Balancing Individual Contributions and Industry Exposure

After finishing my first week interning for Fast Company, I am realizing that if I don’t take initiative, I might end the summer with more questions than answers.

Fast Company is a magazine and media brand that covers stories relating to innovative companies, technology, design, and leadership. I am part of the Integrated Marketing team for Fast Company, which is the group responsible for pitching integrated marketing campaigns to companies or organization looking to advertise with Fast Company.

I imagined this internship would be highly creative and collaborative, but felt slightly frustrated this past week when most of my contributions took the form of mindless excel tasks or conducting mind-numbing research that anyone could do. In addition, I felt quite isolated, as I the majority of my first week was spent alone, in front of the computer.

While I have no doubt that the research I’m conducting will be useful to the marketing and sales departments in the future, I have realized that I am going to have to find ways to not only make my individual contributions matter to the company, but also matter to me and be helpful in my quest to answer some questions about what I want to be doing post graduation. In completing the menial tasks I was given this past week, I realized that I wasn’t really getting a feel for the company culture or what a full-time role in this industry would look like, as I was doing intern tasks that were neither collaborative or highly indicative of the responsibilities of full time employees. While this is to be expected to some degree, I think it will be important for me to look for ways to still contribute and help the company by completing the tasks assigned to me, but also making sure to be deliberate in asking for greater responsibilities and opportunities to truly experience the industry.