Getting Started
Last summer, I took a class at Kennesaw State University where I worked on a project involving Drupal, an enterprise content management system (CMS). This was my first experience ever using Drupal. I loved it! Unfortunately, this was only a summer class and time went by way too quickly, and I wanted to continue learning about Drupal. When I heard about a new internship program at Mediacurrent, I was super excited for an opportunity to continue learning.
As the Information Systems Club president at KSU, I helped host an event with Mediacurrent where Dave Terry and Mark Shropshire both spoke to our club. They told us about Mediacurrent and drawing awareness around their Drupal internship and how exciting of an experience it would be. They encouraged the attendees to get involved with open source and apply. I was still unsure if I should be applying for internships as a senior, who is about to graduate, or for a full-time position, but I moved forward.
After the phone interview, I was asked to present a relevant project to Mark and Madeline Jensen, who is my current mentor. I was so nervous to present. I was terrified that I may not be good enough even though I had the most relevant project ever due to having worked on a Drupal project during that summer class.
The day of my project presentation interview, one of my professors, Dominic Thomas, showed me a TedTalk by Amy Cuddy which covered topics like imposter syndrome and how a person’s body language affects their confidence. This video empowered me and made me feel so much more confident in myself. That past feeling I had of feeling small and like I couldn’t do this turned into me feeling like this goal is achievable and that I CAN do this. During the interview, I was nervous because this is something that I really wanted, but I was finally confident in myself and knew that I could do this. I learned that imposter syndrome is very common in the workplace and that no one is perfect, and no one expects you to be perfect, but what matters most is your character and willingness to learn and overcome.
Pictured on the left is me, on the right is my mentor, Madeline.
Interning
I’m proud to announce that I am now the first development intern from Kennesaw State University at Mediacurrent. I have only been here a little over a month and it is crazy how quickly time flies. I have gotten to meet so many wonderful people, and I still can’t get over how kind everyone has been! I have been learning so many useful things about Drupal, site building, development, etc., and have already greatly expanded my skills.
Things I’ve Learned
So far, I have had the opportunity to work on many interesting projects. I began working towards my first Acquia certification. I was also given the opportunity to attend my first ever DrupalCon where I attended events regarding the topics of site building and development and coding. These events taught about different things like decoupling, CKEditor, Layout Builder, Gatsby, Apache Unomi, etc. A lot of this was my first experience ever hearing about some of these different tools, software, and features that are available for anyone to utilize.
I also had the opportunity to assist a customer at one of their conferences. I was tasked with monitoring the chat for questions, taking attendance, and after the event, I completed a report. I have never been a part of a conference before. I have only attended conferences in the past so it was a fantastic experience getting to be involved in an event like this. I got to see what all goes into panelist events and how much work is actually put into them. It was also super rewarding getting to see something that I worked on have such a great turnout.
Mediacurrent Culture
But things here at Mediacurrent are not all about work. Mediacurrent likes to have fun. They get to know the people that they work with because personal relationships and knowing who the people around you are is important. At first, I did not expect to be noticed very much. The complete opposite has happened. Things like my dog, Lucky becoming Branch Manager of the week during my first week as an intern.
I’ve also had a picture of my dogs used in the Powerpoint slides during a meeting which was such a fun experience getting recognized by everyone. I opened my first pull request then was acknowledged in the weekly meeting and on Slack. I began working on a project with others and learned how to fix broken links using Drupal. I had the opportunity to collaborate with marketing and research ways to create a branded calendar. These are just a few of the incredible things that I have gotten to do so far! I am so excited to continue my internship and to continue to learn and grow with Mediacurrent!
