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What I’ve Learned from My Internship – Allison

Looking back and reflecting on my senior year internship, I realize it’s going to be difficult to narrow down everything I learned into one blog. An internship, in general, gives you so many necessary skills for the workforce that you wouldn’t typically gain just from going to classes, but my internship was different for three reasons. 1. I worked for one of the best teams out there. 2. I was never a big writer before working at Smarter Searches. In fact, my sophomore year English professor essentially told me he was concerned that I was an advertising major after reading my first paper. Yikes, but it gave the push I needed to get better. And 3. Our country went into a full-fledged pandemic mid-semester. After a lot of reflection and brainstorming, I think I can sum up the big things I learned during my internship into three general topics: adaption, how to be independent while also being a part of a team, and time management. 

Even if there wasn’t a pandemic this year, I would still put adaptation as one of the skills I acquired from this internship. In the beginning, I wasn’t totally confident about everything I did or was told to do because it was all so new to me. I had to adapt to this new “real world” work setting and become more confident – more confident in myself and more confident to admit “I don’t know” every now and then. Then, in March while I was back at home from spring break, I was notified that our office was closing and we would all be working from home. Little did I know, I would “graduate” before the office would ever reopen. Experiencing that kind of change mid-semester was overwhelming, but it was truly a great learning experience looking back. Plus, who knows? Maybe my future employer will be sticking to the work-from-home model for good, and I’ll have an advantage! In the end, it only taught me how to become better, how to adapt, and how to achieve a goal in the face of an obstacle. 

How to Work Independently, While Also on a Team

Interning at Smarter Searches gave the word “team” a whole new meaning to me. There is so much teamwork that has to be done in an agency setting. However, in order to pull through for your team, you have to do a good job and be intentional about your individual work. That’s why I feel like this internship taught me how to be independent and take initiative in my own work. I had to for my team. Ultimately, I found that our team was the underlying motivation for all of my work and tasks. That truly is the beauty of teamwork.

Time Management

I learned how to properly and efficiently manage my time during my internship. I wrote blogs for clients that were scheduled on a month-to-month basis. Once I learned how long it took me to write one blog, I was able to plan my whole month in advance. This also helped me stay organized in other aspects of my life at the time like school, my social life, and hobbies. 

I am so grateful for everything this internship taught me. I have a LOT of random knowledge from all of the research I did over the past year, but I truly feel like the workplace skills I’ve acquired at Smarter Searches will help me thrive in my future career. Thank you all for everything!