Written by: Cassidy Murray, Agricultural Communication & Marketing Major I had the amazing opportunity to be an intern for a small food marketing company called Foodist Films. Foodist Films does video marketing for dedicated food brands. They create and develop video marketing strategies to effectively engage customers with their favorite foods, focusing on what fans crave most – authenticity. As the marketing intern, I managed company social media accounts, created content for the website and various blog posts, and filmed food videos using Adobe Premiere. I also prepared and ate the food at the conclusion of the video, which of course was the best part. I felt extremely grateful for this opportunity at the start. My boss Alex, the company’s founder, is transparent and helpful. She willingly answered questions and provided feedback whenever I asked. Having a boss who gave a lot of direction ultimately helped me perform better. Four other interns worked alongside me so I could turn to them for help or guidance as well. The biggest opportunity I received while working at Foodist Films was being able to expand my cooking skills. I really enjoyed cooking and learning how to cook. As a college student, I don’t have much time or patience to cook for myself on a regular basis so being able to go to work and practice cooking and preparing food was refreshing. Lastly, I had great experiences along the way. I was able to control the company’s social media accounts, which I really enjoyed. My generation lives on social media so it was nice already knowing the ins and outs of different platforms. My goal when posting on Instagram was to have a call to action at the end of the caption. If I posted a food video that we made that day, I would add “tag someone who you would share this dish with” or “comment your favorite food,” intended to engage with followers. I also created blog posts for the company’s website. Some examples included The Top 8 Food Videos of 2018 and Top Reasons Why Your Blog Needs Video. I liked being able to create my own content and research food videos/blogs, although that did make me really hungry.
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Written by: Alex Gustafson, Agricultural Communication & Marketing Major I participated in an internship program with the YMCA at a day camp called Camp Ihduhapi. Having worked there as a counselor in the past, I had certain expectations upon being brought onto the team again as a nature educator. While other counselors predominantly were in charge of basic day camp, I was solely in charge of the nature-based camps such as Junior Rangers and fishing camp. Since my first year at camp I have been passionate about Junior Rangers. It holds a special place in my heart because it teaches kids so much in a hands-on way that many would never experience otherwise. Junior Rangers is actually a camp brought to Ihduhapi by the National Park Service. During camp, park rangers taught the kids to make seed balls to promote conservation as well as identify important prairie grasses and animal species in our state. At the end of the week-long camp, kids swear an oath similar to the oath park rangers say when sworn into their job. This provides a unique sense of community and belonging among the kids, and they are often sad to leave by the end of the day. In the past when I would lead this camp, a group known as Wilderness Inquiry would also take the kids and their counselors on a four-mile canoe trip down the Mississippi River. This was always my favorite part of camp because of the opportunity to identify different wildlife along the river as we paddled the canoes, with the kids excited to learn more.
Despite the struggles I faced with other counselors and issues I had with some of the campers themselves, my time with Camp Ihduhapi was a good one. I learned a lot about how to deal with stress and how to best engage kids so that they enjoyed their time learning versus seeing it as another version of school. I also enjoyed the fact that this internship gave me several opportunities to work with park rangers and explore career opportunities with National Park Services. Written by: Christopher Graff, Agricultural Communication & Marketing Major
I had an internship with the University of Minnesota’s Department of Soil, Water, and Climate (SWAC), which provided me the opportunity to work on many different projects being carried out by the field crew researchers. I was even able to help lead part of our crew. Throughout the summer I collected soil and plant samples, and then processed those samples on campus. It was a lot of the same work done multiple different times. After the summer was over, I was on campus everyday due to conflicts with my classes, but it provided me with the opportunity to be more of a leader for the other student workers. Because I was serving in my second year with the crew, I was asked to jump in wherever the department needed help and saw what it was like to be in a crucial position within an organization. This allowed me to learn more about the actual practice of leadership, instead of just reading and discussing leadership theories in class. I determined what type of leader I’d be in those situations in the field when I was asked to lead the students and especially when I was on campus without our departmental supervisors present. I enjoyed the increased responsibility and being put in a leadership positions. One day all the students went out to a field with just a graduate student, and I was selected to be in charge. Being put in that position humbled me, mostly because I did not think I would be the best person to be in that position but also because the graduate student was perfectly capable acting as leader. He was also much older than me. Even once the field season was over, many of the other students would still come to me to ask questions about things that we were doing, instead of going to our superior. This was also a cool experience that came from the fact that I was working there for a longer period of time, and that the other students could see that I was not slacking in my job. While most of the work involved collecting and processing soil samples, which I found fun, the process of grinding them down was much less enjoyable. The photo below shows just part of the soil sampling process. Written by: Brady Tiede, Agricultural Communication & Marketing Major
These two photos show one of my favorite days on the job as an Ag Partners intern. Reporting my micronutrient trial findings to growers was one of my favorite days as an Ag Partners intern. It was a great experience to be able to take work that I had done and turn it into a sales tool. To be able to present something to a grower and have them respond with enthusiasm and interest in the products became a very rewarding part of my work. My internship taught me a lot about agronomy and sales. I have been exposed to some of the best training that interns are offered. I have been out in the fields learning hands-on about crops and everything that agronomists do. I have learned about the meaning of service and the importance on maintaining good relationships with growers. I also had the opportunity deepen my understanding of this agricultural focus at plot days hosted by WinField. This was the best experience of my summer because it gave me an opportunity to network with others in the industry and learn about some of the most innovative products on the market. This internship led to great relationships and future internship offers for next summer. Written by: Jake Scodro, Agricultural Communication and Marketing Over the summer, when I was employed by Channel 44, in Evansville, Indiana. I worked within the creative services department. Each day I helped write the 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. promotions, gathered news stories from anchors, wrote anchors a 10- to 15-second script; 15 seconds for the 5 p.m. slot and 10 seconds for the 6 p.m. slot. I worked with other interns on an overall project making a 30-second promo for the lead anchor Amanda Decker and personality host Gretchin Irons. On slow days the intern supervisor, Martin Rieford, would send out to other branches of the station. I spent a day with finance, sales, programming, anchors, and reporters and experienced all the facets that make the station run. At channel 44 I also had the opportunity to film a commercial live, and to see the coordination and effort that goes into a mere 30 seconds is incredible. The station had one person with the camera and another with the power box, who would act as the cameraperson’s guide if they need to walk backwards. Then there was the cord person who made sure that the cords from the battery to the camera would not hit the ground and become tangled on the feet of the other two. We were there until the station closed to film spots every 15 minutes. I also served as a fire support officer for the U.S. Army during the summer. In this role, I am attached to field artillery unit 2-136 based out of Anoka, Minnesota. This includes planning missions, calling live artillery rounds on a target, and learning new pieces of equipment, such as radio, light-armored vehicles akin to tanks, and range binoculars, which are binoculars that locate your position based on the sun and stars and gives you precision coordinates on targets. Knowing these pieces of equipment is essential to being a fire support officer.
During this internship, the calling for fire with live rounds was something I had never done before, and the contrast between live rounds and the simulator is astonishing. In the simulation, once the round lands, the smoke is relatively small and dissipates quickly. This is not the case in real life, where the sand and dirt hang in the air for minutes, getting thicker when each round hits; so much so that you can no longer see the target. I had a fantastic time in both of my internships, especially learning how much effort goes into a 30-second spot and working in a television station. I will never look at news or TV the same again. In the military it was a great chance to lead and try new things while learning new pieces of equipment that I may have to interact with in the future, and it was nice to see the differences between the civilian and military world. Both have their own unique pros and cons and culture. |
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January 2020
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