Town Hall Meeting 3/16 Recap - Making What You Can of an Internship

Today Keavy Mangan gave her talk on both her internship and externship.

Her internship was at Eden Prairie last spring I believe where she got to go off and pretty much do her own thing. She had the chance to help shoot a dvd all about puppies playing. Naturally any video aimed at kids with puppies would be fun to create. Doing the research and picking the breeds to use were some of her responsibilities. In the end she ended up being billed at production assistant which was a pleasant surprise. She also had a role in an online component Eden Prairie was working on independent of the dvd, but the name escapes me.

After the internship she hopped in her car and headed for California. Upon arriving she started her externship at ABC where she quickly found out she was labeled as "the intern" so she needed to take the initiative. By presenting ideas, asking to do work, constantly sending out emails and networking she eventually took a hold of her internship and made it much more than those who sat back to and I quote Keavy, "sit back and read Perez Hilton". She was involved with http://www.abcinnercircle.com/ where she helped with the research end of finding out the best content to put up for polls and other resources for the die hard ABC fans that the site is geared towards.

Immediately after Keavy commented on how she turned her ABC internship into more than it could've been I knew that would be the most important thing (or at least top 5) I took away from it. Presenting ideas, asking to do work and contacting people in an internship should be one of your top priorities. Not only will this teach you more, it will open up opportunities for future careers or externships.