7/6 - 7/10
After a 6 week delay, I finally started my internship with Soteria Solutions. I felt welcomed and appreciated as soon as I stepped into the office. My manager, Jennifer, oriented me with the space and showed me to my own spacious work place. Shortly after, I joined a Zoom call with the rest of our core team. The team warmly welcomed me on board, and then got straight to business. The unique thing about working for a start-up is that you never feel like your insights on projects aren't wanted. I feel very lucky to have landed a position with a team that from day one encouraged me to get creative, share my opinions, and most importantly, have some faith in my own abilities.
My second day in the office, Jennifer mentioned that she and our social media coordinator, Meghan, were considering making a Tik Tok profile for Soteria. I told her that I thought it was great idea, and that I'm relatively well versed in how the app's algorithm works. She immediately gave me the green light to jump in and start brainstorming ideas for the account, with very little oversight. At first, I was shocked that she gave me so much creative freedom. I hadn't even been there two full days yet; how did they already trust me to do this?
Usually, going into large scale creative projects mentally overwhelms me to the point where the hardest part is just starting the brainstorm. However, when I sat down to start working on it, I didn't feel stressed and insecure; I felt calm and ready to jump in. I've very quickly realized here that when you're working for a team who has faith in your competence, your self confidence in your abilities skyrockets.
This week, I've been using survey data to help write marketing emails and diving into research on their competitors. As a rising sophomore at UNH, I feel lucky to be doing both research and digital marketing help for Soteria. I've already learned so much about the fields in my first week here. I can already tell that learning these skills before starting my more major specific courses is setting me up for success within the Paul College.
Next week, I'll be sitting in on their first Zoom "Train the Trainer" workshops for their Bringing in the Bystander college program. I'm looking forward to learning more about how they train the bystander intervention facilitators, and seeing how our team does rolling it out over Zoom.
