Name: Tommy

Year: Sophomore

Majors: Communication Studies, Computer Science

CFS Program: Field Studies in the Humanities

Employer: Superfly

I was incredibly excited when I received the offer to be Superfly’s very-first Technology Intern; as an avid music festival attendee, I knew it would be a valuable work experience (and a good time!) to work with the minds behind some of the largest festivals like Outside Lands and Bonnaroo.

While completing my internship through CFS, I got the unique opportunity to craft my own experience and also to apply the skills I’ve gained from classes in the workplace. For three days a week this fall, I trekked down to the West Loop on the Metra for work. As a Technology Intern, my main role was to ensure Superfly festival websites were up-to-date and easy to use. I spent my first few days getting up-to-speed on the ongoing web projects, at which point I was given the choice to work on what sounded interesting to me so far. This didn’t take long, though, since my internship period was in the middle of the company’s prep for a new festival in Arizona called Lost Lake; I got to witness firsthand all of the hard work that goes into getting the website of a brand-new music festival off the ground.

While at Superfly, I was also given the chance to pick a topic for an independent project. As I tried to brainstorm ideas for this, I found inspiration in two of the courses that I was taking at the time (DSGN 306: User Experience Design and COMM ST 227: Communication & Technology). I decided I wanted to apply the skills I learned in those classes at my internship, which culminated in an extensive web analysis where I collaborated with the Design team to evaluate the mobile-friendliness and ease-of-use of our festival websites. The highlight of my internship was definitely seeing the suggestions from my project turn into solutions that will be presented to the company for potential use in future websites! This experience, in particular, was reflective of one of the major benefits of CFS. Learning at work and at school simultaneously made it easy for me to see that the two did not occur in isolation.

Though I say this acknowledging the clichés, I look back on this quarter as a time when I, above all, learned about myself. Embracing the commuter life and managing my responsibilities at work while balancing problem sets, essays, and extracurriculars at school was an unbelievably-demanding but altogether-rewarding experience that I would not have been able to do without CFS. My time at Superfly gave me the experiences I needed to clarify my interests and to find my passions within the technology space – I know I’ll go on to the next opportunity with a clear picture of the skills I need to succeed.