Ended my third week of internship and I have to say that the job is getting more and more challenging, and in MPW language it's becoming a stretch assignment. For brochures and posters, even thought I do not have the experience, at least I had some technical skills. However, now my job is developing into a full Marcom role, and the job scope is expanding into packaging design and booth layout, which are no where near my area of expertise. That's rather worrying for me especially now Ella had left the company, I don't have much to fall back on.
Last week had been an especially tiring week, as I'm giving tuition almost everyday since Lorraine is having her exams. Therefore more or less I'm having a work-sleep-work cycle for the whole week. The two days at the ITE roadshow was more or less a breather for me, even though I'm not really a sales type of person. Fortunately there's many friendly people there at the ITE to keep me and michelle accompany and one of them even treated us lunch on Friday.
So work aside, the lack of personal time make me appreciate my night time and weekends better. Last weekend went for the Kukup ride with SMUX. The R&R there was quite good with mahjong, karaoke and lot's of food just that the pace of the ride was freaking slow. Even though it's the second time I rode there with SMUX, it's still a new experience since there's many new people joining us.
And had an internal shoot once again yesterday, and it was an internal shoot filled with prizes. Got myself a third position and won a $75 voucher. Now I can finally get myself a sight and a doinker to form a full set-up :)
Had a short first week of intern last week since Friday was a public holiday. Started off the first day of work pasting newspaper ads on paper, and that's when I thought this internship is about doing sai kang. Oh well, I was wrong and that was actually my few slack moments I have as I started actual work later in the afternoon. For the time being I will be doing marketing communications, which involves designing promotional artwork.
One of the benefits of internship is that it allows the intern to put what is learnt in school into practice, but for me it's slightly different. I am actually putting what I've learnt in NAFA into practice rather than what I've learnt in SMU into practice. Once again, my old problem of interest versus ability starts to arise again. On one hand, I felt very honoured to design brochures for reputable brands but on the other hand, I knew clearly that was not what I'm best in. When I decided to major in marketing rather than finance, there was already a question if I had an ability in marketing, but fortunately I manage to find some flair in marketing. Now when it comes to design, I'm no longer that sure if I can find the same flair. Somehow I felt that asking Wilson to do design results in a net welfare loss to the world compared to asking me to do stats, finance or analysis.
So for the whole week I was designing, designing and designing. I did not even have the chance nor need to use microsoft office as I was using Adobe Illustrator for the whole week. One of the task I was allocated to do includes designing the office assess card, which came as a stunner to me as I've totally no experience in doing that. In the end I still manage to come out with 5 different designs which I'm quite satisfied with, though in the end they shortlisted a design which I don't really like.
Designing brochures requires less creativity, though many other stuffs need to be taken into consideration, especially when it comes to IT products. All the product specs seems so foreign to me especially the chipsets. The last time I read about chipsets it was pentium 4 and now there's so many new stuff like centrino, core dual, duo core and what not which I still don't know the differences. In the meantime, my weakness in design is starting to show up, especially in a tight deadline. Despite following a conservative approach, I still don't find my designs satisfactory, probably have to do major changes to my design when I return to office tomorrow.
