CCD: Tell us about your experience. What were your responsibilities?
AP: This summer, I continued to be an intern with Young Artists of America (YAA), a nonprofit performing arts organization that seeks to train young students into the best performers and people they can be. YAA provides classes in singing, acting, and dancing, as well as college preparation workshops for the college audition process for vocalists and performers in general and a summer performing arts intensive, as well as a strong orchestral program for student instrumentalists that includes training during the year and during the summer.
As the marketing intern, my duties started with a lot of involvement in the company website. I conducted research based on competitor websites to see what worked and what didn’t. I developed recommendations based on those conclusions for how to best revamp the website, in order to best communicate the current state of YAA and what their mission is. My duties also involved video editing and producing marketing videos based on preexisting footage that I edited down to advertise what was then the upcoming summer intensive.
CCD: How did you get the opportunity? What resources at BU or elsewhere did you use?
AP: I was a student with YAA in high school and loved it. It was a great opportunity to be able to see that in addition to a positive environment for students and parents and the company has a great culture behind the scenes.
CCD: What was the best thing about the experience? What was the worst?
AP: The video editing and work I got to do with choosing highlights that would best advertise the company was what I found most appealing. I want to work in film and really enjoy editing, so getting experience with editing outside of my classes and otherwise, school-related projects were really rewarding. While the experience was extremely rewarding overall, there were of course some challenges. Working on a flexible schedule has its perks and was the best option for my summer schedule, which included a very intensive Summer Session 1 class. Time management and making a personal schedule and giving myself smaller deadlines to make sure I stayed on track became extremely important.
CCD: What was the most memorable moment of your experience?
AP: It has been fun to access old uncut video footage and see production photos from back when I was a student. It’s not often that people have that kind of access to old memories and it’s been great to relive some of my experiences with the organization.
CCD: What advice would you give to another student about making the most of an internship, job, or other career-related experience?
AP: My biggest takeaway from this internship experience is that you don’t necessarily have to be working in the exact specific direction of a field I want to work in in order to gain really useful and skills and have experience in a variety of different types of positions. I would’ve never thought to incorporate graphic design into my learning or career journey, but because my position happened to have an opportunity for me to learn how to best organize and design a layout for company documents; now I can say I have experience with that sphere of art and I know how to use additional software than I already did.
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