What Is a LINK Internship?
As part of Animas High School’s unique project based learning and hands on experience, Animas High School gives all junior year students a one of a kind internship opportunity to grow their knowledge beyond the classroom. Students get to choose an internship of their choice reflecting their personal career interests. During LINK, students collaborate with their mentors in the workplace daily creating lifelong skills and meaningful exposure to the real world.
For more information visit: Leading Internships For New Knowledge
My Internship At a Glance
I chose to do my internship at StoneAge, an international water blast tool company based in Durango, looking to engineer the power of water. The company was launched when co-founders John Wolgamott and Jerry Zink developed a new self-rotary nozzle from their garage, changing the way heat exchangers were cleaned in the early 1980s. In order for me to explore my career interests further, at StoneAge, I focused on international marketing, an area of business that I have always been interested in.
To contact and find out more on StoneAge visit: StoneAge Tools
LINK Anticipation and Preparation
Before LINK was on anybody’s mind, as far back as December, I thought I had it all figured out. But, my big plans to go intern in Los Angeles with my successful cousin who marketed for a company called The Agency, a business that marketed real estate, for three weeks soon came to an abrupt halt. As I was eager to get my internship up and going I wanted anything I could get my hands on, I didn’t think through very many logistics and as my cousin ended up leaving her job for something else closer to home, my plans fell through. So, I started searching around Durango… I sent out emails to five or so companies in the realm of business and marketing that were in the local area hoping for any type of response. Unfortunately, only two or so emails made their way into my inbox. One was a straightforward decline from a journalism company, so I moved on; and the next email was from a woman named Kelsea. Kelsea did marketing for the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and she sounded eager to get to know me better and wanted to have a phone call, I was excited enough to feel this close to being an adult so I accepted and we set one up and I waited. Then, a struck of bad luck (literally) hit me the day of what was supposed to be our phone call… I was kicked during class at school and dislocated my knee, so I had the luxury of spending my afternoon in the hospital. More than anything that day, I was frustrated because I had brainstormed things I would say during our phone call and I had a list of questions to ask, but I never had a chance to say any of it. So, I had to start back at square one. I tried to reschedule a phone call with Kelsea, but after trying to contact her twice more, I never got a response. Days turned into weeks of silence so I set out for something else. My mom mentioned a familiar name to me, Randy Parker, the marketing director for a water blast tool company by the name of StoneAge. My family had known their family for years so it was an easy setup, and Randy and I talked in person about my internship. Since I knew him, he was easy to talk to and we got everything figured out quickly. By the end of my internship I hoped to have nothing more and a better direction of where I wanted to take my education in terms of college and career choice. One of the reasons I chose the internship that I did was because marketing has been a very successful up and coming area of business and I wanted to improve my “people skills” in what seemed to me to be a fairly interactive business due to the high level of public relations that were involved. Not to mention I had heard a lot of positive reviews about the kind of company StoneAge was and they had hosted many interns in the past with positive outcome. I wanted to be able to help the company and the team I’d be working with in any way possible, even if it was doing classic intern work for three weeks. I wanted to feel valued and welcome even in the slightest ways, while being in a place filled with new people.
Before LINK was on anybody’s mind, as far back as December, I thought I had it all figured out. But, my big plans to go intern in Los Angeles with my successful cousin who marketed for a company called The Agency, a business that marketed real estate, for three weeks soon came to an abrupt halt. As I was eager to get my internship up and going I wanted anything I could get my hands on, I didn’t think through very many logistics and as my cousin ended up leaving her job for something else closer to home, my plans fell through. So, I started searching around Durango… I sent out emails to five or so companies in the realm of business and marketing that were in the local area hoping for any type of response. Unfortunately, only two or so emails made their way into my inbox. One was a straightforward decline from a journalism company, so I moved on; and the next email was from a woman named Kelsea. Kelsea did marketing for the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, and she sounded eager to get to know me better and wanted to have a phone call, I was excited enough to feel this close to being an adult so I accepted and we set one up and I waited. Then, a struck of bad luck (literally) hit me the day of what was supposed to be our phone call… I was kicked during class at school and dislocated my knee, so I had the luxury of spending my afternoon in the hospital. More than anything that day, I was frustrated because I had brainstormed things I would say during our phone call and I had a list of questions to ask, but I never had a chance to say any of it. So, I had to start back at square one. I tried to reschedule a phone call with Kelsea, but after trying to contact her twice more, I never got a response. Days turned into weeks of silence so I set out for something else. My mom mentioned a familiar name to me, Randy Parker, the marketing director for a water blast tool company by the name of StoneAge. My family had known their family for years so it was an easy setup, and Randy and I talked in person about my internship. Since I knew him, he was easy to talk to and we got everything figured out quickly. By the end of my internship I hoped to have nothing more and a better direction of where I wanted to take my education in terms of college and career choice. One of the reasons I chose the internship that I did was because marketing has been a very successful up and coming area of business and I wanted to improve my “people skills” in what seemed to me to be a fairly interactive business due to the high level of public relations that were involved. Not to mention I had heard a lot of positive reviews about the kind of company StoneAge was and they had hosted many interns in the past with positive outcome. I wanted to be able to help the company and the team I’d be working with in any way possible, even if it was doing classic intern work for three weeks. I wanted to feel valued and welcome even in the slightest ways, while being in a place filled with new people.
LINK Project Pictures
Although it is somewhat difficult to see, I structured my project in two main summary boards, showing the premise of my project and what it consisted of. The third board is a brief biography of the StoneAge team and each person that is apart of it. I created a brief synopsis using venngage showing the overview of and results of my experiment. The idea came from the marketing administrative assistant. We started to brainstorm ways to up the trafficking on every social media platform that StoneAge uses to connect with the public. Although StoneAge is an international company, we wanted to be put on the map using content marketing and stimulating interest using quantitative and qualitative demand; basing the project around questions like:
How many monthly visitors?
How many web pages?
Why and how?
What type of style?
And being sure to focus on numbers and details.
How many monthly visitors?
How many web pages?
Why and how?
What type of style?
And being sure to focus on numbers and details.
LINK Reflection
Coming into LINK, more than anything I was eager to show how mature a high schooler can really be. I wanted my mentor(s) to understand that they could rely on me just as they could with others who actually worked at StoneAge. I prided myself on how mature I had gotten over the past year and I wanted my mentor and the rest of the marketing department to feel that I could take on as many tasks as they needed me to without having to babysit me for the entire three weeks. Although I was completely new to marketing and what it involved, I wanted to take in as much as I could while also being fully trusted with the things that they were giving me to do.
During my internship I was lucky enough to explore almost every aspect of digital marketing with the team at StoneAge. I shadowed in on the making of company videos for customer, discovered the process in which annual reports are put together, and study the actions taken to produce a company catalog, and finally observing how international trade shows are put together and carefully planned. I focused specifically on two different jobs while I was there, a social media campaign, and assisting in redoing the StoneAge website from scratch. One of the things I learned there was more of the behind the scenes work that went into a lot of the work done. I used many different sites to help navigate how to manage multiple social media platforms and get important information out to the public. Using sites like Lynda.com, MailChimp, and HubSpot, I quickly was able to learn how to measure demand, keep track of consumer interest, replicate success, focus my targeting, and much more. With the help of my mentors I was able to complete my task quickly and efficiently, and the overall environment was a breeze to work in with little distractions with someone always nearby to go to for help. Through this, I learned that I could take on a lot more responsibility than I thought I could, and even with many long hours of somewhat mind numbing tasks at once; I was always proud of what I had accomplished at the end of the day.
One of the biggest challenges I faced during LINK was helping work on the website. During the first week of my internship I was in charge of replacing files for documents and manuals for different tools on the website. This meant, using a program titled FileZilla and replacing over 100 different files. Although the task itself was not necessarily difficult, the biggest problem I ran into was replacing the files one by one while the website was live, so any mistake I made would transfer onto the site automatically. So, after spending two hours checking and rechecking, and searching for files that didn’t work, I discovered that I had mixed up more than one file and because of that, customers were unable to locate specific docs and manuals for tools through the website. One of my mentors came over and addressed the problem with me and at the time I was still fairly new to the internship so as imagined I over analyzed the situation and became nervous. My mentor reminded me that apart of this internship is learning from mistakes and taking things day by day; so I was able to go forward feeling confident and understand that coming into marketing or any internship without any background knowledge would take some time to get used to.
Overall, I had a very positive experience at my internship, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. StoneAge is a company that no doubt prides itself in its work and they have been hosts to many interns over the past several years. I felt that I was able to help each of my mentors by being a beneficial assistant to them by helping them with their projects, creating social growth through my own project, and being available to help day in and day out, even with the little things. Everyone apart of the marketing team was motivated and eager to help me learn, they all did their part in taking me under their wing, and I felt comfortable around each of them; and from this we all were able to create an efficient and fun working environment. For that I am always thankful.
Participating in this internship helped me gage the direction I want my future to go. I proved to myself that I am just as interested in marketing after my internship as I was going in, and I strongly believe that I will take my college studies in that direction in the years to come. I will most likely consider doing a second internship with the company in the summer or during my senior year in order to expand what I already know about marketing. I am also considering taking a gap year and taking my prerequisite classes at Fort Lewis College in order to ease myself into the college environment and better prepare myself for more challenging classes later on at a separate college.
Coming into LINK, more than anything I was eager to show how mature a high schooler can really be. I wanted my mentor(s) to understand that they could rely on me just as they could with others who actually worked at StoneAge. I prided myself on how mature I had gotten over the past year and I wanted my mentor and the rest of the marketing department to feel that I could take on as many tasks as they needed me to without having to babysit me for the entire three weeks. Although I was completely new to marketing and what it involved, I wanted to take in as much as I could while also being fully trusted with the things that they were giving me to do.
During my internship I was lucky enough to explore almost every aspect of digital marketing with the team at StoneAge. I shadowed in on the making of company videos for customer, discovered the process in which annual reports are put together, and study the actions taken to produce a company catalog, and finally observing how international trade shows are put together and carefully planned. I focused specifically on two different jobs while I was there, a social media campaign, and assisting in redoing the StoneAge website from scratch. One of the things I learned there was more of the behind the scenes work that went into a lot of the work done. I used many different sites to help navigate how to manage multiple social media platforms and get important information out to the public. Using sites like Lynda.com, MailChimp, and HubSpot, I quickly was able to learn how to measure demand, keep track of consumer interest, replicate success, focus my targeting, and much more. With the help of my mentors I was able to complete my task quickly and efficiently, and the overall environment was a breeze to work in with little distractions with someone always nearby to go to for help. Through this, I learned that I could take on a lot more responsibility than I thought I could, and even with many long hours of somewhat mind numbing tasks at once; I was always proud of what I had accomplished at the end of the day.
One of the biggest challenges I faced during LINK was helping work on the website. During the first week of my internship I was in charge of replacing files for documents and manuals for different tools on the website. This meant, using a program titled FileZilla and replacing over 100 different files. Although the task itself was not necessarily difficult, the biggest problem I ran into was replacing the files one by one while the website was live, so any mistake I made would transfer onto the site automatically. So, after spending two hours checking and rechecking, and searching for files that didn’t work, I discovered that I had mixed up more than one file and because of that, customers were unable to locate specific docs and manuals for tools through the website. One of my mentors came over and addressed the problem with me and at the time I was still fairly new to the internship so as imagined I over analyzed the situation and became nervous. My mentor reminded me that apart of this internship is learning from mistakes and taking things day by day; so I was able to go forward feeling confident and understand that coming into marketing or any internship without any background knowledge would take some time to get used to.
Overall, I had a very positive experience at my internship, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. StoneAge is a company that no doubt prides itself in its work and they have been hosts to many interns over the past several years. I felt that I was able to help each of my mentors by being a beneficial assistant to them by helping them with their projects, creating social growth through my own project, and being available to help day in and day out, even with the little things. Everyone apart of the marketing team was motivated and eager to help me learn, they all did their part in taking me under their wing, and I felt comfortable around each of them; and from this we all were able to create an efficient and fun working environment. For that I am always thankful.
Participating in this internship helped me gage the direction I want my future to go. I proved to myself that I am just as interested in marketing after my internship as I was going in, and I strongly believe that I will take my college studies in that direction in the years to come. I will most likely consider doing a second internship with the company in the summer or during my senior year in order to expand what I already know about marketing. I am also considering taking a gap year and taking my prerequisite classes at Fort Lewis College in order to ease myself into the college environment and better prepare myself for more challenging classes later on at a separate college.