I am excited to share my first ever Intern Notebook Blog post for DSG! I’d like to start off by introducing myself. My name is Gabby Milacki and I am a senior at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. I am studying Communications with a minor in Media and Culture and just recently started my marketing internship with DSG on January 16th.
Expectation vs reality
I bet many of us are familiar with the internet memes, expectation vs. reality, or the old saying, ‘sometimes what you see isn’t what you get’. What we “expect” sometimes outweighs the true reality. However, this is not always the case- and I speak from personal experience. I want to break down for you my expectations of my internship experience at DSG vs the reality of my internship at DSG so far- and how it has been better than expected.
Expectations
Although it has only been a little over two weeks since I started my internship, it has already been much different than I originally thought, (in a good way of course). You always see on television the ‘intern cliche’ of grabbing your boss a cup of coffee or filing papers alphabetically for hours on end. Although I wasn’t hoping for that, through the power of social media and how I’ve seen internships portrayed, that is what I expected. I had this image of answering the phone at a desk and telling the person on the other line, “I will relay that message to my boss and get back to you!” Nothing too hands on and basically just dipping a toe into agency life.
Reality
Now onto the reality of my experience. I’d like to start at the beginning, getting ready for my first interview for an internship position at DSG. I did my research on the company, the clients, and the work done there- but nothing could calm my nerves. I was as prepared as I could be, but regardless, there were still a multitude of thoughts and worries going through my head.
I’ve never been an intern, nor have I ever worked for a digital marketing company before. Surely this was the field I had spent the last 4 years of college studying , but my experience so far came only from the classroom and textbooks! Rather than going down that rabbit hole and confessing every last thought that went through my head, let’s just say it was time to have a reality check and hit the pause button.
Soon enough, the time had come…. It was showtime. During my first interview, Paige communicated that in this internship, I would be able to learn and experience the marketing world firsthand. I was excited to hear that, but at the same time, wondered – what exactly does that mean? As I mentioned, this is my first internship and even after only 2 weeks it’s clear that this experience is unlike any I have had before, and it is still just the beginning. With that in mind, let me give you some examples of what a typical day looks like.
So, just in case you were wondering, in my first two weeks, no one has asked me to get them coffee, organize a file or answer the phone! In fact, it feels more like I’ve been placed right in the middle of the action.
I’ve had the opportunity to participate on client status calls, as well as video meetings with agency vendors across the country. I have also been a part of strategic media planning sessions and completed a cycle of training on numerous platforms of the DSG technology stack! I have already been assigned to DSG’s agency marketing team and have sat in on industry webinars discussing how to find new, exciting ways to improve the content I produce, and much more.
One surprising thing that makes this opportunity particularly gratifying is the fact that agency management allows me to work tasks independently and is genuinely interested in hearing my ideas and feedback.
As I enter my last semester of my senior year of college, I am confident that I’ve learned a great deal in the classroom… but truth be told, nothing compares to actually participating in the day to day activities of agency life.
I am excited to see how my work inside the classroom complements my hands-on experience at DSG and where this internship leads me . Looking forward to my second entry, and an update to all the exciting projects I have become a part of! Stay tuned!