Just as all responsible agricultural communication students should do, I began searching for the perfect internship just as my sophomore year had begun. I was committed to my internship by early March, my housing arrangements were finalized by April and I had an internship start day of mid-June. Everything was going according to plan, or so I thought.
Since I had a few weeks before my internship officially started, I decided I would go back home to California and visit family. As fate would have it, I broke my ankle a mere two hours before getting to the airport, and my first stop home was the beloved emergency room.
This put quite the wrench in my summer plans, and due to not being able to drive, I was no longer eligible for my internship that I was counting down the days for.
I am sure you can imagine the stress I was in trying to find a new internship that typically takes months to find.
I turned to my trusty friend, Facebook, for some help. After posting my situation to two professional agriculture groups on Facebook, I received over 15 messages from different organizations willing to help me out. This was a solid reminder on just how grateful I am for the agriculture community; there is always someone willing to lend a helping hand.
I ended up interning with United Braford Breeders (UBB) as a remote communications intern under the direction of UBB Executive Director, Hannah Wine. I could not be more grateful for how my summer internship went, even under what had originally seemed as unfortunate circumstances.
My internship consisted of writing news and feature stories for the UBB magazine, Braford News, designing advertisements and tradeshow materials, creating a media kit and developing content and design elements for promotional and marketing materials.
Since this was a remote internship, I was worried I may lose out on the valuable feedback and critiques that come from working in a professional office setting. However, this could not have been less true, and I would strongly recommend this internship to anyone. This was actually UBB’s first try at hosting a communications intern, and it went so well they will be continuing the internship program this fall.
Working for Hannah was a true pleasure, and I learned more than I could have ever hoped for. While building a work portfolio I learned about developing feature stories, designing advertisements and structuring newsletters to the way people read best.
If I had to pick the most valuable piece of information I learned this summer, it would be to be flexible. Be flexible when you break an ankle, be flexible when you don’t get your dream internship, be flexible when the editors don’t like the format of your first design piece; just be flexible. It all happens for a reason, you just have to learn from it.
I would have never thought working remotely would turn into what I now call a perfect summer internship. As luck would have it, I am almost grateful to have broken my ankle because without it I would not have had the opportunity to work for United Braford Breeders this summer.