Name: Pallas

Year: Junior

Major(s): Communication Studies

Minor(s): BIP, Creative Writing

CFS Program: Field Studies in Humanities

My internship has been a phenomenal learning experience so far. The most surprising thing for me with this internship is that seeing as the company is a startup, there was no particular period for training or adjusting to the system. As soon as I arrived on the first day, I had a quick orientation and was thrown right into work. I had to teach myself most things and learn the different styles within the company. At first it was overwhelming but soon I had familiarized myself with the concepts and actually began to find it enjoyable to do the work I was assigned. The blogs were interesting as I had to write about different restaurants that I had never been to as though I had dined there in person. I was a little disappointed about this as I had been told by my supervisor that I would get to write blog posts about restaurants in the Chicago area and had been looking forward to actually dining at a restaurant and then writing a review about it. Unfortunately, I arrived at Bootler right when they installed their new system of expanding out of just the Chicago area and to other regions and states in the US. I took this with stride though, because it not only allowed me to research other states and learn about small neighborhoods all over the country, it also helped me tremendously with my writing. I have always enjoyed reading and writing but could never come up with anything to aid me in improving. I have written over a dozen blog posts in the past two weeks, and I truly surprised myself with how much quality content I was able to produce in such short notice. The real source of pride for me was when I found out that my first blog post which I had been so nervous about publishing, ended up being selected for a feature on the company’s twitter page. Recently, we ( myself and the other interns) were assigned a daunting project that had to do with data analytics. This proved to be a bit challenging for me at first since we had been assigned to groups of three and my two other group members were MIA. I was tasked with starting and finishing the entire project on my own. My supervisor was very helpful at the start, I think he sympathized with me about my plight. He offered me a chance for extra time and insisted I reach out to him with questions whenever I needed. Thankfully, the project was assigned over the weekend, it gave me a good amount of time to practice this novel concept and finish the whole thing on time. I have learned so much during this internship, it helps to have such a great class to supplement it with. I enjoy hearing about other students internship experiences and our professor Liz is very understanding and supportive. I am very grateful to all the people who made this experience happen, I hope to keep learning, keep improving and come back next time for another amazing quarter with CFS.