My Internship
I studied under my mom as her social media management intern. Her goal was to recreate her online presence as a professional esthetician, and find a way to post cleanly and consistently! We managed to renew her old account and spark interest in her clients.
We spent several days over summer taking photos, videos, researching and solving technical problems. Some hours were spent at the beach, on the road, and mostly in her spa room! My dad served as an important asset on this journey, as he is a photographer/ videographer, and his input was important to our final posts.
Originally, I wanted to intern as a counselor at camp IMUA, a week-long summer camp for children with special needs. This would have been an important step in pursuing my passion for psychology and nature, and would have challenged my decision making skills.
Unfortunately, I tested positive for COVID-19 just one day before camp was scheduled to begin. I quickly emailed Camp IMUA telling them the news, and researched whether I could have my room and board fees refunded.
On the day I was meant to begin my internship, I started to research other, similar options. I applied to many internships, even past the due dates just to test my luck. I reached out to mentors at art camps, science camps, agricultural programs, and a CSI program. There were no spots open for me, so I began to think outside of the box.
I had been emailing Ms. Federoff back and forth for four days, and on the fifth day I presented my idea to be my mom’s intern. My mom had expressed how unhappy she was with her business instagram, and how she hasn’t posted on it for at least a year. I asked her if she thought I could spend 60 hours with her to make it new again, and she thought it was a great idea. I imagined it would be a great way to connect with my mom and work on my social media networking skills. Ms. Federoff approved the internship, and I started working on it.
I worked with my mom and dad, and took inspiration from many other beauticians online. We looked at instagram and tiktok accounts to see what was favored and attracted the most attention. We found that videos with text and catchy background music was the way to go. Calming beachy scenes and happy photos also seemed to grab people’s attention.
I wanted to explore how building a strong social media presence could affect my mom’s business, and how to make it easy for her to continue to post. One of the hardest parts of having a social media account is keeping up with the algorithm. I knew we needed to post consistently, and spend time on hashtags and captions just as much as our photos and videos.
We met multiple times a week to discuss what she wanted her page to look like and what products and services she wanted to promote. Our second post showed a video of a soothing jelly mask, and our third post to her story showed the before and after of a lash tint. We plan on buying sunscreen wholesale and promoting it next!
My number one takeaway is that social networking is difficult and time consuming, but it pays off! On the first video we posted, our welcome back video, I spent hours shooting, compiling, editing, and figuring out how to use instagram reels. I ran into a few technical difficulties like camera quality and music licensing, but I ended up figuring it all out.
We noticed more engagement the more we posted, even though our follower count didn’t change by much. We suddenly had more profile and story views. Because I was signed into my mom’s account, I noticed all of the likes and comments coming in!
I developed several 21st century skills throughout this process, three of which being my thinking and problem solving skills, my financial economic and business literacy skills, and my information skills. All of these skills were put to use with my first issue- missing my original internship. I needed to combine my business literacy and informational skills while finding out what posts and online tactics were best for business. My information skills were also used in conversation with my mom, finding out what her vision was and what the best outcome would be.
I met my goal of posting educational advertisement videos and stepping out of my comfort zone, however I lacked in making my posts as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped. The first videos we posted informed my mom’s clients about her new location and a new jelly mask she offers as a facial add on. I also posted a story showing the results before and after a lash tint. There’s a learning curve I’m overcoming in creating visually pleasing posts. I still feel like we did a good job at putting posts together, and they’re a definite improvement to her previous posts.
There were a lot of valuable takeaways from this experience. The most important thing was being able to enhance my social networking skills and spend more time with my mom.
I tend to be busy all year round, and I can’t always make enough time to see my mom. Sometimes, when I do make enough time, we end up just doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping and running errands. This internship gave me the opportunity to have fun with her and bond over her business. We spent 60+ hours together this summer shooting, editing, and talking.
I’m technologically challenged by nature, therefore I had a lot of learning to do as far as social media goes. I rarely post on my personal instagram as it is, so I had to research tactics for posting consistently. I also had to dig deeper into what makes an account look good and attract clients.
Finding a new internship was by far the biggest challenge. The hours of searching for new internships and emailing teachers while sick with covid stressed me out. I was lucky and relieved to have found an internship that would work with my schedule and that was something I was interested in!
That being said, completing my hours was still a struggle. I found myself procrastinating, and sometimes logging very short amounts of time into my time log. I ended up completing my hours just in the nick of time, however I think I underestimated how much 60 hours really was.
I was working two jobs over summer and attending appointments. This kept me very busy, as I wanted to earn as much money as I could over this summer. I usually worked 50 hour weeks while still keeping up with my social life, which left little time for my internship. I ended up finding ways to work around it, and got some long days of shooting on my days off!
This experience will help shape my life outside of highschool. I’ve learned many valuable lessons and skills from my internship, and will be continuing to help my mom after my 60 hours is completed. I developed critical thinking and problem solving skills, and created a better understanding of media and technology for myself. Although I was stressed in the beginning, I’m so grateful to have spent my summer working on this and to have learned so much!
I studied under my mom as her social media management intern. Her goal was to recreate her online presence as a professional esthetician, and find a way to post cleanly and consistently! We managed to renew her old account and spark interest in her clients.
We spent several days over summer taking photos, videos, researching and solving technical problems. Some hours were spent at the beach, on the road, and mostly in her spa room! My dad served as an important asset on this journey, as he is a photographer/ videographer, and his input was important to our final posts.
Originally, I wanted to intern as a counselor at camp IMUA, a week-long summer camp for children with special needs. This would have been an important step in pursuing my passion for psychology and nature, and would have challenged my decision making skills.
Unfortunately, I tested positive for COVID-19 just one day before camp was scheduled to begin. I quickly emailed Camp IMUA telling them the news, and researched whether I could have my room and board fees refunded.
On the day I was meant to begin my internship, I started to research other, similar options. I applied to many internships, even past the due dates just to test my luck. I reached out to mentors at art camps, science camps, agricultural programs, and a CSI program. There were no spots open for me, so I began to think outside of the box.
I had been emailing Ms. Federoff back and forth for four days, and on the fifth day I presented my idea to be my mom’s intern. My mom had expressed how unhappy she was with her business instagram, and how she hasn’t posted on it for at least a year. I asked her if she thought I could spend 60 hours with her to make it new again, and she thought it was a great idea. I imagined it would be a great way to connect with my mom and work on my social media networking skills. Ms. Federoff approved the internship, and I started working on it.
I worked with my mom and dad, and took inspiration from many other beauticians online. We looked at instagram and tiktok accounts to see what was favored and attracted the most attention. We found that videos with text and catchy background music was the way to go. Calming beachy scenes and happy photos also seemed to grab people’s attention.
I wanted to explore how building a strong social media presence could affect my mom’s business, and how to make it easy for her to continue to post. One of the hardest parts of having a social media account is keeping up with the algorithm. I knew we needed to post consistently, and spend time on hashtags and captions just as much as our photos and videos.
We met multiple times a week to discuss what she wanted her page to look like and what products and services she wanted to promote. Our second post showed a video of a soothing jelly mask, and our third post to her story showed the before and after of a lash tint. We plan on buying sunscreen wholesale and promoting it next!
My number one takeaway is that social networking is difficult and time consuming, but it pays off! On the first video we posted, our welcome back video, I spent hours shooting, compiling, editing, and figuring out how to use instagram reels. I ran into a few technical difficulties like camera quality and music licensing, but I ended up figuring it all out.
We noticed more engagement the more we posted, even though our follower count didn’t change by much. We suddenly had more profile and story views. Because I was signed into my mom’s account, I noticed all of the likes and comments coming in!
I developed several 21st century skills throughout this process, three of which being my thinking and problem solving skills, my financial economic and business literacy skills, and my information skills. All of these skills were put to use with my first issue- missing my original internship. I needed to combine my business literacy and informational skills while finding out what posts and online tactics were best for business. My information skills were also used in conversation with my mom, finding out what her vision was and what the best outcome would be.
I met my goal of posting educational advertisement videos and stepping out of my comfort zone, however I lacked in making my posts as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped. The first videos we posted informed my mom’s clients about her new location and a new jelly mask she offers as a facial add on. I also posted a story showing the results before and after a lash tint. There’s a learning curve I’m overcoming in creating visually pleasing posts. I still feel like we did a good job at putting posts together, and they’re a definite improvement to her previous posts.
There were a lot of valuable takeaways from this experience. The most important thing was being able to enhance my social networking skills and spend more time with my mom.
I tend to be busy all year round, and I can’t always make enough time to see my mom. Sometimes, when I do make enough time, we end up just doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping and running errands. This internship gave me the opportunity to have fun with her and bond over her business. We spent 60+ hours together this summer shooting, editing, and talking.
I’m technologically challenged by nature, therefore I had a lot of learning to do as far as social media goes. I rarely post on my personal instagram as it is, so I had to research tactics for posting consistently. I also had to dig deeper into what makes an account look good and attract clients.
Finding a new internship was by far the biggest challenge. The hours of searching for new internships and emailing teachers while sick with covid stressed me out. I was lucky and relieved to have found an internship that would work with my schedule and that was something I was interested in!
That being said, completing my hours was still a struggle. I found myself procrastinating, and sometimes logging very short amounts of time into my time log. I ended up completing my hours just in the nick of time, however I think I underestimated how much 60 hours really was.
I was working two jobs over summer and attending appointments. This kept me very busy, as I wanted to earn as much money as I could over this summer. I usually worked 50 hour weeks while still keeping up with my social life, which left little time for my internship. I ended up finding ways to work around it, and got some long days of shooting on my days off!
This experience will help shape my life outside of highschool. I’ve learned many valuable lessons and skills from my internship, and will be continuing to help my mom after my 60 hours is completed. I developed critical thinking and problem solving skills, and created a better understanding of media and technology for myself. Although I was stressed in the beginning, I’m so grateful to have spent my summer working on this and to have learned so much!