This week has been an exercise in getting my coordination, email, and organization skills up to snuff. Because I meet with my supervisor every other week, I get a lot of assignments at once and am left to tackle them however I see fit. The assignments I was given at my last meeting include:

• Outlining the DSG with what information to include and suggestions on how to present it.
• Drafting an article about the rapid bus system the university uses.
• Reviewing the new “blueprint for success” article diagram to be used in the next issuing of the magazine.
  

This week I found out that the other intern at the company is ending her internship because she was too busy. Her primary responsibility was to deal with state and local grants, while mine was to do the federal grants. This change means that I’ll be working on some state or local grants now.

This week I began transcribing an interview with Sonya Hollins, she is a rather remarkable woman who has won many journalism awards in Michigan and has written her own book. I met her last semester when I was in my internship coordinator's class. I thought this would be rather easy, considering I sat in on the interview.

I have a clearly defined list of projects which will serve as my internship duties and I work on them because they are what I do. Writing in media other than the traditional is a large part of my internship.

Let me start by first giving a short synopsis of what exactly it is I’m going to be doing for my internship over the next few weeks. I’m interning at the Do Something Guide, a GVSU publication aimed at students new to the university, whether they be freshmen or transfer students. My work is going to be primarily concerned with writing articles that would be of interest to transfer students, and to offer a viewpoint that leans more towards the academic, rather than the extracurricular.

My beginning week in my internship consisted mostly of writing the application for my summer scholars project. This was important because I will be working closely with my coordinator over the summer and I’m particularly glad I have found a multidisciplinary position that allows me to incorporate my writing and my skills with my minor (history). This week, I’ve spent it looking over oral history books. There is a great deal of information to consider when interviewing someone about their life. I suspect the hardest thing will be picking a focus when I begin drafting.

I have been in my internship now for one and a half weeks. I have been in my current position for the last ten years. So is it possible to have an intern experience in such a situation? I think so.

The internship description and learning objectives have clearly outlined areas in my job where I can focus on writing. I have always had to do some writing but had not classified it as professional writing. The truth is, I do quite a bit of writing.

Since this is my first blog entry, I’ll describe a little bit about my internship. I am interning with the KEEP Foundation, a non-profit organization that raises money for scholarships. The scholarships are awarded to KEEP Foundation members to pay off their student loans after they graduate. Membership is free, but helping out at fund-raising events throughout the year is required of members.

I am feeling good about where my writing center freelance project is at. Over Thanksgiving break I spent some time going over all of the original genre guides (the ones that are already posted) and correcting their re-edits and inserting any additional information that has come up. This effectively took care of nine different documents haunting my project folder and I'm pretty sure puts work on all of those original genre guides to a close.

It seems like it's been forever since we've had to post!

Well, the semester is coming to an end and everything seems to be picking up even more at my internship. There's the kick off of the R.I.S.E. Mentorship Program, the Graduation Video Tribute, and tons of more stuff happening daily that needs to get out to the press. So, now what?