Internship Review

One of the main goals I had going into my internship was to gain more experience in a professional environment within my field. I have been working the same retail job in my hometown since I was 16 years old. When I came to college, I picked up two more part-time jobs on campus at IUP. Here, I worked in the textbook department at the Co-op Store and as a staff member at the HUB Fitness Center. As much as these jobs have taught me throughout the years, I found myself seeking to get more out of the work I was doing. At IUP, I found a passion for audio production and radio broadcasting, and it made me realize that that was the work I needed to be doing.

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I am confident in the fact that I found exactly what I was looking for at The Washington Center. Once admitted into The Washington Center, I accepted a position with The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) as an audio/video intern. This was a unique experience, as The Washington Center acted as a residential academic facility, where I took a career development course and a media management course, whereas ADST was the site that I worked for full-time throughout the summer. I spent most of the summer editing oral histories and podcast episodes for ADST’s various podcast series. Although I was fully remote, I was still able to mimic a professional work environment within my residential facility by attending frequent staff meetings, networking events, and one-on-one meetings with my supervisor, James Fowler. I was able to assist James with various projects throughout the summer, and he had a big influence on my positive internship experience.

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Another goal I expected to achieve this summer was expanding on my audio production knowledge. Though I have gained a lot of experience in my audio production courses at IUP, we use only one audio editing software called Cubase Elements 11. This is a fantastic software that provides all the tools you need for audio production. On the other hand, it is one of many audio editing software on the market today, so it is important to work with and navigate your way around different software throughout the course of your learning. Coming into my internship, I did not know what software to expect to work with.

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My first meeting with James consisted of a couple hours of downloading various files, drives, and software to my computer. This was the same meeting I learned that James was going to have me use Audacity for the summer. Learning how to use Audacity was one of the biggest challenges I faced during my internship, as I was so used to the format of Cubase. I spent hours watching informational how-to videos so I could learn how to navigate through using Audacity. After about a week, I felt confident enough to begin my first project, which was listening to and applying normalization and filters to an episode of Partners in Diplomacy, one of ADST’s podcast series. Little did I know that this was the project that was going to get me accustomed to using Audacity. After completing this project, I felt very confident in my abilities to effectively use Audacity for audio production. Knowing that I came out of this internship with efficiency in using a new software felt like a huge accomplishment.

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With the help of The Washington Center, ADST, and my supervisor, James, I was able to accomplish both goals of gaining more experience in a professional environment and expanding on my audio production skills. Overall, I am very grateful for this unique internship opportunity. It was a great experience that I will carry with me throughout the rest of my college and professional careers.