FT Web Design Intern at Total Web Company
During the beginning of the Fall 2015 semester at Temple University, I was an accounting major with the hopes of graduating within a couple of semesters. For one of my electives I decided to take MIS2101 and quickly grew to enjoy the topics we were discussing. By the second week of the semester, I made the decision to change my major from accounting to MIS. This decision was made because I already have an Associate’s Degree from BCCC in Business Administration, and my goals were to learn more about the IT industry. MIS is a perfect blend of the two areas of study and would allow me to learn relevant information for my internship. At this time, I had been interning at Total Web Company for a few weeks and decided that it would ultimately be better for me to drop my Intermediate Accounting course, which would allow me to have more time to dedicate to my internship.
Project Manager, Justin Wallace, was willing to bring me on as a full-time intern for the remainder of the semester due to the fact that I only had 2 classes (one of which was at night, the other was online). As stated in the offer letter, this would only be a temporary change to the existing offer and I would report back to part-time at the start of the Spring 2016 semester due to my heavier class load. During this time, I was largely responsible for the Search Engine Optimization department of the company, but also designed website templates for later use. I expanded upon my knowledge of the Adobe Creative Cloud (mainly Muse, Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign), as well as started working with WordPress. Working with WordPress powered websites allowed me to quickly understand the fundamentals of PHP, as well as gain more skill using CSS and HTML. I also shadowed the owner/salesman on a couple of sales calls in order to get a feel for how the industry works outside of the code.
Working full-time for approximately 10 weeks really allowed me hone my craft. I became more familiar with my duties as an SEO Intern, in addition to learning some of the practices of a small business. I also became more acclimated with the Adobe Creative Cloud during this time. There are things in my future at Total Web Company that I hope to learn, but so far my experiences have been nothing short of fulfilling and challenging. Working with a team of young designers and programmers is giving me all of the confidence and will-power that I need to survive in this industry and I hope to never stop growing as a web designer with Total Web Company.