Holly McDowall

Describe the steps you took to obtain your internship/research opportunity/fellowship.

To obtain my internship position I searched online for hours at a time at what opportunities were available. I applied to a lot of places within a few months of each other and had a few interviews scheduled throughout the summer. This was great practice for me by writing multiple cover letters, preparing for multiple interviews, etc.

How far in advance did you prepare and begin applying for your experiential learning opportunity?

I started looking for summer internship opportunities at the end of the fall/beginning of the Spring semester. My summer internship did not turn out as expected due to COVID, but over the summer I continued applying at organizations for a fall internship and ended up finding The Children's Campaign.

If you used any Career Center services, resources, or events to obtain your internship offer, what were they? 

I used the Career Center's course on Canvas (Career Docs) where we can submit our resumes for review. This really helped me edit my resume so it only had the necessary information.

Describe some of your responsibilities or duties during your experiential learning opportunity.

Some of my responsibilities included managing social media accounts on a designated day of the week, creating weekly publications, and organizing and creating social media campaigns. On every Thursday, I was in charge of choosing appropriate news articles and drafting captions to share on our social media platforms. I also created a weekly publication called "The Current" in which I chose important news articles and created an email newsletter on Constant Contact. Finally, one of the other big assignments I worked on is a number of social media campaigns. For these campaigns, I created graphics (sometimes creatively and other times by researching facts to share) which were posted throughout the social media accounts. .

What was a typical day like "on the job?"

A typical day "on the job" started with "clocking in" by messaging my supervisors. I then received my assignments for my shift or continued working on what I had started my previous shift. My supervisors were always there if I have any questions about an assignment. We had weekly Zoom meetings where the whole communications team got an opportunity to discuss social media metrics, upcoming assignments, publication timeline information, etc..

What are some major takeaways from your experience? How will these help prepare you for the next step after graduation? 

From this internship, I know that I love the kind of work that I have been doing. I love the kind of assignments I have been working on, and this has been a great experience for me and a wonderful first insight into communications as a career.

Did this experience help clarify your career path? If yes, how so?

Yes, I now know that as a future career I hope to do something related to social media and the other communications work that I have started to learn more about.