By: Correy Koellner
Through the entirety of my internship, I have learned many new skills. I have learned how to manage money, event plan, coordinate events, use different types of frying, and most importantly how to communicate in a professional way. I would have to say the highlights of the internship were the relationships I formed with the Chamber of Commerce members. The biggest concerns were making sure that Dandelion Daze and the Fair went off without a hitch. My favorite moment was when I was getting ready to head out and I get a frantic call because we don’t have any oil to make the fried food. I went to the store and everyone looked at me like I was crazy because I was buying a whole cart full of vegetable and canola oil. My biggest success was when I was able to find a replacement for our band when they dropped out like 5 days before the event. I also found it successful when they used my ideas because they were intelligent.
The biggest challenge for me was making phone calls. I am a people person. I read social cues and body language. I also read lips to help pick up on what people are saying. It is very difficult to do that over the phone, which gives me a bit of anxiety. Through this internship, I had to make many phone calls. This didn’t help me in the overall scheme of things anxiety-wise, but now I have different phrases to use so that they can better understand the point I am trying to make. The final outcome of both events was a huge success. Everyone had a great time. We were also able to get the Dandelion Dash back up this year. We were even able to have a decent turnout. I would personally say that this internship was very successful. I was able to help make a stressful time less stressful by identifying problems early on.
For communication, I was able to develop a more professional tone and verbiage, then use them in the workforce. I was able to use them both in person and over the phone. I also was able to work on better control over my body language. For my leadership goal, I was able to phrase my ideas in a way where they were taken and used. I was also able to grow my leadership through social media. I am now more active and better at promotions. For my professional network goal, I now have better relationships with many of the local businesses. I already knew people who worked at these businesses, but now I have relationships with the actual bosses. I also learned how to interact and make small talk to catch up versus just getting what you needed. I learned how to be direct, but also how to be sociable. This is a very hard line to learn how to balance. It is a skill I am going to continue to work on in the future. I was also able to learn new skills through the zoom meetings I attended. I went to the one about building a resume and the one about living on our own and keeping yourself accountable. I was able to pick up some neat tricks from Daniel, and I was able to get new ways to build credibility for my resume. I also learned about LinkedIn. I had no idea that it was even an app. The last thing is my harvesting ceremony. Making the slideshow presentation helped to work on my gathering of professional information and weeding out what wasn’t important. I also like making slideshows and doing presentations. They were always something that I dreaded in school because the topics were never interesting. This internship was something that was interesting to me, which made the presentation feel better than having to do it on something that I didn’t agree on.
