My step project was to intern with The Switch to gain experience working
with marketing and in the housing field of city planning. However, did not get much experience
in the housing field, but I did help them with marketing their merchandise and I assisted with
organizing and shipping subscription boxes with the merchandise as well.
If I am honest, nothing really transformed in me during or after this internship, only
thing is that I have come to realize how non-profits operate. In this case, I was given a grand
opportunity that was not all it was cracked up to be. I have learned my lesson of job hunting
and one thing that I value most is stability, order, communication, and pay. I have learned to
value myself and to not settle for where I want to work, because if I do settle, I will be highly
disappointed. I will say I transformed in a way where I know my worth and I will in the future
choose a different arena for where I devote my time and energy.
Honestly this internship was a little disappointing. I was hired and told I would receive
great experience doing grand projects with human trafficking, housing, and traveling to D.C.,
but it turned out to be quite unorganized and more work at home than anything. They rarely
met up to meet during the month and everyone was always confused or uncertain about who
to contact or what to do. I understand this is acceptable sometimes, but every time we met
there was something major, we did not know that hindered us from moving forward in a
project.
Furthermore, the CEO that hired me was always busy and never around. She traveled so
much that it was difficult to even be her intern. Being that I was also unpaid during this
internship my few hours working at Panera Bread would clash with times to meet with them
and kept me from traveling and being more hands on.
In addition, there was a subscription box that we were supposed to put together and
that alone took forever to kickstart, and when I would try to help out the communication was
so terrible, I was left for days not knowing what I should do. Overall, I do not want to come
down on the organization itself or the people there. These are amazing people, but I just
believe that their roles for interns are still in the works. It is not much for their interns to do
because they do everything themselves and there is an extreme me lack of communication and
meeting with one another for follow up. I personally did not favor this work style and I wish I
had learned more.
For this reason, I now know what type of work environment I prefer. I recognize that I
do not do well with spontaneous work settings and that I need a structured workplace. Also,
not being paid was not the best because many experience opportunities would clash with my
work schedule at Panera Bread. In addition, I learned how difficult it is to run anon-profit.
Though they impact so many lives and bring awareness to many, at this stage in The Switch’s
non-profit life they are in a phase where a few people are doing literally everything, and they
are too busy for interns.
This change relates to my professional goals because though it was an incompatible
internship, I had inside view on how hard it was to run a business. It honestly had me rethinking
if I truly wanted to take on pursuing social entrepreneurship. Lastly, it relates to future plans
because as I stated before I will know what type of career I can be functional in or be more at
peace with, such as working in an office setting and not from home, or not working for nonprofit companies, but only searching for public or more established firms. I will never regret the
experience I had here or the people I got to know, but I believe that it was just a lesson learned.