About the Author:

Melissa Lawhorn is a senior at Indiana University and holder of multiple internships. With multiple internships under her belt, Melissa provides her perspectives and advice for fellow college students to get the most out of their internship experiences. Follow her weekly column in The Internship Chronicles.

I’ve been working as an intern at Deer Park Manor since December of 2010. This means that for a little more than six months now, I’ve had the opportunity to learn the ins and outs of the venue, our contracts, and the rules and regulations of the space. Thankfully, I have a wonderful internship coordinator, Sue, to teach me everything that I need to know about my specific internship, and also many different things about the special events industry.

Recently, Sue embarked on a two week European adventure. I have known about this trip for months now, and Sue has been diligently working with me to ensure that I was prepped to take care of everything in her absence. “Everything” included phone calls from clients and vendors, coordinating the already-scheduled events, being physically present at those events to ensure everything ran smoothly, and booking tasks, such as contracts, payments, and negotiating prices with potential clients.

In theory, all of this sounds great! I was eager to have the responsibility and try my hand at running everything rather than being just “the intern.” In practice, it was A LOT harder than I expected! The following are a few lessons I learned in Sue’s absence:

• Not everybody is going to like everybody (and I’ll elaborate on this topic in an upcoming post!) It’s the unfortunate truth, when working with others, personalities don’t always line up. This is something I’m constantly working on — not taking things too personally!
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question. Sue was completely out of contact (no email!) for the first week of her trip. So when I needed to know how something was done, I had to ask someone else. This was a little intimidating at times, especially after the conflicting personalities, but I needed help and had to ask! It’s always better to ask and do something right rather than not ask and do something that you can’t fix later.
• Take diligent notes! This is something you should ALWAYS do regardless of if you’re in charge or not, but seriously, note taking saved my life on more than one occasion. By taking notes, I was able to recall the details of each day, and keep track of everything I did.
• If you don’t already, utilize Google and their infinite resources! While Sue was gone, I was communicating the event schedule and updates between myself, the office employees, and the other intern. For this, we used the Google Docs and Google Calendar. This made it easy to keep everyone updated and keep everything in one easily accessible location.
• Communicate and understand each person’s responsibilities. The source of conflict as mentioned above came from a misunderstanding in who’s responsibility was who’s. For that reason, I think it’s SUPER important to talk with everybody in your internship office to ensure responsibilities are understood. If it’s clear who will be doing what and what is required of each person, there is less of a chance that a miscommunication will occur.

As Sue’s trip comes to a close, I’m happy to hand the reins back over. Through this experience, I’ve definitely realized that working at a venue may not be my ideal job, though. As much as I love the Manor and knowing all the intimate details about it — because there are very few venue-related surprises that come up on event day! — I LOVE working with all the different vendors, and I think I’d love doing the same with venues. I enjoy knowing a venue really well, but I also like the challenge and surprise of working with a new and unique venue — I think it’s more of a learning experience!

All of that being said, I have to ask: have you ever had a challenging experience at your internship which led to a decision about your future career? If so, share! What was the experience and what decision did you make from it?