An Honest Account of my First Internship
I started my Marketing/Communications internship at the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) later in the semester from September 19-December 12, 2013. I had originally obtained an internship as the publications intern at Strayer University back in May, and very devastatingly, I was dropped as the intern precisely a week before classes started due to a hiring freeze. I had been pretty excited about that internship all summer (and not just because it was paid!) but I felt honored to be hired there, even though I had overslept for my first interview with them!! But I was honest with them & told them my mistake, and they liked my honesty. All summer long I had been in contact with Kevin, the internship coordinator (even when I went to Hawaii I called him and responded to his emails), and was worried I wouldn’t find another internship in time for this course.
However, I sent out my resume, cover letters, and writing samples to approximately 20 different companies, and was offered a position at the IAFC as well as at the Workhouse Arts Center. After meeting with both places, I was impressed very much with both, but I chose the IAFC (even though I had never heard of them prior to Professor Dickerson’s recommendation) because I liked that it was an international company and also closer to school (around 15 minute commute).
The IAFC, established in the 1860s, is located in Chantilly, Virginia, and Jacqueline Garnier, my internship coordinator at the IAFC, was very welcoming, patient, and friendly. I instantly liked her upon our interview, and whenever I had any questions (even the dumb ones!) she attributed greatly to my success here at the IAFC. Jacqueline and I were in good communication, I always emailed her if I wasn’t able to come in that day, and she always kept me informed of IAFC news and changes with finances, employees, and other topics that kept me “in the loop.”
I worked in my own cubicle in nestled in between the marketing director, Corrine Baker, who was very sweet and talkative with me, Jacqueline, and the IT guy, Chris Bradshaw. It was the first time I had worked with a “double screen” computer which was really efficient when I was researching material on one screen and able to work on a spreadsheet or word document on the other screen.
I came into the IAFC around 3 times a week for about 8-10 hours total, which worked really well with my school schedule. Every time I came in, usually wearing “business casual” attire (no jeans, shorts, or open-toed shoes), I would check my IAFC email to stay on top of the latest “news” or events of the day. During the 3 months that I have interned here, I worked on about 4 major projects, usually taking me around 2-3 weeks to complete, which I will elaborate upon later.
My hopes before starting this internship were to gain relevant marketing/PR skills with a well established international association, expand upon my professional network, and observe and understand how the IAFC operates. In addition, my other objectives included building upon my writing & research skills and develop my work ethic. I would say that I met 4 out of the 5 objectives, because I didn’t feel like I really gained any specific “marketing” or public relations skills at all.
I also wanted to sit in on at least one company meeting to gain further insight on how the IAFC collaborates ideas and expands their business, but I was never offered the opportunity to do so. However, one Friday, I attended an afternoon “potluck” celebrating an employee’s ending career there, and got to socialize and get to know a few more of the people that worked in the offices of the IAFC. Everyone seemed quite content working here, and were very professional and welcoming to me.
My only “bad experience” was one Friday when I got locked out of the offices because they shut down the elevators from 12-2pm every day to cut costs, and I was not informed of that. When I tried to go through the stairs, I didn’t know the code to access the office, and tried emailing and calling the 3 people’s numbers I had to try to let me in, and nobody answered. It was a very confusing and frustrating 30 minutes, and I finally sat on the curb outside & waited for someone to come back in and let me in. I told Jacqueline what had happened and she was very empathetic and told me the code so that that wouldn’t happen again in the future.
The first project I worked on was for Tim Hopkins, their social media coordinator, in which I converted around 150 PowerPoint slides into PDF files, and then had to upload the files onto their conference website. The first few hours, I didn’t mind the monotonous work because I liked the “brain break,” but after a while it got tedious and quite boring. Time dragged those few weeks it took me to complete that! I did learn how to turn PowerPoint files into PDF files, which is a simple but useful skill in the future.
The second and third projects that I worked on was editing old online archive publications for their news magazine, “On Scene,” and then plugging the data onto a Microsoft spreadsheet. I didn’t particularly enjoy that project either, but I did learn a few keyboard shortcuts in Excel from Jacqueline which was beneficial, and I had to implement a very keen eye for detail. The other project I did was editing old online publication archive spreadsheets done by other interns. I can’t say I learned anything from that, but again, I would say these projects built a stronger work ethic in myself, because I had to push through monotonous work that I didn’t particularly enjoy but still finished. To make it fun, I would time myself to see if I could plug in the data faster than the previous day.
In between projects, I helped research interview questions to ask IAFC employees for an article Jacqueline was working on featuring the staff members’ job descriptions and random fun facts. Another day, Jacqueline allowed me to finish a school project for another class during midterm week because I had a lot going on, and I really appreciated her flexibility with me. \
During the last few weeks at the International Association of Fire Chiefs, my final project was in looking up past advertisers that the IAFC’s partner and competitor, “Fire Chief,” organization had used in their magazine publications. The Fire Chief went bankrupt in November and were forced to close down, so the IAFC was capitalizing on reaching out to their past advertisers and subscribers. So I looked at the list of advertisers on the Fire Chief website (from the months of July to November’s publications), and created a contact sheet with approximately a total of 85-90 company emails, phone numbers, and any other relevant information needed to expand the IAFC’S advertising network. I really enjoyed doing that, because it was challenging looking for contact information, and it wasn’t as “mind-numbing” as my previous projects.
Lastly, I got the opportunity to learn some very valuable editing tips and skills from Jacqueline, who was very willing to sit down with me and teach me the process she has been using to edit articles for the last 25 years. That was my favorite part of this internship, hands down, because I love editing, and I learned some good skills from Jacqueline, a long time editing professional.
Another day spent at the IAFC stands out to me because I had a very beneficial “epiphany.” I had been stressing out over getting a job right away upon graduation in the spring, and was frustrated with the whole process. While I was working on one of my mindless projects, I had an encouraging thought: I have the whole rest of my life to work at a career and come in every day and do something similar to what the employees do every week at the IAFC, and I realized there’s no rush or immediate pressure to finding “the perfect job” for me right away! I decided to stop stressing out about my future so much and just enjoy the rest of my journey as a student and take each day as it came.
I also enjoyed the overall atmosphere at the IAFC; it was laid back, never stressful, peaceful and quiet most days. I was always greeted in a friendly manner by several employees when I first walked into the office, and I always appreciated that kind of work environment. I really liked the flexibility and convenience with my school schedule that my internship offered me, which was much needed during this hectic senior semester! I also liked that there were almost always baked goods or candy in the office, as well as free yummy coffee for us.
On the other hand, the things I disliked in this internship was that it was unpaid (but we all have to start somewhere!), there weren’t any people around my age, so although I enjoyed the people, it was hard to really feel connected because I didn’t feel like we had a lot in common. It was also distracting that I could hear almost every conversation going on in the offices, even from far away because there’s not much privacy! Lastly, my other regret is that I wish I was able to implement my written-skills-I would have liked to be able to have given the opportunity to help Jacqueline write an article or two for their magazine, “On Scene,” and practice my creative skills there, but I never got the chance.
Although my internship at the IAFC was never particularly exciting, and I felt restless with some projects, it was overall a positive experience with my first internship. I am very grateful that I found this internship so quickly on such a short time limit, and everything else that I have gained during my time here this semester. My last day will be on Thursday, December 12, in which I am planning on sending thank you cards to Jacqueline & Corrine, and maybe some cupcakes for the office as well. Despite my positive experience at the IAFC, I would not work for them because I learned that associations are solely dependent on their member’s financial contribution to sustain their business, which is seemingly stress-producing for a lot of employees, as the IAFC’s financial statements were quite low this year. I would probably not like to work here due to that inconsistency in job security with an associational organization.