Week 1 in Review

I have been recording my experiences from my first week.  Here they are!

I had never had an internship or job before that was an eight hour a day desk job in the corporate world, so I did not know exactly what to expect.  Luckily, I am interning for a great company with a department full of wonderful people who made it easier to adjust to my new position.  I began the week with the required formalities of paperwork, introductions, and tours.  That first day I was nervous about making a good impression and because I was not really sure how I needed to act in the workplace.  My colleagues quickly put me at ease.  Our whole department sat down and I got to know everyone over pizza and salad.  As soon as I heard the jokes, sarcasm, and good-natured ribbing between all the team members I knew I was in a special place. 

When I had my first meeting with my boss, Brendan, the marketing manager he assigned me my first task.  I was going to be responsible for learning, testing, and teaching Evergreen Business Systems.  EBS is an automated webinar generator software that our company is looking into.  Since no one has spent much time with the system, I was charged with learning and testing it out.   The other task I was assigned was to take about half an hour to meet with every member in the department in order to get to know them, learn what they do, and get a feel for how everyone is working together in the department. 

I spent most of the week watching the tutorial videos on EBS’s website, taking pages of notes, and learning the capabilities of the system.  I then began setting up a test webinar and drafted an email with the instructions for all my co-workers.  It was an involved process to get all of the details just right so that the test would run smoothly and in a way I could easily analyze.  During the week our Graphic Designer, Marc, busted out his sound effects system on his computer.  We all had some fun eating candy, telling jokes, and laughing over perfectly timed sound effects.  Thursday of my first week was the first time I felt like an intern.  We are redoing our entire website and the CEO asked for it to be printed out so he can approve which pages he wanted to keep.  I was given an excel spreadsheet with over one thousand links on it.  I spent the entire day clicking links, clicking print, and putting the pages in four large three-ringed binders.  I didn’t mind the work because just like in sports, seniority rules.  How can I expect a freshman to have to clean up the field, carry the equipment, etc. since he hasn’t “paid his due” and then get angry when I am asked to do the same at work?  It was never a problem for me, I’m just happy to help the company in any way I can.  I wrapped up the week crosschecking and entering registrants of the upcoming Networking Conference into our RegOnline database.  With my first week in the books, I can look back and say that I am very lucky to have landed the internship I did.  I enjoy the company of my co-workers, my boss is understanding and truly invested in helping me learn as much as I can, and I am already given the responsibility to take the lead on some projects.  Let’s hope the fun continues in week two!