First and foremost, I want to step back and take a second to remark at how quickly this semester flew by. I’m in sheer disbelief that I only have one semester left as an undergraduate student. With that being said, I would not consider myself unprepared for the next step and I would have to thank both Canisius College and my internship at 15 Fingers for that. Canisius really gave me the connections and tools that I needed to enter into an internship in the first place. That’s where 15 Fingers came in, to give me the opportunity to implement these skills.
From the very first day, 15 Fingers was sure to tailor my internship to fit my needs. I was asked right off the bat what my strengths were, what I enjoyed doing, and what I wanted to learn more about. Of course, I wanted to learn everything! But if I had to start somewhere, I would definitely have to say using programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator was a skill that I wanted to have. One of the first projects the team had me work on was editing images through Photoshop and uploading them to the website of one of their clients. That taught me the basics and prepared me to then use Illustrator for images on another client website. When asked what I truly wanted to be doing, however, my answer was writing. I have always had a love for channeling my creativity into words and stories, and I was eager to learn how to do that in the advertising world. Under our copywriter, I learned how to speak to different audiences and how to find my own voice in the process. Among writing projects that I’ve worked on, I’ve came up with names for parties and buildings, written copy for company websites, written taglines and headlines and emails to be sent to clients and customers. Through these assignments, I achieved my goal statement. At the beginning of the semester, I had no idea what road I wanted to take. I was thankful that I had realized freshman year that Communication was the field I wanted to be in. However, Communication is such a broad area of study that can be taken in so many different directions. I had narrowed my search down to public relations, marketing, and advertising, and my hope at the end of this semester of interning was to determine whether or not advertising was the path for me.
I will always remember the day I had my epiphany. Sitting in my chair at my desk, coming up with names and ideas for my holiday party, I realized that this is the kind of creative work I really enjoy doing and really want to continue to do. Sure, there are things about the job that might not be so sexy like the pieces that aren’t as creative and at times, monotonous. And of course, for awhile, I will still be doing my fair share of “intern” tasks like counting tickets and inputting data and cleaning shelves. But that’s what being a part of a team is all about.
I consider myself very lucky that my first internship went this well. I’m so thankful for 15 Fingers and everything that they have done for me and taught me. I was never afraid to ask questions, to re-explain things to me, to repeat what exactly they were asking of me. They create an environment that allows creativity to grow and thrive. Everyone in the office is very supportive of one another and genuinely cares about each other. I’ve gotten to know the team very well and I can honestly say I consider everyone in the office my friend. I’m happy to say that I was asked to continue interning for them and I’m even happier to say that I agreed and will be returning for the spring semester. I think that it’s common to hear a lot of horror stories or even just “my first internship taught me that this isn’t what I want to be doing with my life.” And that’s great! Going into things, I was super undecided and half of me believed that this internship could possibly show me that the advertising world isn’t for me. It’s so exciting and almost relieving to now know that this is my niche and this is a passion of mine.
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