Hi everyone! I’m Clarissa and I am currently a senior majoring in Communication Studies.

Can you see it? The logo for Matee is a penguin holding a location pin.

I choose Communication Studies because I believe it is the most important skill to have in your personal and professional life. Additionally,  there are numerous careers and jobs for a Communication Studies major. During my time at Chapman, I’ve had three wonderful internship opportunities. These experiences ranged from marketing to event planning, but today, I want to talk about the nontraditional internship I had with F-Tech. Like most of us during the pandemic, I had a virtual internship that was held through Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

F-Tech is a startup company that was founded in 2020, and their first project is a social networking app called Matee. Matee’s main goal is to connect students with their peers on campus and encourage more face-to-face interactions with others. Users will be able to set up fun activities to meet like-minded peers and hopefully make new friends throughout the campus. There are a few big differences between Matee and other social networking apps. The app matches users based on similar interests, not based on a swipe feature. The app wants to make genuine connections based on shared interests and not looks. Looking back at my college experience, I wish there was an app like this during my first year at a university.

Although Matee is not on any app stores right now, I got a chance to download it and test the software. *Hint* it’s a really fun app and I can’t wait for you all to get on it!

My internship with F-Tech taught me so many useful skills for future careers. When I first joined the team, they had just launched their company and started designing the app. This was my favorite part of the internship because I was curious about how apps are developed. It was overall a fun experience creating an app that could help students in the future. In the beginning, I learned a lot about how a business is started and the paperwork needed to start it. This was extremely helpful because one day, I want to start my own business. The other half of my internship was focused on marketing. I researched how to promote a new app and used some ideas to create a marketing plan. It was fun because I honestly had free range to do whatever I wanted (but still had approval from my boss first).

This was by far my favorite internship during my time at Chapman University because I learned so many valuable life lessons and skills outside my intended area of study. Even though it was all through Zoom calls and messaging, it felt very personable because of the other team members’ personalities. We got along very well, which helped us work better together. Although my internship period is over with F-Tech, I was offered to run their social media pages for Matee.

Thank you for letting me share my wonderful experience with F-Tech. And remember to look out for Matee in the app store. It is coming Fall 2021!