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A Couple of Days Off

(7/7/19)

This week was very short for me when it came to work, because I only had to go into the Discovery office on Monday and Tuesday. The company gave everyone off on Friday for the Independence Day holiday, and my supervisor told me to take off on Wednesday as well so that I could spend an extra day at home with my family. Like I said in a previous blog post, I am really appreciative of the fact that Discovery puts so much emphasis on maintaining a healthy work/life balance, and that the employees are encouraged to both put in hard work and also make time for their families and personal lives. I appreciated that mindset this week especially, because my family always makes a huge deal out of the 4th of July. Each year, we get together with everyone on my mom’s side of the family at my cousins’ house in upstate New York, and we get to spend a few days together full of fun and quality time. This year was definitely no different!

Monday and Tuesday at work had several meetings and loose ends for me to tie up before diving into the long weekend. Everyone was in such a great mood as the vacation neared, but i don’t think anyone was in a better mood than me! I took the train back to West Chester on Tuesday night, and I was so happy to have some time to spend with my family back home before embarking on yet another journey to pretty middle-of-nowhere New York. We started the trip early on Thursday morning, heading to my grandparents’ house first where we did a hike, sat out and picnicked by a lake, walked around Cooperstown, and then went out for a delicious BBQ dinner. That night we set off for my cousins’ house, and the days that ensued were full of tennis, home-cooked meals, cake decorating, sitting on the porch, going to the farmer’s market, visiting breweries, playing poker, and togetherness. I couldn’t have had a better long weekend, and it just makes me look forward to doing it all again next year!

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Updates + Pride Weekend!

(6/30/19)

This week was busy busy busy – but what else is new? The days seemed to fly by as the meetings came one after another and more work was continuously added to my plate. I am currently working on a main project throughout the summer, which is a competitive analysis of the onboarding/profile creation processes for other TV Everywhere apps. Discovery owns the apps for TLC, HGTV, ID, Food Network, SCI, Discovery, Animal Planet, and TRVL Channel, and my department is in charge of retaining users on these apps and getting them to stream as much content as possible. We are constantly looking at ways to improve the user experience and encourage them to come back for more and tell their friends. Some of the ways to potentially improve the user experience is to change the process when it comes to making a profile on the app, opting in for push notifications, or giving opportunities to provide feedback about the app. My role in this competitive analysis project is to complete a comprehensive overview of the competitor’s apps by downloading them as if I were a new, casual user and documenting the onboarding process. I will present my findings to the team towards the end of my internship, and hopefully I will be able to give some concrete suggestions regarding what I believe are the most successful and unsuccessful ways of retaining a user.

So that is what I have been working on for the majority of this week! On Friday, we had a team onsite/offsite meeting that involved being in a conference room with my team for the majority of the day and discussing our goals and strategies for the upcoming weeks. I really appreciate that my supervisor goes out of her way to make sure that I am learning as much as possible and really making the most of this experience. She often asks me what I want to focus on or improve upon so that she can give me projects that will help me develop news skills that will make me more of an asset to companies in the future.

This week was also Pride week in NYC, which was so exciting! We had a pride event at the Discovery office, and on Sunday my friends and I attended the NYC World Pride parade! We live in Greenwich Village this summer, less than a 10 minute walk away from the Stonewall Inn where the Pride movement first began, so it was an especially thrilling area to be in. The parade was beautiful and the atmosphere was electric. It was an amazing week!

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A Lot of Work, A Lot of Free Food

(6/23/19)

Things are continuing to move at a quick pace here at Discovery, and I am getting more tasks and projects given to me on almost a daily basis. I am really getting the hang of the pace of this position, and the work that I am putting in makes me feel like a real asset to a team full of talented and driven people. Though I am still contemplating about what kind of job it is that I want to pursue after I graduate, I know for sure after three internship experiences that no matter what, I need to surround myself with inspiring people. If the people I work with are so passionate about what they do, then that passion rubs off on me and I am more motivated myself to do a great job and serve the people around me.

Though the projects this week were free-flowing and abundant, there were also many opportunities to relax, get to know other people around the office, and truly enjoy my work days! I also believe that looking forward (or at least not dreading!) coming into the office every day is something that can be found and cultivated in an environment that is both productive and conducive to periods of de-stressing and relaxation. On Monday, there was a breakfast for the entire digital team on the 11th floor of my building, so a couple of the other interns in the department and I spent the time getting to know one another and eating delicious food. On Tuesday, the smaller digital marketing team went out to lunch (a lot of this is food-based) which basically turned into a two hour pow-wow addressing everything from the TV shows we were all currently watching to how we can improve the functions and productivity of the team. A work lunch that combines work and play seems to be very beneficial – and I got some delicious free food out of it! We also had a surprise baby shower this week for two members of the team who are pregnant and due in the summer, which made me feel good knowing that the company heavily promotes a strong work/life balance. I know that someday I want to have a family, but I don’t want to compromise my career either. Finding a company that supports working mothers is something that I really want to be in search of in my future (though maybe not the near future!)

Over the weekend I had a visitor from home come to NYC and we had the best time. We went to a comedy show on Friday, went for a picnic on Governors Island and a boat cruise on Saturday, and rode bikes around Central Park on Sunday. It was a lovely weekend, and I am always in awe of how much NYC has to offer!

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Week 2 at Discovery

(6/18/19)

I’ve learned this past week more than ever that if you are given a ton of projects to do at work, the day will pass by quickly and then the week will zoom by even quicker. Though my internship with Disney was a ton of fun, there were often days that I didn’t have many pressing things to work on and the day would crawl by. But here at Discovery, I am given a bunch to do every single time I come into the office. Our digital marketing team is very small, with two women on it so pregnant that they’re about to pop, so I feel as though I’m taking the lead on a lot of tasks that wouldn’t typically be given to an intern. This makes me feel like a valued member of the team, and I love leaving the office every day knowing that I benefited the department and the company. The worst feeling would be leaving work for the day and feeling like nothing important was accomplished in the 9 hours there. Luckily, I never have that feeling at Discovery.

It’s also been very beneficial for me to work in a department that I haven’t interacted closely with in the past. I’m trying to utilize my internship experiences to discover what jobs I want to pursue after graduation in a relatively low-risk scenario; sure, if I don’t like the work that I’m doing I will have to endure it for 10 weeks or so. But at least I haven’t committed to it for a couple of years. With that being said, I am using my time here to really assess whether digital marketing is something that I want to seek a full-time job in. So far, I have really appreciated the ability to solidly contribute to the team. However, I sometimes feel like my creative muscle isn’t being flexed enough; I have always been a creative person and an idea-machine, and I don’t know if my full potential is really being reached if I am spending more time with data and numbers rather than more arbitrary but unique expressions of creativity through writing and ideas. I think it is become clearer to me that after graduation, I will pursue a career related to creative marketing. This is a way to combine my love for generating new and fresh ideas while also tapping into the forever-lucrative marketing side of the entertainment industry. I have always wanted to work in entertainment business, and I really believe this is the sector that I will thrive in.

My two weeks so far in NYC have brought me these revelations, as well as a lot of new friends and fun times. I really like my roommates and we have spent a lot of time together the past two weekends discovering new restaurants and ways to enjoy our time in such an exciting city. There is so much to do here and so much to discover, and I doubt I will be able to do even half of the things on my list before my 10 weeks here are up. Hopefully I’ll be able to secure a full time job in or near the city next year so that I can continue crossing items off that list!