5 - Overall Insight

Overall, my experience at Michigan prepared me a lot for my internship; however, it did not prepare me in the ways I would have expected it to. Truthfully, my classes have not taught me anything about casting, so the actual Communication Studies curriculum is not what has helped me throughout the summer. What has helped me has been my experience working in groups in my comm classes as well as thinking about things through a comm student’s perspective. In my opinion, a comm student has a broaded ability to problem solve in a creative, unique fashion. I feel that I have been able to take on tasks at the office in a create way and this has given me more vibrant results when I have been asked to do creative work. I do, however, feel that Michigan could prepare us more for our internships by having a broader range of comm classes, because there are many jobs that require skills that are rarely spoken about in Michigan comm classes.

Overall, I was surprised by a number of events I encountered because I had very little knowledge about casting. So almost every new task was a mini surprise! I did not know how the chain of events occurred at all when casting for a project, and it was really cool to see how each company/agency played a role in creating a final project.

A specific example of a surprise was how much responsibility the interns have on casting days. Some days I am the only intern, and when a casting of 100+ people is scheduled, it can be pretty overwhelming. I was surprised how much trust the company had in their interns, but it made me feel a lot more equal to the other employees!

In the end, I definitely think Michigan has helped prepare me for this job with the rigorous course load and preparing I have done in my two years at Michigan, which helps me trust myself when I have a lot of responsibility at work too.