- What are you hoping to learn from this experience?
From this experience, I hope to learn more marketing skills and techniques, including things I’ve never tried before; Lydia was telling me that she will begin to start teaching me about analytics and how to use excel spreadsheets as it’s important to see what types of posts perform best on which platforms and to review our age demographics. Furthermore, I hope to learn the basic skills you will need at a job; navigating the work relationships with your co-workers and your boss, work-life balance, community building and being punctual. I also hope to get more of an insight into marketing and digital communications as this is something that I would love to pursue in the future. Lydia is also a great resource for this as she has worked in marketing, social media and within the fashion industry. Hearing about her past experiences and getting advice from her has been an incredible source of knowledge and inspiration.
- How do you see this work as complementing your academic, extracurricular, or career interests?
This work compliments my academic interests as I am now on the Studio Art track and have fully leaned towards the more creative side of courses. Lydia assigns me many creative tasks such as creating content for TikTok, making digital designs for events and different occasions and I’m always being challenged to think creatively when brainstorming ideas. Recently, we had to come up with a way to portray our annual fundraising event in a more interesting way which was certainly difficult but we created a video, taking inspiration from TikTok videos that have been going viral recently. As for my extracurricular interests, this work fits in perfectly with what I do outside of school; I work as the social media manager for the Thai Wesleyan Student Association and I have full creative control on what we post so I get to take pictures of events, edit and do graphic design. Furthemore, I take part in clubs like Fray Magazine where I get to direct or be behind the scenes for photoshoots, work on the layout team or work on graphic design. All of this together ties into my career interest of potentially, marketing, graphic design and communications!
- What is the best way to give you feedback and support you to ensure your success in this role?
Personally, I think the best way to gain feedback and support within this role is to continue having more open conversations that allow two-way communication to flow. I really enjoyed my first conversation with Lydia and she gave me insight into what I would be working on in the future and I told her what I would love to continue doing or if I wanted to try something different. This form of communication really allows me to gain feedback on my progress and assess my skills whilst allowing me to ask any questions that I may have.
- Of the six Ideals into Practice competencies, which do you feel play to your strengths or past experiences, and which do you feel need more development?
Of the six Ideals into Practice competencies, I feel as though collaboration and creativity really plays to my strengths and past experiences; I have been in many positions throughout highschool and now college, where I have collaborated with different teams and have been challenged to think creatively. I think that I have been developing my digital literacy skills and communication through this job because I have been able to test out new digital platforms to design, upload content and reach out to a wider audience. However, I feel like I need to develop my inquiry and analysis skills as well as my socio-cultural awareness; I can do develop my inquiry and analysis skills through performing analytics for the Office of Advancement social media applications and I will be able to develop my socio-cultural awareness by portraying a wide range of stories from Alumni of all different backgrounds.
