By: Allie Goodall, DHS Senior Student
Back in January, I had the privilege to begin an internship through DHS Work-Based Learning (WBL) at the Dickinson Public Schools central administrative office, working with Sarah Trustem. She is the Director of Communications and Community Relations, and is in charge of all of the media that the public sees from DPS. The central office is always buzzing with some sort of project or activity or meeting, and getting to partake in the other side of the school system has been eye-opening for me.
Every day that I come in for my internship, I don’t know what to expect. That is my favorite part about it! Some days, I go from school to school taking pictures of our district’s students, staff, special speakers, and any other content we might need for the website, Instagram, or Facebook! Other days, I get to sit in and pitch ideas to meetings with various groups of people from across the city of Dickinson. I also spend some time editing, drafting, and researching new ways to produce content.
Thanks to WBL, I have finally found and feel confident in what I want to pursue in the future. I came into this semester highly unsure of what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, especially after completing a semester of Dental Assisting my junior year and not enjoying it whatsoever. I came into this internship only knowing how to create content for my personal page, which is an entirely different scope and requires a different skillset.
Sarah has spent many hours explaining how to do things and how to make the content my own while still speaking from the perspective of DPS, which has widened my horizons and encouraged me to attend Colorado University at Boulder for Advertising, Public Relations, and Media Design. I never spent the time to think about who creates the advertisements I see every day and who does all of the posts for each business, and now I get to become the creator! Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to turn social media content creation into a career path but now companies need content creators more than ever, as social media is becoming the primary source for advertising. Thank you especially to Sarah, everyone I met along the way, and WBL for making this opportunity possible for me and guiding me on the path I was meant to take.