Hi everyone! My name is Whitney Smith. I am a senior at Chapman University with a major in Communication Studies and a minor in Leadership Studies. This interterm, I had the privilege to intern for a financial advising company, Fairway Asset Management, as a Content Marketing Intern.

This position involved graphic design, creating mailers for clients, logo designs, and creating Facebook Ads. I had no prior experience doing any of these skills, so I found it all very interesting to learn about and to develop my skills. A lot of the work that I did was on Canva, where I created a new logo for the company’s webinar they were about to launch, and I created a logo for the website. I really enjoyed the creative aspect of these tasks. My supervisor, Halena, gave me guidance and direction butt still allowed me to let my creativity shine through.

Here is a slide in a PowerPoint I created where I learned to create graphics in Canva and utilize the layering tools.

The communication courses I have taken at Chapman have prepared me to interact professionally in work settings. One class in particular that developed my communication skills is interpersonal communication. Erin Craw was my professor, and she did such an amazing job at giving us tools we can apply to our lives to be more effective communicators. In my opinion, being a good communicator is crucial when working in content marketing because I noticed how important it is to make sure that I was on the same page as my supervisor, and I needed to be able to read her through both verbal and nonverbal communication to get a better understanding of whether or not she wanted me to make any changes on my work. An important lesson that I learned from that course was to show confidence when in a professional setting, because exuding confidence allows people to build trust with you.

Something that I learned from the internship that I could only learn from experience is to work on having thicker skin in a professional setting. I have had a few part-time jobs, but have never received feedback from my previous bosses. Within the first week of this internship, I had to create a logo for the webinar that my supervisor was starting within the company. I didn’t know how to do it initially, so I sent her what I had so far and I could tell through her nonverbal communication that she wasn’t a fan of it. A few days later, she emailed me and told me that they were going to move forward with a marketing agency to make a logo for them instead. I was respectful and understanding when I responded to her, but in the back of my head I was a little upset and offended that they were using somebody else. I realized that this wasn’t personal, and I had to move past it and start improving. So, I decided to create more logos anyway and see if I could get better and end up with one that my supervisor liked. She ended up loving my final logo and I felt so proud of myself for moving past feeling upset, and instead used it as motivation.

This is an image of the final product of the logo I created!

My advice for anyone interested in this type of work is to play around with Canva, Adobe Photoshop, and PowerPoint. I also think that if you see something that peaks your interest in terms of an internship, just apply! You never know what could happen, and you can get a lot more valuable skills from an internship rather than solely online resources. I learned a lot about graphic design as well as myself in a professional setting. I encourage anyone reading this to get outside of their comfort zone and apply to an internship that will challenge you and align with your passion.