My experience at the Student Health Center has been far from what I expected. The scope of projects and expectations changed frequently throughout my duration here. At first, it was a little intimidating because it was my first time working in a professional setting. However, I settled in very quickly and developed a nice relationship with my coworkers and boss. I believe that the strength and weakness of the organization is actually the exact same thing. They both came when we lost my original graphic design boss, Salem. When he left, all of his duties + all design work were transferred to me. Unfortunately, one critique I have is that this limited a lot of the time that could be spent strictly on design work. Although I did not get as much design experience and formal training as I would have hoped, it helped me beyond belief in many other ways. Finding myself in such a unique and powerful situation, I was forced to develop relationship with other professionals in the industry. Previously, my biggest weakness would be communication and pitching my ideas. Being in contact with such important professionals helped a great deal. Because of this, my communication skills have improved immensely. I have also started to pick up skills that I was not previously exposed to. For example, I was not familiar with HTML before I started. This internship gave me the chance to dip my tow in the water and grow an interest. I also learned invaluable social media/ public communication skills. Finally, I simply just learned to work in a fast-paced environment and how to handle adversity and constantly changing situations. In the real world, you do not always get 4 weeks to complete a project with your professor coddling you every step of the way. In the real world, you have to deal with people who are not always pleasant. You have to deal with social media disasters, poor communication, large-scale printing problems, budgeting, and client expectations. During my internship duration, I have become more comfortable tackling those real-world problems that aren’t touched upon in my graphic design classes.
Although the internship class is ending, my position at the SHC will still continue. I hope I get to work with them for the remainder of my time at LSU. Although I am still getting to know him, I am very excited to continue work with my new boss, Colin. With him settled in finally, next semester should be more focused on my design skills. He is extremely talented and I hope to learn a lot from him in the coming year. I am excited to continue to be challenged by the work they present and get even more experience then they have already given me.
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Since there are no programs going on currently, I have still been at the front desk, working on small projects (such as little twitter graphics). A couple of weeks ago, we did Flu Shots. Unfortunately, because we were so late to the game, we had very low numbers attend. The medical department decided to do one more day of Flu Shots. Although I have done a few tweets and posts, Colin has taken over most of the design work as his first official project as new communications coordinator/ design specialist. Again, a lot of my time was just spend shadowing him, learning new things (and teaching him some things along the way).
The opening of the Pharmacy marked the last event of the Fall Semester. This means that I do not have any scheduled design work until December. The past few days at the office have been spent working at the front desk and shadowing Colin (my new boss/ graphic designer). He has a stronger background in Photoshop, whereas I am stronger in illustrator. We shared our knowledge on these programs, teaching each other new tips and tricks.
Today I faced huge problems in the office dealing with the Pharmacy Open. Our pharmacy is technically subcontracted through a private company. Unfortunately, this means a disconnect in communications. Yesterday morning, I announced the opening of the pharmacy, and it received a lot of positive attention. Usually I would be excited at the feedback. However, today I received a call telling me, "Oh, by the way, the Pharmacy STILL isn't ready and we will not be opening for another week". Obviously I started freaking out because the announcement was on social media and our website for 24 hours on the original scheduled date before I was told they wanted to push it back a week. Today was spend scrambling correcting the misinformation online and through social media.
Unfortunately since they gave me such a short deadline, I worked over the weekend to update the website with the new web page and design the graphics. The website was scheduled to open this morning, along with my scheduled social media posts.
After the fire and the flood, we were 2 months behind the scheduled date for the new Pharmacy at LSU. However, I was given the final 'soft' opening date for the Pharmacy--which would be November 7. Today (and the next few days) will be spent preparing little graphics to announce the opening over social media and our website. I was also asked to design a simple a web page for the new pharmacy. After the opening, we will be able to gather pictures to make the web page more appealing.
With the office finally hiring our new communications professional, I was preparing for the incoming of my new boss.Today was spend getting training materials together from my own personal notes in order to promote a smooth transition and get him caught up on everything. Tomorrow, I was instructed to give him an informal "training" day,
Today I received the final prints of the Pantry to Plate hand cards + the recipe of the month cards. Because of the influx in responses, we printed a lot more recipe cards than we did last month. In fact--about 100 more. This month's recipe proved to be especially difficult because of the sheer size of it. I struggled to make the text heavy recipe fit. Finally, after many rounds of editing with the dietitian, we came up with a formatting style that worked. In order to do this, we needed to utilize the back and separate some of the information. Regardless, she was very happy with the result. Today I continued playing with applications for the Pantry to Plate Brand. To get the word out there, I focused mainly on online and social media applications. This month, we have widened our reach to include myLSU--giving us an even greater response than last time.
Today, I started working on many of the applications that were needed for the demonstration. Our first priority was getting some hand cards out to start promoting the demonstration. I tried a couple of different variations. Unfortunately, however, the logo created some awkward spacing at the bottom. To remedy the situation, I just blew up the spatula and fork graphics to help balance the piece while still maintaining a brand presence.
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