Well, my final blog post is upon me, and I can hardly believe it! This internship time with the Ogallala Commons has flown by, and it has truly been an incredibly rewarding experience. The internship certainly kept me busy, as completing the internship while working full time and also managing my side business definitely presented me with challenges of fatigue and time management. “Free time” wasn’t really a thing these past several months, as I always had something to fill that time. Despite the business of the schedule, this internship has opened my eyes and broadened my horizons in many, many ways and I am incredibly grateful for it.
For my main projects, I created freelance projects for JenRus Freelance out of Courtland, Kansas. Basically I was assigned various projects for small businesses in Northwest Kansas. The majority of these projects dealt with website design in some fashion or another, whether it was creating one from scratch or updating one that already existed. I really valued my time with JenRus, because it gave me practical insight into what managing a company in rural Kansas is all about.
As I previously stated, my main challenge was finding the time to complete everything that I needed to do. However, on the flip side of that challenge came my main success, which was the realization that I am capable of anything that I put my mind to. I became more effective with time management and increased my ability to complete many tasks simultaneously which is a great life skill that will serve me for the rest of my life in all my endeavors.
Ultimately, I can say with confidence that I reached all three of my goals; my communication goal, leadership goal, and professional network goals were definitely all achieved. I feel like I widened by professional network a ton in this process, gaining quality contacts and perhaps even future customers, through the work that I did. I became a better leader by virtue of all the tasks I completed, and my communication skills increased as I was always working hard to make sure everyone was in the loop and on the up and up of what I was doing.
I would like to thank the Ogallala Commons for this experience and for selecting me as an intern. With many hard working, like-minded individuals striving towards the same cause, we can ensure a productive and successful business future for the state of Kansas and the surrounding states.
