The semester has ended, and after several months as a CUPID Associate at Elon, it is time for me to reflect on what I’ve gained, what PWR skills I’ve put into practice, and how I believe that this experience has furthered my PWR identity and skill set.
As a CUPID Associate, I held open hours during which students could (and sometimes did!) come and get feedback on PWR and professional projects, such as resumes. I also worked with the other associates, Dannie and Alexa, to come up with, plan for, and lead workshops, with this semester’s being on visual branding, Microsoft Word, and Digication CSS.
One of the main tasks that I did this semester was working to get the CUPID blog to be more people-centered, as one of our overall goals was to draw people to the CUPID blog to increase knowledge about the role of CUPID Associates. I believed that we could achieve this by including more people in the blog, so I interviewed several incredible PWR students including Sarah Paterson, Kim Lilienthal, and Rachel Fishman. Working with these students gave me practice with interviewing, taught me to condense information, and gave me a better understanding of the truly wide-ranging work accomplished by students of PWR.
As I mentioned in my first blog post for CUPID, as a PWR student I have worked and continue to work to build an understanding of design, branding, and online identity. I was able to employ these skills as one of the associates leading the Visual Branding lunch, where Alexa and I worked to help students create personal logos and banners for their resumes and portfolios to make themselves more marketable and memorable.
This was really enjoyable for me because, after giving a general presentation on visual branding, I worked one-on-one with a student to teach her the basics of InDesign and guide her creation of a banner for her resume header. This allowed me to practice my collaborative and visual rhetoric skills in tandem in a practical and productive manner.
Taking CUPID taught me to work independently, to know when to ask questions, and to come up with a concrete plan early on and stick with it. What really made this semester’s CUPID Associates so successful was that we spent our first 2-hour meeting planning with RPR, our advisor, and coming up with what we wanted to do and when. By the time we met the following week, we had a running schedule and were able to begin working on specifics. We used technology to our advantage, using Google Docs and a calendar to keep each other updated and in the loop and to keep track of our goals and tasks. I made a transition document to assist future CUPID Associates with this planning process, and the document includes what we did well and what I think can be done better next year. Each set of associates will continue working to make the program stronger!
Overall, I am pleased and proud of what I accomplished with my fellow CUPID Associates, and I look forward to seeing what the associates do next semester to further the success of CUPID.
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