Outside Activity - Project Management Intern

                       Back in November of 2010 of my EBMS program, I began an internship with Full Sail University’s creative department, Platinum Creative.  This internship was to be a Project Management Intern for Full Sail’s new sports sponsorship with the NBA’s Orlando Magic.  My job was to become the point of contact for the Orlando Magic and to manage a student production team, acting almost like an ad agency to produce content that co-brands the Magic and Full Sail.  Using my strength of people skills, I have managed more than twenty students in this internship, have created more than a dozen promotional videos, and exceeded everyone’s expectations for this position including my own.  The fact that I was an unpaid intern managing other unpaid students was very difficult for me at the beginning.  However, my positive attitude and vision for the payoff at the end of the road kept me going strong, often getting only two hours of sleep per night for weeks in a row trying to balance school and my internship responsibilities.  My weaknesses of influence, problem solving, and creating positive change, were all put to the test on a daily basis.

My personal confidence in my ability to lead others grew tremendously over this six-month period.  In fact, I grew so much as a person in this internship that it was not ended because the six months were up.  My internship ended with Platinum Creative creating a full time position out of thin air just to keep me around based on all the work I had accomplished while unpaid.  I am now the Logistics Coordinator for Full Sail’s sports initiative at Platinum Creative and look forward to restructuring my entire process of managing students now that I have been through the fire and know what works and what doesn’t.  I am extremely proud of myself for what I have been able to accomplish and the name I have created for myself amongst the Full Sail staff.  I feel that I am going to be able to grow at a rapid pace over the next few years in my position as Logistics Coordinator, fine tuning my skills along this never ending journey to becoming a great leader.