REAL Exclusive Magazine

My Internship Experience

By Crystal DaCorta

This summer, I was fortunate to join the team at Real Exclusive Magazine as an intern for the health section of the magazine. Before starting, I knew I wanted to learn how to incorporate my passion for health in the modern communication field, but lacked a feeling of direction. When I found this opportunity at the magazine I felt like I found my calling and could finally start gathering meaningful work experience that could help me choose a future career path. With this internship I was able to learn much more about health in general, as well as how to apply it in a work setting.

My experience with the magazine offered me my first real taste of the work force that I could picture myself involved with in the future. I learned valuable lessons from various projects and plan on utilizing that information in my future career path. Not only did this experience allow me to learn about the company itself and how it works, but also about myself and my own work ethic.

This experience allowed me to identify and explore my own individual strengths and weaknesses. I have found that my ability to write is one of my stronger assets. Throughout the internship I was constantly writing, whether it was for an article to be published in the magazine, a Facebook blog post, I found that I was excited to type up my new ideas. I have always enjoyed writing and have been confident in my ability to write, therefore I felt encouraged when I was able to showcase this skill on various platforms. Additionally, my other strengths include proper organization, time-management, creativity and being punctual.

However, this experience has also allowed me to notice some weaknesses within myself and to incorporate a plan of action to correct them. Multiple times I was given the opportunity to publicly speak about various health topics I have an interest in, and had further researched specifically for the internship. I felt a lot of nervous energy building up inside me before I spoke and I feared my audience would be able to notice that. With more practice in front of audiences I am not familiar with, I will become more confident in performing this task, especially as it is required in almost every job field.

Another weakness I noticed, and corrected, was that I put up a blockade around myself which inhibited my initiative. Instead of testing out my own ideas and being more creative with accomplishing tasks, I would wait for the green light which I thought I needed to do, but in retrospect I realize I should have been more confident in my work to try out new ideas without always being supervised. This was a learning experience for me as now I will be more eager to take initiative with future jobs and tasks.

In my career, I will use the skills I learned such as organization, working in teams, time management, general marketing, how to hone in on a target audience, what motivates people to interact with social medias and how to effectively use general marketing platforms.

This experience has helped me to solidify my career focus. I really enjoyed working within the realm of health. I gained knowledge regarding different aspects of the health, such as the lymphatic system, yoga, chakras, and how to use your surrounding environment to maintain a healthy lifestyle. We explored different health and fitness trends while simultaneously learning about different systems of the body from one-on-one interactions and research materials.

Giving back to the community was 50% of the intern experience. To make a real, lasting difference and strengthen our community, REAL Magazine supports local needs. I enjoyed working at the community level and found this to be extremely rewarding. We saw people taking an interest in our work and applying it to their personal lives and daily routines.

Creating the partnership with All Faiths Food Bank was another learning experience that proved to be a good networking opportunity. The feeling of making a difference within my own community was insurmountable and I hope that I can continue doing so after graduation. Before finding the internship, I was not sure if I would be able to apply my passion for health in an industry other than healthcare, but this experience clearly demonstrated to me that I could and I look forward to discovering more about the field as I join the workforce.

Finishing my internship is bittersweet, but I look forward to getting back to Rollins for my last semester to finalize my education. I tried to absorb as much useful information as I possibly could to incorporate into my work ethic at Rollins, as well as in the work field.

Any work experience can be viewed as a learning experience from various aspects, and I believe my internship was a complete learning experience for me from the start to the end. Throughout the entire time, I was exposed to new educational materials, marketing resources and networking opportunities that I will continue to maintain as I look for full-time work in the near future. I am excited to explore different work possibilities and eager to find out what the future holds for me.

Crystal DaCorta, REAL Exclusive Magazine Intern cdacorta@rollins.edu.

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