A Behind-The-Scenes Look into the Theme Park Industry Jeremy Becker's internship experience at NBCUniversal
August 3, 2022
Hello everyone, my name is Jeremy Becker and I am a senior student at Chapman University who will be graduating from the Strategic and Corporate Communication (SCC) major. In my time at Chapman, I have been fortunate to partake in SCC classes that have allowed me to branch out and flourish in a professional work environment. For the past semester, I have been growing and learning for NBCUniversal at Universal Studios Hollywood where I have worked an internship role at the Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride attraction.
I found the internship through my greatest passion, which is the operations and general workings of theme parks worldwide. I had already been employed at the company as a ride operator since June ‘21, so becoming an intern and adding new responsibilities just took some self-advocacy. My new responsibilities range from scheduling assignments, writing operations performance evaluations, and addressing both guest and employee conflicts among many other communication-based duties like communicating with the tons of different departments involved with keeping an attraction at a certain standard. Recently, I have been given new assignments such as “opening the attraction”, which entails a thorough walkthrough of the attraction building and ride-track as I make sure everything is safe and up to the Universal standard. When problems arise, I communicate with different departments to resolve a variety of issues.
In addition, I have taken this internship experience as an opportunity to network in the field that I dearly want to be a part of going forward. However, I do not think my networking abilities would have been as effective if not for the lessons I have been lucky enough to receive as an SCC major at Chapman. From class lessons in public speaking on how to carry yourself professionally to learning how to act when you are the least highest-ranking person in the room, I feel that Chapman has thoroughly prepared me to thrive in any work environment. In my power, conflict, and negation course last semester we learned about how to network and the importance of building relationships, and I have used many tactics from the class to help myself become familiar with lots of higher-ups that have been able to teach me so much already.
Not only did my classes help prepare me for taking full advantage of the opportunities available at my internship, but my internship has also strengthened my ability to perform in my classes. Time management has become something I have greatly improved within myself because of the often-urgent deadlines at work. I have also developed a lot of patience stemming from certain guest and employee interactions that have helped me become a more engaged and efficient learner and class groupmate.