Roman Internship

This week, my boss was not in the entire week. Thus, I did everything with and through Erica. She mentioned that the infograph that I had done for last week's assignment was a good start but that our boss' boss wanted to make it one congruent visual graph than four separate ones. So, this was my assignment for the week, figure out how to synthesize four fountains of information into one. Thankfully, our boss' boss had a concrete example of what he wanted. This made things a lot easier but it was still difficult to transpose the information about level of executives, money spent on the program, the degree of change that the client had, and the success of the program. The example our boss' boss had given us was in relationship to tree leaves and their abundance during the different seasons. That is why the example helped piece together what the infograph should LOOK like but it did not help at all in how to arrange the content within the graph. After brainstorming and ...

This week was much more different than previous weeks. My boss and his team had a workshop program somewhere in the outskirts of Rome. Thus I did all my work remotely. I was in charge of finishing the infograph, which took so much more time, effort, and energy than I had expected. I had had a solid idea on how to go about it, except it did not work. I was forced to try multiple ways. Through this trail and error, I found that the best way to present the information was via a Prezi presentation. And that's what I did. I'm not the biggest fan of Prezi, so figuring out how everything runs took its time. Through the difficulties of this task I emailed back and forth with Erica to iron out some of the wrinkles that popped up. She was very kind and very prompt and she was very helpful. Finally after much, much work, I had finished the infograph in a way that flowed and made sense. Since I wasn't in the office this week, everything I did for my internship seemed off. I was in th...

This week was a bit strange. On Wednesday I was a little stressed because I was running later than usual, and yet when I got to the office there was no one there. The were all in a meeting elsewhere in Rome. Unfortunately, I hadn't checked my email the night before, where Erica had sent me an email explaining that there was no need for me to come in but that I should translate a PowerPoint from Italian to English remotely. Of course, I was already in the office so that is where I did this translating task. On Thursday, I once again was running behind schedule yet to my surprise I was able to be there early (the public transportation in Rome is such a mystery). There I was asked to brain storm for problem solving on how to get rid of a logo from a video making app. This took much longer than anticipated and in the end Erica decided that it was easier to simply pay the 20 euro fee for the actual program and not just the free trail. After this, I was given the most creative task yet...

This week I was a bit apprehensive about going to my internship. I had just gotten my midterm evaluation and I had set up a follow up meeting with my boss to discuss it in detail. Now, don't get me wrong. The evaluation wasn't bad, but there were areas where I could definitely improve. Plus, who doesn' t get nervous when placed under inspection. Once there, I was asked to proofread multiple documents and presentations in English. I was asked not only by Erica (who tends to ask me these things) but also another coworker with whom I hadn't interacted before. My boss also asked me to convert more web articles into PDFs. I also had to "clean" the PDFs up because since they were taken from the web they had a lot of advertisements that had nothing to do with the article itself. I had never done this before; I honestly didn't know one could make a web anything a PDF, let alone be able to manipulate them. This is very useful information that will extend beyond m...

This week started a bit slow. I arrived five minutes early which usually isn't an issue because I simply pick up where I left off on a project and continue until my boss and or Erica give me a different assignment. However, I had finished all previous assignments and now sat at my desk killing time waiting for either my boss or Erica to arrive and let me know what it was I was to work on that week. This waiting took a bit longer than I would have liked, but in this time I was able to answer some emails.  Once Erica finally arrived, she asked me asked to transfer information from a horizontal layout into a vertical one. This didn't take too long but I did have to ask for permission to get into the image server of the company.  Another task I was asked to do this week was to look into transferring information from an Excel sheet and creating a data base from which to easily find this information. This took a lot of work since I have never before created any type of...

Internship. This word held a negative connotation in my mind when I started this experience. I was expecting to be another stereotypical intern, who goes gets the coffee and be given tasks that no one else in the office wanted to do.  I was expecting to be another fly on the wall who is constantly there but does nothing but decorate the wall and occasionally bother the people around the office.  Fortunately, this was not the case at all with my internship. I have been constantly involved with multiple projects. I have also been asked for my opinion as well as my expertise in various different circumstances to help develop an idea further. I have been given free reign over specific tasks, which have challenged me to become more independent and have an actual reason for doing the method I did in order to defend it if questioned. I have had to become much more independent and stand by my ideas. This is very exciting because for the  longest time I was afraid to speak up a...