Since my last post about finding internship opportunities, I managed to find one, apply, interview, submit a portfolio, get the job and work there for 3 days. That might sound like a lot, but I really just haven’t been blogging enough.
My friend Kayla (whose bridal portraits you may have seen in a previous post) is the one who really started all of this. I’ve been looking for a job that would let me get more hours this summer and even during school, while also thinking about internships. She mentioned that her company (TTI) has a creative department (Torque Creative), which offers paid internships in graphic design and gave me a number to contact. I honestly had no expectations going into it, but I ended up with an interview two days later and they hired me the same day.
I just started working on Monday and it has been an invaluable experience already. Seeing the environment and structure of a real workplace has basically confirmed for me that this is what I want to be doing. I have always been stuck between a love for design and a fear that I’m going to hate being in a cubicle from 9 to 5 every day. This has helped me in so many ways to put that into perspective and know what I’m getting myself into. It’s a crazy awesome balance between creative expression and work. And it pays.
Beyond just the experience of being there, I’ve also learned a lot by watching the designers work and being given some minor work of my own. I absolutely know that having done this, even just for a few weeks, will affect the rest of my time in school. There won’t be any more wondering if what we’re learning will really be useful later on. The “end goal” isn’t just some ambiguous mental image of waking up early, wearing a tie, sitting at a desk and drinking coffee.
All that said, I don’t think that this internship will meet the school’s requirements for internships for a lot of reasons. Bummer, but I kind of expected it. It’s still a job for right now, and an amazing opportunity, and doing a second internship next year can’t hurt anything.
Dyed it.
Better pictures later. At the moment, my laptop is in the care of iPlace in Greenville so I don’t have Photoshop. Standard defect for white Macbook causes top case to crack in multiple places, but they’re fixing it for free.
I can easily say that this is one of my most favorite websites: Shirt.Woot.
Woot is all about selling 1 item per day at an extremely low price. Their t-shirt division, in particular, sells 1 t-shirt every day for $10. I own a couple myself, and have bought some for Carlie too. The designs that they publish are generally known for being humorous, creative and high quality. They also have a weekly derby, where they give a theme, and anyone can submit their own design. The top 3 designs are sold as the Friday, Saturday and Sunday shirts. I haven’t actually participated in a derby yet, but I am working on something right now that, if I can get it done in time, will be submitted early this week.
My birthday is coming up soon. July 15th, to be exact. Feel free to chip in and buy me one of these! The 16gb 3G version, only $629.
With two years, four semesters and only one summer left before I graduate, I realized that I really need to start thinking about internships. (As a Graphic Design major at AU, some sort of approved internship is required for graduation.)
I’m just gonna pause for a minute and comment on how terribly disappointed I was when I realized this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally pumped about interning somewhere and seeing the professional design world from a firsthand perspective, but… at this very moment, I’m halfway through college. But…I’m not totally ready to stop being a kid! I don’t feel like I’m prepared to go out into the working world. Part of that has to do with the fact that I feel terribly young, while the other part has to do with the fact that I feel like I totally blew off my first year and a half of college. I did not devote myself at all to my major, and just did what I could to pass, rather than push myself to take as much as possible from the experience. Hopefully, my anxiety about it all will get better as the year goes by and I put more and more into my work.
Back to internships, I’m planning on talking to my advisor at school as soon as possible when the fall semester starts. For now though, I’m doing a bit of research. I would love the opportunity to work for Disney as a graphic designer. Even though I always wanted to be a Disney animator as a kid, that’s not really my thing. But Disney has some really accessible internships, plus the Disney College Program, which I would be really interested in. The only problem is that there aren’t summer sessions. Both programs mainly run in 6 month periods. Missing a semester of school will make me lose my financial aid, and I’m pretty sure you can’t do your GD internship post-graduation. Still, if it doesn’t work out any other way, I may apply for the Disney College Program for the semester after I graduate and just do it for the experience, not for the college credited internship. Having Disney on a resume would simply be invaluable, plus a really great, unique experience.
So, aside from Disney, I’m still looking for internship opportunities for next summer. I would like to get out of Anderson and maybe even out of South Carolina, since, for several reasons, I feel like I’ll probably be in SC for a while after I graduate. Even if it’s just Atlanta, I’d much prefer that. Anyway, here I am asking for suggestions. To all my GD friends, have you guys found any good info or resources? Anyone have any suggestions?
This summer has brought a lot of photo opportunities for me! In an attempt to keep my new flickr account and blog up to date, here are some of my recent photos.
First off, we have the long-awaited posting of Kayla Chasteen’s bridal shoot. I couldn’t post these before, just in case there was a groom lurking around here, but here they are, finally.
Next up is the groom himself, Lance Evatt. Their wedding was last Saturday evening. With over 900 pictures, it will be a while before those are up!
And lastly, here are some photos I did for Beverly Hight. I did senior portraits for her daughter,
Jordan, and she wanted me to do some more photos for her. This is baby Noah, his dad Austin and granddad David.
