Week 3: Communication and Flexibility

After the first two weeks of getting adjusted to the organization, staff and students, I felt a lot more comfortable contacting my supervisor and leadership team without any discomfort. They are a small organization who has been needing interns every year and are very appreciative for the work that we do for them and it motivates us to do more and to do better. I believe it is because of their caring and friendly leadership approach and care for maintaining a good relationship that motivated me to do better for every task that I am assigned. After asking me to be in charge of doing some project or my opinion on something, my supervisor would always say “thank you” or “wonderful” to show appreciation. This made me feel a lot more connection with the staff, the whole team and made me feel as if I had created a second family.

But it was difficult with communication in the beginning because they are understaffed. They only have two administrative full time staff members working, my supervisor being one of them which made them preoccupied and very busy. When first trying to figure out my tasks and schedule in the beginning, I sent a lot of emails asking about my schedule weeks before, but I did not know how spontaneous or flexible things would be. Because this organization was building three different performing arts programs for students for 5 days a week for almost the whole day, they needed staff to be on standby most of the time in case the faculty had technical difficulties and help with opening up zoom rooms since the faculty did not know the login and password to all the rooms. It is the administrative team’s responsibility to know these things and help to make things run smoothly. Sometimes I would get a text message asking if I can open up a class 15 mins before the class starts because someone was not in touch. My schedule had to be flexible and to be available during the whole program just in case something was not happening the way it was supposed to.

From even before my internship started, I learned a lot about how communication is very important in any situation. I had struggles getting replies back from my supervisor before, but I just had to reach out a second time. During the first few days, I had to make sure my phone was near me in case I got a text message to open up a room all of a sudden. Being online and available in a remote internship is very important. I tried to respond within minutes, and when I did cover for someone or open up a room, I would always let my supervisor know that this class was clear. It just gives a peace of mind knowing what is happening and good communication is the only way for I realized for programs to run smoothly.

Within the first 3 weeks of my internship, I learned the importance of communication and flexibility.