Guest Blogger Emilia Azar ’15
The millennial generation approaches life with a “me me me” attitude. My grades, my accomplishments, my strengths, and my weaknesses. Working as an intern this semester helped me to gain insight into my own “me” bubble and learn how important collaboration and communication is for future success.
I was prepared for an academic challenge, but little did I know how much I would learn about the way I work. I interned with Family Abuse Services of Alamance County, a wonderfully up-beat, passionate community of people who provide support and resources for survivors of domestic violence. My first expectation was to work on an updated version of their newsletter. Instead my supervisor asked me at our first meeting to focus primarily on re-structuring the FAS website. I was slightly taken aback – me, re-create a website? – but I took on the project ready to challenge myself.
The Process
As the sole intern working on this website, I would need to implement a flexible working plan and go through a multi-level writing process that would start with pre-writing and lead up to a product.
The first step was researching the organization itself. To understand FAS, I studied the current website and asked my supervisor as many questions as possible. Later on, I would realize how vital it is to understand the organization, its client’s audiences, the purpose of my work, and the genre in which I would be working. I explored other websites of domestic abuse support organizations to help answer some of my personal questions: “How can a safety plan help someone?” “How do you help a friend who will not admit to being abused?”
I then drafted an outline of the website’s structure. And drafted again, and again, and again. Through my writing center workshop class I learned to think of all drafts as “discovery drafts,” and I was now implementing this idea into my own work. I initially used a sticky-note draft so that I could re-group information during meetings with either my FAS supervisor, or my faculty advisor Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark. This pre-writing process helped me to decide on a rhetorical approach to the website: audience specific categories.
After working through drafts of the structure, I began re-wording existing content. My supervisor had sent me several pages of information she wanted to keep in the website, but my job was to re-write that information to address the specific audience. I sent Dr. Pope-Ruark my drafted content for feedback, and adjusted even more.
Finally, I started putting content on the WordPress website. I learned about pages, posts, and other aspects of WordPress that I had never worked with before. Tinkering around with the material was tough because I wanted it to all fit, but I continued to change the structure and the content as I added on.
Throughout my process, I learned how to shape useful material I was given, and recycle it. I have learned how hard it is to break down what is there, but in a client-centered project you work with what you are given. Initially, my supervisor asked me to function as an editor by bringing written content together and plugging it into a new website. I quickly learned that sticking with this role would have helped me to create a finished product that FAS would love or want to change. Sometimes you should stick to what is practical, and make the best of the time and resources you have in the moment.
In the end, I created a WordPress website that could be edited. I also worked on creating new content for FAS that they could use, and re-wording their old content. My biggest challenge and, therefore, best lesson was branching out to my support system and allowing myself to share the rough parts of my project. As an intern, I wanted to learn as much as possible, but I also wanted to create a project that would represent something other than myself. Perfection is unattainable, but the wonderful part about writing is that it can always be improved. Communication is an essential tool for success in the world, and it will help you think outside of your own perspective.
Advice for future interns – and the future in general
• Keep up communication with your supervisors and advisors throughout the entire process.
• Understand the organization, its purpose, and its goals.
• Research anything and everything.
• Break the big stuff up into manageable chunks.
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