Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

If You’re Not Happy, Do Something About It!

Starting the summer off with high hopes and high expectations, I entered my internship at a local brewery ready for an adventure. At the brewery, I had the position of the Summer Marketing Intern. From what I had learned from my interview and job description, I would be helping the marketing team prepare for summer events and help with the marketing and promotion of those events. From the very beginning, I was put to work prepping and setting up for that weekend’s festival that was occurring at the brewery. I worked long hours setting up tents and tables, putting up signs, cleaning the area, and for the actual event, I poured beer for 16 hours of the weekend. Whoa, what a way to start!

 

I was happy that I was able to jump right in from the start to get to know the company and my coworkers, but that is not quite what I was expecting. Although I was a bit confused on where my actual ‘marketing’ experience was coming in, I decided to keep my head up and see what else was in store for the rest of the summer. For the following weeks, I waited to actually sit down with marketing team to work on some promotions and campaigns for the coming events, but I found myself rarely in the office. Each day I was given a list of deliveries that needed to be made and equipment from events that needed to be cleaned… and that is when I started to realize that I wasn’t really ever going to get that time to utilize my education in marketing and expand my experience in the field.

 

After no major changes were made at work and after speaking with friends and family about the situation, everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion: this internship is not quite an educational fit, as well as a personal fit. I strongly believe that, with such an extensive and intensive education that I am pursuing, I need an internship that is supplemental to that, and I wasn’t quite getting it. I attempted to work more closely with my supervisors and move my way into more ‘demanding’ tasks, but the position of the Marketing Intern was not meant to be there. After five weeks of struggling with the idea of leaving and breaking the commitment that I had made to the company, I decided to explain my situation to my supervisor. Although it was tough, he seemed to understand and see that I was unhappy where I was, and allowed me to leave my position at the brewery shortly after.

 

Leaving my internship at the brewery was an incredibly hard decision to make, but I knew that I could be doing better and learning a lot more in another opportunity. As a rising senior, I saw this as my last opportunity for a summer internship before I enter the ‘real world,’ so I wanted to make sure that it was all about the experience and what I could pull from it to add to my education. Looking back now, I can see that I 100% made the correct decision and opened myself up to a much better fit of an internship opportunity.

 

So the first thing that I learned this summer: If you’re not happy with where you are and what is going on, then do something about it!