare these new interns and to give them the truth about what they are getting into. It’s not about scaring the new interns but creating a mini Ellen that will be someone they can rely on. I’ve realized that I didn’t have anyone like that when I started, it was trial and error and I finally got it right! I don’t think the show will suffer if the interns aren’t great, but with the interns it creates new material for the show and that is what keeps it fresh and relevant with pop culture. I feel obligated now to teach these new interns all I know, help them to not make a fool out of themselves and to really appreciate the opportunity they’ve been given.

This could be a game changer for a student’s career path and I’m taking it upon myself to make sure that if this internship is the game changer, then the new interns will soak it up for all it’s worth! Interns have gone on to work out in LA because of the skills they developed while working at this station; so I can only hope that with my guidance that another intern can have the same success.
 

Meghan Reistad Is A Reporters Shadow

Written By: Meghan Reistad

This week involved shadowing a reporter at my internship. I enjoyed learning the process of putting a story together from the beginning to end. Our first stop for the evening was the St. Joseph City Council meeting. We made sure to have a copy of the meeting agenda, and specifics to developing stories, on hand when we arrived in St. Joseph.

Our job for the evening was to follow-up on a few stories from the previous week and make sure we reported on the specifics. To be completely honest, I was extremely confused by all the formalities and technical lingo when we first arrived. Fortunately, the reporter I was shadowing said she felt the same way when she first started reporting on city council meetings. Overall, the experience was a great way to be introduced to reporting a “beat,” in-depth reporting on a particular issue.

The next day, I assisted with a video shoot of a local photography studio in St. Cloud. We began the shoot by setting up our equipment and making sure the lighting was set up properly. One of the most important aspects to being successful on a video shoot is making sure all of your equipment is ready to go for filming. Fortunately, all of our camera and lighting equipment was charged so we could begin setting up our shots.

The reporter I was shadowing focused on filming the main interview and close-ups of the subjects. My job was to film the little things that make a video interesting. In a very small space, I managed to get footage of many different aspects in the photography studio. I am anxious to see how the video turned out! I know the reporter I was shadowing found it helpful to have me as an assistant. Sometimes, two heads (or cameras, in this case) are better than one.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be volunteering to help with the “World’s Largest Garage Sale.” The event is organized by my internship location and many of the interns will be helping out at the event. In my next post, I’ll be writing about my experience as a volunteer, and hopefully a few good deals I find, as well!

A Variety of Experiences by Jessica Nietfeld

Interning this week was a challenge. I had schedule conflicts with the graphic designers, who are designing promotional posters for a project that I am ahead of in the office.  Luckily, I contacted them in advance to show respect for both, their schedule and mine. 

I also got to help with putting on a job fair!  There were over 40 employers that attended.  My duties were setting up posters, helping employers set up, and directing students to take surveys so they could win prizes!  Overall the day of the event was fun and exciting!  Offering to help anyone and everyone is always a good strength to have! 

In between the development of posters and the job fair, I was meeting with students regarding the internship search process.  Good news, I had zero no shows! 

This week, I will continue to meet with students regarding internship development!  In addition, my first Internship Search and Preperation presentation will be tomorrow, which means today I will be prepping in-between student meetings.    Mostly, I am excited to better my speaking skills so I can add this experience to my resume! 

The best part of my internship is the variety of experiences!  My goal when I got this internship was to continue building on my skills no matter what duties I was asked to do.  Whether big or small, all the experiences I act on have demonstrated my strengths of cooperation and collaboration. 

Insightful Internship by Jasmine Lee

This week has been incredibly insightful with my internship. Since the office is in Bloomington, I don’t get face-to-face contact with my employer or others in the office as much as I’d like during the school semester, but this week, I got two chances to do so!

My employer came to SCSU to do some interviews for advisors earlier in the week. I got the opportunity to sit in on a couple and just observe and then ask a few questions myself. He does structured interviews, and it was really exciting being able to see what each question is meant to get out of the candidates and what they look for.  After a couple interviews of just observing, I got to role play asking the questions and then got a chance to ask a couple in the next interview. I felt pretty powerful!

Today, I went into the office to meet the advising interns and see what they were up to in their classroom work. I have to say it was really nice being around people my own age, and it was kind of a fun change of pace seeing what they were learning about financial advising. I definitely don’t know enough about the industry since it is so complex, but I’m trying!

I have to share some advice that one of the advisors shared with us today because I’ve seen and heard about this much too often. He asked us, “Why do you go to college?” Well, the answer is pretty obvious – to get ready for a career, right? Well when an opportunity presents itself to further your career, take it, no matter what is getting in your way.  Professors probably won’t like me saying this, but classes and exams can wait. The main point of going to college is getting a career, so take every opportunity you get to move towards that goal.

Employers want to see motivated and enthusiastic recruits who really want to work for their company and do well. Being persistent and confidant is generally a good way to get in, but you need to utilize resources to get those initial contacts and build relationships with employers. I’m not getting paid to say this, but Career Services is an excellent place to get started. So use it!