Overall Insight

I often questioned if and how my academic career would help during a working experience. This internship showed me the value of studying at U of M in a way that wasn’t clear to me during my school year.

First the majority of my classes have been writing based which was very useful in this writing intense internship. I was thus able to write quickly and efficiently something that was important in any media job. This hasn’t always been my strong point but the university helped me cultivate this trait that was necessary at work. When I had deadlines for writing pieces or for composing an Excel file of dispersed data, I was able to manage my time accordingly because I had been in this circumstance multiple times at the U of M. This part of my academic background however I expected to come in handy.

Where I did not expect to use my experience from school was in my interactions with my co-workers. Due to my experience of working in teams at the University I was able to adapt much easier than if I didn’t have this experience. For example I took initiatives to assist co-workers with Excel files or reviewing articles and giving my suggestions on them. This was also especially handy in the conference we had.  There were over a thousand attendees so having a good communication with the co-workers and thinking on my feet was vital. We divided the work among us in such a way that everything ran smoothly. I was mostly responsible for helping guests and making sure that the space of the conference was set up properly throughout the event. 

This was also something that surprised me. As I came in for an editorial internship I did not expect to help out that much during the conference. As I explained above however I was very active and it was a very new experience in that I hadn’t been in the hosting side of such an event. It was a very welcome surprise to learn within 3 days how to host a conference, how to make use of (apparent) free time during such an event, how to observe whether someone needs help with something and take other liberties like talk with guests about their views on the current state of the shipping industry all from an editorial internship!