Internships as Prof. Dev., Part 2

10-min. read

This blog post is a collaboration with Eliza Kriz, an amazing writer I studied alongside while completing my bachelor’s degree in Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU). The two-part article focuses on our experiences as technical writing interns at Cardinal Solutions, a research and design consultancy run by students, faculty, and alumni at SVSU.

Although Eliza and I interned for the same organization during the Fall 2020 semester, we did not work together, as we were assigned to different project teams. Thus, we used this joint reflection as an opportunity to learn about another client, project, and Cardinal Solutions group.

In my last blog post (Part 1), we covered a variety of topics:

• New experiences in PTW;

• Interdisciplinary teamwork;

• Overcoming challenges; and

• Strategies and platforms for collaboration.

In this blog post (Part 2), we cover additional topics:

• Areas of study/interest unrelated to PTW;

• Applied insights from PTW coursework;

• Remote internships; and

• Benefits to professional development.

In Fall 2020, Eliza was a junior in the PTW program and an intern at Cardinal Solutions, where she worked as the technical writer on a project team serving the Saginaw County Prevention Coalition. She is currently completing an internship with JAARS, Inc as a communications coordinator associate.

In Fall 2020, I completed my last semester in the PTW program and an internship with Cardinal Solutions, where I worked as the technical writer on a project team serving Women of Colors. I currently work as an independent consultant at Allison Stein Consulting, LLC. Among my consulting gigs, I am involved with the social media and web content strategy for Cardinal Solutions.

Areas of Study/Interest Unrelated to PTW

What did you learn that was unrelated to PTW (e.g., something fun or something about your client)?

My Thoughts

I learned a lot about nonprofit work in the Saginaw community. I actually wasn’t previously familiar with any of the programs I was promoting. My position at Cardinal Solutions gave me an incentive to do a deep dive and learn more about these programs—and how to make them more visible on social media so that people like me can find out about them.

I was interested in learning about the different volunteer opportunities in our community. My internship focused on research as well as writing, so I had the opportunity to look into how Women of Colors structured different programs, how they were attracting participants, and so on.

Eliza’s Thoughts

The theme of our activity book was “Saginaw Awesome.” Because I’m not from the Saginaw area, I enjoyed finding out more about the people and places connected with Saginaw. The crossword puzzles were based on people that at some point lived in Saginaw and then later became famous, such as Serena Williams. The coloring pages were all based on different places or attractions, such as the Saginaw Children’s Zoo, different museums, and parks in the area. One job I had was to write just a one-sentence description of each of these places that will be put on top of the coloring page or the maze. It was really interesting for me to find out about these places because I haven’t explored the area thoroughly. Some of them were a little bit familiar, but a lot of them were new to me. It made me realize the different opportunity and different places that are part of the Saginaw area that I hadn’t even known existed.

Applied Insights from PTW Coursework

What insights from PTW coursework did you apply to this experience?

Eliza’s Thoughts

In the PTW coursework and program, we’re very focused on audience and making sure that everything that we’re writing is directed at that audience in a specific group. Yes, our professor is grading it, but that’s not ultimately who our audience is going to be—at least, you know, imagined audience because it’s coursework, so it’s not always going to concretely go to that place. But we make sure that it’s written in a way our real or imagined audience can understand and we’re not using different jargon or words that aren’t in their vocabulary, for example.

When I was writing material for the activity book, we knew that the audience was young teens and their parents, so then I was thinking, especially when I was writing the descriptions about the famous people from Saginaw, “What will be interesting to them?” Do they care what university this person graduated from, or are they more interested in what made them famous or where they were born and where they moved? I thought a lot about what these kids will actually care about. We want to share a good overview of who the person was but focus on the parts that these individuals will find interesting and will find engaging.

And similarly, when I wrote the partner descriptions, I was thinking about, “What are the services that these families might find useful?” What do they need to know about this organization that will be most helpful for them? That focus on audience was something that I kept coming back to throughout the project to make sure the different texts I was writing would really apply to the demographic and the ages that we were working with.

My Thoughts

A lot of our PTW classes frame technical communication as less about writing and more about solving problems. In my internship, I was not responsible solely or even mostly for putting words on the page. I was diving in—taking note of the organization’s past social media strategies overall and by platform, understanding the kind and extent of activities and initiatives Women of Colors supports, and learning a ton so that we could teach people a ton on social media.

I emailed back and forth with coordinators of various programs, forums, and workshops. I found out why and how they got involved with Women of Colors. I found out how much the people of Saginaw had already given to the organization and how much the organization had already given to the people of Saginaw. I went in with the mindset that everyone had something to share, and they did.

That mindset made for a better project than it would have been if I had seen myself primarily as a writer. If I am going to write as the voice of an organization in a way that is respectful of my client and our audience, I need to be not only a proficient writer but a proficient researcher and problem solver and a really good listener.

Remote Internships

What did you learn from working in a remote internship?

My Thoughts

I learned strategies for cultivating a professional community from my home. I learned how to ask people for feedback and to bounce around ideas, even though it might be less convenient than if we were in the same room. I learned that it is very possible to share meaningful experiences without sharing an office space.

For other interns working remotely, I recommend spending just as much or more time cultivating those connections as you would in an office setting. Be present intellectually and emotionally whether or not your job requires your physical presence. Invest in yourself and your team to the extent you are able. Get to know people outside of work. It will help you work together better and make the work feel more meaningful.

Also, consider whether and how you or your team can take steps to streamline the information overload that tends to happen with online workspaces. I was sending a lot of text to our graphic designer over the course of the project, but for the most part, I could paste it into a OneNote notebook for her to look over at her convenience instead of bombarding her with emails, which would have been a bit challenging for our project specifically—it may have worked with other teams—since we were largely dealing with fewer than 140 characters at a time. It just becomes a lot because it’s a lot of little things. So putting that into place was helpful.

My last tip is to identify and implement good strategies for time management. Set up a system that makes it easier and more enjoyable to practice self-discipline. Figure out how to balance focus time and collaboration time. Find a happy medium between blocking off specific hours to get work done and staying connected with people on your remote team.

Eliza’s Thoughts

Some of the strategies you mentioned sound really helpful, and some of them were relevant to what I was doing, some of them were a little different. Because I was working in a bigger group, it wasn’t quite as easy to have that open communication between everybody, but for the people that I did need to communicate with, I was able to do so. I feel like I’ve gotten to know the faculty advisors a lot better because I was sending them a lot of emails and hearing back from them, so that has been an interesting collaboration.

And like you said, just with the overload of information, with those emails going back and forth, I found it was necessary to set up a system. From the beginning, I thought, “If I’m going to be getting all these emails, I’ll set up a separate folder for my Cardinal Solutions work.” And then I tried to be really careful about moving related emails to the folder immediately because I was afraid I would forget about them and lose important information otherwise.

One thing that was a little interesting—specifically for Internship in PTW, because we were doing it for class, I was tracking hours for the internship. If you go to an office and you’re there for eight hours, four hours, whatever, you were there for that long, that’s how long you worked. But when I would track my own hours, I would have to think, “Okay, I’m opening my computer, and I’m going to start researching this thing. I better start timing myself.” That was a challenge sometimes because I didn’t know whether or not to time when I replied to somebody’s email, for example, and it took me five minutes. Do I have to add that to a previous time? I had to work those things out.

And also, because the internship was so flexible, which I really appreciated because I could arrange it around my schedule, it was a matter of determining the best times for me to work on those projects. So I set up a system where I did one hour in the morning and found another time in the afternoon. I still wanted the flexibility but also wanted to have some sort of system where I could have general expectations for myself and hold myself accountable.

So just figuring out the hours was a little bit challenging, but I also found that, with the remote internship, I was able to work pretty efficiently because I could set myself at a task with fewer distractions. Yes, there would be distractions from other homework or emails coming in from other sources, but I wasn’t distracted by the other things going on in the office or other conversations with coworkers. Sometimes I would sit down and work for a couple hours and actually get a substantial amount of work done that maybe wouldn’t have happened in a different environment. It was interesting just to compare how my remote internship worked versus other work experience that I’ve had in the past.

Benefits to Professional Development

How did the experience prepare you for future academic or professional goals?

Eliza’s Thoughts

This was a really valuable experience for me because it is related to my target career path. I will be able to put on my resume that I was a technical writing intern. Some of my past work experience somewhat relates but isn’t specifically tied to technical writing. Being able to talk to prospective employers about the different writing-related projects I did for Cardinal Solutions will be helpful.

The experience in the remote internship will be helpful as well. I’m actually working on an application process for an internship for next semester, and it’s also a remote internship. I can say, “I’ve done this before: I’ve worked in a remote internship, I’ve had online classes, I’m able to manage my workload this way.” Having this experience with a team that’s very supportive and helpful—and easy to get connected to—may help me in a future connection.

Even the idea of working in this team is valuable because so many companies and groups value the teamwork and collaboration. I can tell them that I worked with this group, and we were able to create this project, and this is what I contributed, and this is how I helped with the whole group atmosphere. These broad, general experiences are going to be really helpful when I apply to different jobs, update my resume, or talk about things in my cover letter.

My Thoughts

You touched on several learning experiences that resonated with me, such as how to work well in a remote environment. Post-graduation, I want to do full-time remote consulting work for clients, so learning different time management strategies or remote collaboration strategies was something that was very useful to me.

Also, I appreciated the experience of communicating with a real client. I discussed this in detail in a previous question. Now I’ll be able to feel a little more confident in “What is an appropriate way to communicate? What is most likely to get good results?”

Eventually, I’ll be able to include my work for Cardinal Solutions as a sample project in my portfolio. I can also discuss the experience with prospective clients. I haven’t completed a project specifically related to social media before, so the internship was a way to expand my skills, my value proposition, and even the range of services I feel comfortable offering through my consulting platform.

Advice to Future PTW Interns from Guest Author Eliza Kriz

Ask questions and communicate sooner rather than later.

At first, when I started the internship, I was still confused about exactly what my role was and what I was supposed to be doing and then how we were communicating with the client. I thought, “Okay, I’m starting the internship, but I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

So then I wrote down a list of questions after our first meeting, and I sent them to the faculty advisors. I was like, “Here are my questions. How is this going to work? What am I supposed to be doing with this kind of project? What are my expectations?” Figuring those out at the beginning was really helpful. As we went on, I could ask follow-up questions to make sure I was on the right track, but then I had the confidence to go into the project knowing what and how much was expected of me because that was a little bit difficult to understand at the beginning.

I recommend many of the same strategies when working with a client. If you communicate with your spokesperson sooner rather than later, you can build a deeper relationship, establish more trust in each other, and have a better idea of how the other person works. It may take more time than you would like to get responses to your inquiries, so put them out sooner than you actually need to hear back from someone on behalf of the group. There won’t be as much tension around delayed responses when you estimate that at the beginning and give that extra time for back and forth.

Thanks for reading!

If you found this post helpful, check out my featured posts below.

Special thanks to my friend and the talented graphic designer Joanna Nauman, Women of Colors President Evelyn McGovern, and the faculty advisors of Cardinal Solutions at Saginaw Valley State University for the great experience collaborating on my internship project.