During my time at BGSU, I was able to develope my personal attributes and apply my academic studies to the real world. Personally, I became a more outgoing person and willing to work with large groups of people. Prior to this internship, I was hesitant to speak up and talk with strangers. Working at SOAR taught me to open up and be comfortable with my surroundings. Everyone is nervous the first time they speak in front of strangers, but addressing them with professionalism and confidance leads to a more relaxing and interesting conversation in the end for both parties. Additionally, working this internsthip helped me become more efficient working under pressure. Theby would set deadlines for us to hit to accomplish our assigned tasks by. This helped me to type faster, to search for key words or phrases when looking something up, and to organize myself to stay focused and not pay attention to the distractions surrounding us (Renovations to the Football Stadium). Academically, I was able to apply what I learned in CIS 111 by using Excel and Word efficiently in the workplace. This included creating charts, importing data, and organizing information so it was in alphabetical order. Another academic topic I applied in the workforce is my knowledge on Title IX and Collective Barganing Agreements. There were times throughout the semester when Theby asked us to give our input on specific topics ongoing in sports and what the university could do differently to address the problem without violating any Federal laws in the process. Learning about these topics in school helped me to hold a conversation with Theby and to teach the other interns about how these laws affect the way we work in sports. It was beneficial to me to have this knowledge prior to this internship as it gave me a competitive advantage over my co-workers.
Throughout this internship, the communication with my supervisor was excellent and extremely helpful. David always had a list of activities prepared and ready for me to work on. David's office was right next door to mine and his door was almost always open for me to come in and ask questions on how to improve my work. Eventhough David was out of the office for most of the month of June, he still stayed in contact with us via email or text to ensure that we were keeping up on SOAR, our marketing plans, and side-jobs around the office. I felt that having a boss as personable as David was is key to the success of the interns who work for him. He is very understanding of prior commitments and was willing to work around my schedule to accomodate these requests. I enjoyed working for David and would be more than willing to work for him again in the future. Partaking in this internship has helped me to realize that I really enjoy working in sports. I have always aspired to one day own or manage my own sports team, and I will work hard on my way through the sporting industry to try and acheive this goal. For a starting career, I have learned that I do not wsh to work in ticketing as I need to spend time outside the office to remain involved and focused on my assigned tasks. I also believe that this internship has turned my focus to wanting to start out as an Assistant Director of Marketing and Promotions, or as an Assistant Athletic Director at a small school/university. I believe this path would be best for me so that I could learn from an experinced director on how to handle adverse situations and to better address the health and financial stability of a schools sporting budget. The starting pay for these jobs may not be the greatest, but with hard work and dedication, promotions to higher paying jobs will come. This internship taught me that success will come with patience, all you need is for the right opportunity to open up to one day find your dream job. If another student was considering taking a position inside the Bowling Green Athletics Department, I would tell them to be preparred for some long hours at the office during the school year. Summer is by far the easiest time of the year as there are no sports in session. You are able to relax a bit more then usual and you will spend the majority of your time working on preparing for the upcoming sports season. Hours throughout the summer run on 30-40 hour work weeks and are vastly centered around meetings and improving promotional activities from the previous sports season. The biggestt project that you will take on is fulffilling shipping requests and ensuring that the team marketing plans have been updated and finalized. Once school is back in session, Assistant Directors and Directors of Sports Marketing are expected to work every home athletic event. This mean that you could work anywhere from 40-80 hours a week depending on the number of athletic events scheduled. Additionally, BGSU pays it staff by a salary so there is no overtime payment gained from working these long hours every week. If you have a love for sports, the opportunity for advancement and reward is there for you to succeed in. Patience is key and you will have days with nothing to do. Not everything comes easy in this job and you must work hard to create the best marketing and promotion plan you can to help the university meet its season attendance goals.. Rememer to ask tons questions and listen to feedback as this is how you can learn from your failed promotions too create a more successful plan in the future.
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Today was my last day at the office. It was a bittersweet day to say the least. I began the day by meeting with the Women's Soccer Coaching Staff to review the Marketing Plan with them. We discussed in detail the new promotions we would be promoting at their events and how we planned to increase their attendance for this year. Following this meeting, Chad, David, and I all met to make the necessary revisions to the Women's Soccer Marketing Plans and addressed the budget constraints we thought we may run into (Bubble Soccer was eliminated as it was too costly for only 5-10 minutes of a display). We then published the marketing plan for use for the season. Chad left for his orientation, while I remained in the office to cleanup my area and gather all my belongings. I said goodbye to Theby and the rest of the summer interns, the BGSU Marketing staff, and all my new friends I made while a BGSU. I will be forever thankful for my time spent at BGSU for helping me grow as a student, a leader, and a person. Thank you to the entire BGSU Marketing Department for you willingness to help me during my three month internship.
Today was a relatively slow day at the office, so David let me work on finalizing my website. We edited my resume and reviewed the changes I had made prior to meeting with him. He added in that I have a lot of useful information, I just need to prioritize them and make note of my accomplishments. After lunch, Chad and I continued passing out football flyers to local businesses and coordinated with Kellan as to what businesses took flyers from him as well. We called it a day as Theby and Chad had an organizational meeting to attend and there was no work left to be done.
The vast majority of the day today was spent cleaning out the storage closet to allow Falcon Sports Properties to move their equipment to another location. We through away old sponsor banners and broken sports gear to accommodate state fire marshal standards. Chad and I then gathered a handful of posters and continued distributing football posters to local restaurants. We recorded which businesses took one and which businesses denied our request. After lunch, we came back to the office and cleaned out the Intern Office to prepare for the fire marshal walk through.
Today, Chad and I distributed the Football posters to some buildings on-campus and sent Kellan around town to do the same thing. When we got back to the office, I sent my interview to Theby and he set-up a mock interview with me discussing my resume and how to improve it. I updated my LinkedIn account to coordinate with my revised resume and published it onto my internship website. After lunch, Chad and I discussed the plans for the fall sports season and how to possibly implement a Pokémon Go themed event at a football game this fall. We reviewed our notes from yesterday and prepared a letter to the Wood County Hospital to host a sponsor appreciation night for all employees and their families. We sent this letter to Falcon Sports Properties for approval and release to the hospital. Afterwards, I helped Chad process some paperwork and fill-out forms for new employees.
Today, I arrived at the Sebo Center at 9 a.m. to take part in the Soccer Operations meeting. We listened to the general overview, season opener schedules, coaching expectations, Theby’s marketing plans, and the upgrades recently done to the fields. The meeting concluded with a short Q&A before we left. At 10 a.m. I met the newly hired Assistant Director of Marketing and Promotions, Chad Clark. Chad and I talked about the workload we’ve taken on this summer and I passed my work onto him. Theby then gathered Ed, Kellan, and I into his office where he told us that with the help of our work at SOAR this summer, Falcon Fanatics Memberships have reached a new record of 600-plus members. He then asked us to revise the 2016-2017 Women’s Basketball Marketing Plan, which we accomplished in an hour. At 2 p.m., Chad, Theby, and I headed to the Stroh Center to meet with the Volleyball coach to review the Volleyball Marketing Plan. The meeting concluded at 3:30 p.m. and we headed back to the office for review before heading home for the day.
Today, Kellan and I met to finalize the distribution chart. We went over the campus chart, added in missing restaurants, dorms, buildings, and administrative offices. The list grew to well over 200 businesses and building to distribute the new posters to. We sent this list off to Theby and helped him to pick-up the posters and move them into the Intern Office. Afterwards, I continued working on the website as we had nothing else planned for the day. Before I left for the day, Theby requested that I join him at the soccer operations meeting on Monday morning at 9 a.m. and I gladly agreed to join.
When I arrived at the office today, I continued my work on the sports distribution chart. Today’s task was to eliminate the remaining businesses that no longer existed and to double-check that the missing businesses had been added. I then searched for each businesses contact information and programmed it into the file to display the company’s address, phones, and sponsorship information. I then assigned the campus distribution chart to Kellan to shorten my workload up.
Today, Theby requested that Kellen, Ed, and I take a trip around Bowling Green to collect the names of restaurants and businesses to distribute sports schedules to. We listed well over 100 area businesses that were missing from the list. When we got back to the office, Theby sent me the original distribution chart and I began updating the chart to correlate with what was missing and what businesses no longer existed. This began the start of my mini-project for the next three days.
Today was an exciting day at the office as Theby asked that I join him at his meeting with the Men’s Soccer Coaching staff. We discussed the marketing plan we created, went over promotional details, and added input on what they wanted to achieve, how to achieve it, and what David needed from his team to achieve these goals. They added that they wanted to have kids announced as ball boys prior to each game and to help promote these promotions to youth teams as well. I wished the staff luck with their season and we headed back to the office to review our notes and make the necessary changes to the document. We finalized the marketing plan and send it back to Coach Nichols for approval. Afterwards, Theby left me in charge of the office as he headed off to yet another meeting. Kellan and I worked on cleaning up the office for the new Assistant Director’s arrival.
Today was a very slow and simple day at the office. Theby had nothing for us to work on so we all talked about sports and the upcoming MLB trade deadline. We discussed the Collective Bargaining Agreement and why it was installed in the first place. I then worked on creating the Organizational Profile page and interviewed Theby about how he got started in sports and what tips he has for aspiring students looking to enter the workforce.
Today, we finished compiling our song list and sent the list to Theby. We had well over 15 hours’ worth of music on the document and five different genres. Theby then sent us over to the Stroh Center to approximate the number of cases of drinks remaining so he knew what to re-order and replace with his remaining trade budget with Coke. Kellan and I loaded up the expired drinks to throw away and headed back to the office to do the same thing for the storage closet.
When we came into the office today, David requested that we all add more songs to the list, mainly focusing on country songs this time as we only had a short list for that genre. After completing this task, I did a final edit on Ed’s Men’s Soccer Marketing Plan and sent it off to Theby to be published. I also added in some additional promotional ideas that Tiffin does to the BGSU Plan and explained to Theby what each event was. He kept several of these ideas and emailed the coach to get his input on them. Finally before we left for the day, Kellan and I packed Bobble-Heads up to be sent to the National Bobble-Head Hall of Fame. Kellan and I took the packages to the store and we headed home for the day.
Today, I asked Kellan to send me his song list as he wasn’t present yesterday when I added Ed’s songs to my list. I complied all three documents into my comprehensive Excel file and send it off the David so he could send it to the Media and Marketing Relations Department for approval. We then cleaned the Intern office out and moved the Falcon Fanatic Shirts back into storage as we no longer had a need to keep them in the office. Theby left for a meeting, but I stayed back at the office to work on some school stuff and compiling documents for the website.
Today, I asked Ed to send me his list of songs as he wasn’t going to be present tomorrow. I highlighted any repetitive songs we had and transferred the remaining songs into the appropriate excel table. We then talked about the progress on his Men’s Soccer Marketing Plan and I helped him finish the document to send to Theby as the coach’s meeting was approaching quickly. Theby called Ed and I into his office and talked to us about applying for jobs and giving us helpful tips on what not to do when applying for a job anywhere. We went through some applicants, and told him what we thought was wrong with each email he had received (wrong university, faulty information, cover letter addressed to the wrong person, etc.). He explained to us that before you send any email to triple check your information, because one little mistake could be the difference between getting an interview or having your resume shredded. He asked that we work on our resumes and LinkedIn accounts the rest of the day so that the same thing wouldn’t happen to us.
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