My perfect summer with the NDC

How is my summer internship with the National Diversity Council over already? I feel like I just got here!

The amount that I’ve been able to learn and grow as a multimedia communicator in these short months has absolutely blown me away. Going into this position, our directors made it very clear to the other interns and I that this was no cookie cutter “coffee grabbing, copy making, phone answering” experience. Their focus was to find out what area of digital media each of us are passionate about, ask us what we wanted to improve on and then show us the way to make the best version of our career a reality.

I’ve always been a print journalism geek, and my experience prior to joining the NDC was all newspaper-based. I was a little scared to try my hand at the professional social media game, but I was excited to see what I was capable of.

My days here were spent tracking my assigned networks’ social media analytics, creating content for these pages, writing articles for the NDCNews website, and making exciting graphics. While writing is an area I’m confident in, every other aspect of my responsibilities here was mainly a new environment for me. You can take class after class about social media metrics, graphic design, and multimedia content, but nothing quite prepares you like simply going out and doing it!

After submitting our posts, graphics, or articles our directors would take a look at our content, and give us useful, educating feedback on how we can improve. In our process of creating a social media campaign for NDC’s 2020 LGBTQ+ Unity Summit, we relied on our social media analytic research, but also the skills we were taught across the summer. Our lessons on press release writing, engagement management, peak social media times, and so many other topics proved to be so helpful.

Every day at this internship has been unique, and I am incredibly grateful to have been given the opportunity to make a difference through communications. The best way to learn is through experience, and the National Diversity Council was certainly a memorable one.