For my STEP Project, I worked as a Marketing/Sales intern for a company called Gravity. Gravity was employed by Spectrum to sell their wifi to customers around the Columbus area. We worked different events daily to have face-to-face interactions with customers.
Before, I would say that I was a little more shy in that I probably wouldn’t interact with random people I didn’t know, but now that that’s basically what I did the entire summer, it’s not as scary for me to do. Half the time, the people I spoke with wouldn’t remember our conversation, and even minutes after talking with someone I would move on. This internship really taught me to face the negatives every day and find ways to move past them.
This internship also taught me to push through, as most weeks I worked Monday-Saturday. At times it was difficult because I struggled to make time for my social life, so finding a good work-life balance during the first half of the summer was hard. Eventually, I found ways to make time for things that I enjoy so that I didn’t experience burnout.
Like I said before, I would have to talk to just random people all day, pretty much every day in order to make sales. This was pretty nerve-wracking initially just because I never wanted to feel like a burden on people as they were doing their own thing, but eventually I got over my shyness and was able to talk to pretty much everyone. Getting to know my coworkers also really helped with this just because they made the situation more comfortable, and so I would feel less shy as I spoke to these people. I made great connections and friendships throughout this internship that I’ll cherish forever, especially as many of the other interns go to Ohio State.
This internship also had daily meetings ran by the managers, and they always spoke about their experiences, and how they were at one point in time also in our shoes. Hearing their stories and the ways that they overcame the burnout and work-life balance also helped me put things in perspective at times. There were times when I would be distracted by whatever was going on in my personal life, and it would affect how I worked. At first, I thought that learning to focus on either work or personal life, one at a time, would only be useful in this specific internship; however, I also realized that this could be useful in my studies. Sometimes I find it hard to concentrate in class if I’m worrying about something else, so learning to better separate the two has helped me in my classes thus far.
I also think pretty early on I realized that sales isn’t the route I’d like to go with my career. While it can be a lucrative career for some, it takes a lot of work to keep a good attitude when you’ve been rejected from a sale moments before. I think that this, facing the rejections, coming to terms with the fact that sales isn’t in my future, and more, gave me a lot of confidence and useful skills that I was able to use to get me another internship for this fall.
This transformation was significant because I’ve recently been thinking about what I want to do for a career post-graduation, especially as I’m entering my senior year. Being able to say that I’ve worked in sales and found that it wasn’t for me helps to clear a possible career from my list. As I also said earlier, I’ve made great friendships and relationships over the summer and I know that I will stay in contact with many of my old coworkers.