Internship Adventures at Where the Fun Begins: Learning Reflections Round # 6: Nov. 4

The goal of every internship is to benefit one's professional experience and future career plans. Did I accomplish this? You bet! When I started my internship, I came to the Fox Valley Park District with almost zero knowledge about marketing. But almost immediately I started learning new things, and today as I am writing another reflection of what I have learned during the last couple weeks, I realize that week after week I have been given excellent communication tools to further develop my skills as a marketing professional.

But going through my notes of what I have been working on during my internship, I can't help but feel proud that I, too, have helped and contributed to the marketing department of the Park District. Here is the breakdown of my learning experience for the last couple of weeks:

Winter Guide
Finishing the Winter Guide has been priority number one for the marketing folks at the Park District.

Once classes, programs and special events for the Winter Guide has been sorted out and updated with basic information (age, cost, location, etc.), description and graphic design, it comes to the laboring tasks of editing and proofreading the whole thing.
I took part in this process too, and I am sharing the electronic version of the Winter Guide here.

Looks awesome, right?

Now, with the Winter Guide being finished, we already started working on the Spring Guide - this should give you an idea of how much time and effort goes into the creation of the Park District guides.

E-mail Marketing
I also created my first official E-blast for the Prisco Community Center about these Candy Science Classes. Proud of how it turned out as I have never had an experience with e-mail marketing before.

Volunteer Manual
Another project I worked on was updating the Volunteer Manual. Did you know that the Park District gets tons of help from volunteers? People give back to the community by offering their time and skills as special events and program volunteers, but there are rules and policies for them to follow, so this explains the importance of updating the Volunteer Manual regularly.

Special Events Update
I am finally finished with updating the calendars of Oaklee's Family Guide, TribLocal and Daily Herald with information about the Park District's upcoming special events for the months of October, November, December, January and February. I am in awe that nowadays anyone can go the website of similar online publications and post information (even articles) about their own events for absolutely no cost. A perfect example of citizen journalism.
I have also posted Information about the special events on the FVPD website.

Meeting the New Intern
I was not surprised when I learned that another Aurora University student will be the new intern for the Spring Semester of 2014. I met her yesterday, and I truly wish her the great experience that I am having right now in the marketing department of the Park District. She will have a blast!

Research
I love research! Besides being a marketing intern, I also work at a local public library. According to author Neil Gaiman, Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one. So here are some websites I came across while surfing the web that might be helpful to you if you are a communications major or if you are looking for a communication internship.

http://www.mastersincommunication.com/

http://communications.jobs.net/jobs/illinois.aspx

http://internships.jobs.net/jobs/illinois.aspx

Just sharing some photos I took during my internship: