The Big Event!

I can’t believe it’s already the middle of November—the semester has just been flying by! The Professional Forum has come and gone, and all in all it’s left me feeling pretty excited. As I mentioned before, we interns at the Career Development Office have been working all semester to get the word out about this liberal-arts centered cluster of professional events. I’ve designed flyers, invitations, table tents, and email campaigns, among other things, with the collaboration of the marketing and public relations interns. Still, after all the preparation, I was feeling a little nervous about the event turnout. Were our emails deleted as spam? Did students just take the invitations we handed them and deposit them in the nearest trash can? Luckily, my worries were proven wrong! The pre-forum presentations on resume writing, dressing for success, and making the most of a career fair were delivered to full classrooms of interested students who each got a golden ticket—admission to our professional networking event the night of the Forum—for attending.

The morning of the Forum started out with company presentations and panel discussions, although these events didn’t end up with quite as much attendance. In the future, I think we could probably promote them a little more; the career fair portion of the day had been given more attention. Other students who told me that they planned to attend the fair generally saw it as the main event of “The Professional Forum,” saying that the other events were more like extra little tidbits. And attend they did! The rooms we booked in the union saw plenty of traffic throughout the day. Polished and professional-looking students were lining up—LINING UP!—to talk to company and grad school recruiters! Some of the recruiters I talked to commented on how pleased they were with the turnout, and even complimented us on our marketing success.

The invitation-only formal networking event was another great opportunity to mingle with the recruiters, although several of them didn’t attend due to illness and other circumstances. I was a little disheartened that the people I most wanted to talk to missed the event, but hey: they missed out on some delicious hors d’oeuvres. And the tie logo I designed was on a cake!




Imagine eating this. Delicious.


You can probably tell from all the exclamation points that I’m pretty well pleased with how things turned out… I believe the Forum’s maiden voyage has been a success, and has definitely laid a strong foundation for the years ahead to build on.

Although the big event is over, we’re far from done with our internship experiences! I’m currently designing a seven-foot-tall banner for the Career Development Office, and will soon begin work on the logo for the spring’s Liberal Arts Career Week and getting ready to hand things over to the new set of interns next semester. It’s been a busy couple of months, but I’ve accomplished and experienced so much… I’m really getting a feel for what designing in a professional setting is like.