Kevin Thursby: The Rewarding Summer
This summer I had the amazing opportunity to intern back in my hometown of Chicago at MAT Holdings, Inc. as a marketing intern. Going into the summer, I was honestly very scared of the internship because of a few reasons. The first being, I was afraid that I would not be able to know how to do anything and that I would mess something up. Next, I was afraid that I would not like what I was doing for work. This past summer was a fantastic learning experience for me and it proved a lot of my preconceived notions incorrect.
One of the things I love most about the Leavey School of Business is the professor's experience in the business world. Most of, if not all, of my professors, have worked for years in well-respected industries and companies. For this reason, my knowledge of modern business languages was much higher than I thought. To be honest, I did not give myself enough credit for how much I was prepared for my internship because of LSB.
As I mentioned before, I was very worried that I would hate my job. On the contrary, I found that my internship was very rewarding and it surprised me. Although there were aspects that I did not like, I took these situations as an opportunity to learn and discover that there are just some things that I am not interested in. Further, my internship gave me the opportunity to work on much bigger projects than I expected. I was able to edit and manage our major partner's e-commerce websites such as Home Depot and Wayfair. Some of the other projects I was able to work on were beginning a new Digital Asset Management system for the entire
marketing department, tracking/answering customer reviews, and giving individual presentations on potential changes to the marketing department's business plan.
This summer allowed me to gain incredible experience and become much more advanced in the necessary skills for a marketing career. One of the biggest takeaways from my first internship was that I was not expected to love everything that I was assigned to do, however, I made sure that I would learn from everything. This, in effect, allowed me to discover what I liked and what I did not like. I was very pleased with my experiences and thankful that I had the background from LSB in order to succeed this summer!