Philippe (left) and Leeza (right) with alumnus Joonmarie (above)

Two of our students completing summer internships this year are Leeza Walkes (Web/Graphic Design) who worked at Asia Society and Philippe Chery (Digital Video Concentration) who worked at Hot97.

Communications Technology students at York College are required to complete at least one Internship in order to fulfill their major requirements and be eligible for graduation. Internships help create a smoother transition from being a fulltime student into the big scary world of careers and fulltime employment.

At the end of their internships, our students write a reflection on their experience. It helps them organize their experiences and lessons learned, but also benefits future interns. Here is what Leeza and Philippe had to say about what did and learned during their internship:

Selections from Philippe

…There are some days where I’d be the one shooting the event or I’d just be the one assisting, but over all I’ve learn a lot of valuable [things] interning at hot97.

I was given plenty of chances to use some of the video and audio equipment they had and I also had time to learn how to use them. They were not at all too difficult to understand; the controls on each camera resembled the same ones I used in school. I knew exactly how to use the camera in every event.

There was a lot of cleaning that I had to do after shoots and I actually appreciated those times… it made me more comfortable holding and breaking down heavy equipment that I was not used to…

I’ve learned a lot about live streaming and I realized that learning to shoot live events is very necessary and it is something that I wish to learn and hopefully master.

I learned how important it is to keep things organized because there [were] plenty [of] incidents where files would be lost and a project would have to be thrown away.

I felt that having an internship at Hot97 was very beneficial [for me]. One of the reasons is because their digital department was recently made and because of that there was a lot for me to do. I was able to go on shoots and actually hold the camera instead of running around, back and forth, and I was also able to edit instead of transcribing at a desk for hours. There was a lot of hands on experiences for me at hot97.

… would I work there if I was given the opportunity? … the answer would be no.

I want to have my own brand and do my own thing, have my own business.

Hot97 was just showing me what is needed in order to chase my dream.

I intend to use all that I’ve learned from hot97 to help build and bring me closer to my goals and achievements.

Selections from Leeza

I initially wanted to intern with Najlah Hicks at Design For Social Good, because her company and values reflected many of my interests in the field of multimedia design. Because her company is run remotely, it made it difficult for her to consider that. But from this inquiry, grew her interest in my placement … she reached out to Asia Society.

I was asked to look at documentation for Drupal, a CMS [Content Management System] platform that I had not been exposed to hands on. Upon my arrival, I was asked to look at and fix an issue on the intranet which hosts the information and employee updates, which was really my “icebreaker” into Drupal and also into the way that particular site worked.

…my supervisor was very helpful in explaining and providing literature that would allow me to find solutions and strengthen my confidence in navigating the site from the CMS route. Her approach was extremely helpful to me because it allowed me to troubleshoot and find solutions on my own. I became excited to continue because I had been exposed to a bit of all of my interests in terms of web & graphic design and it had only been two weeks.

Looking back it was a blessing that I couldn’t work with Najlah because I would not have had the office experience in this field that I received.

An interesting project that I was able to be a part [of] was to create an RSS feed that pulled from Asia society’s main events calendar and posts the events to their respective tumblr…

What really made this experience rewarding was that someone from the communications department saw the process of the project and was [very] excited about what it was able to do because she was the one responsible for manually feeding the tumblr.

There was a lot of work to be done and not many people to spread it around to. Interns are a big part of what makes this organization so efficient…

I was never asked to buy or fetch anything. Everything that I worked on was related to web design and development.

Everything that I did was a tool to learn or strengthen what I already knew.

An internship will help a student to gain understanding of what it is like to work for media production organization and learn very useful skills like time management and organization.

It will also help a student decide which area of his/her field they will purse in their career and network with people currently working in the industry. Most of the jobs held by our graduates are gained through contacts made in internships.

We recommend students take CT 399 Portfolio Design (our capstone preparatory course), prior to taking any of our capstone courses (CT 490, 491 Internship  –  CT 401 Senior Seminar).