I was busy up to the last couple of minutes. I revised the articles I wrote about the National Zoo and the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress will be published sometime in the next several weeks, which makes it the last article I contributed to holaciudad.com. I also ensured that the site calendar is set for the month of April and wrapped up several other projects I had going.

I loved using my Spanish in the real world. And beyond expanding/using my skills in communication and Spanish my internships has helped me realize two things.

First, my work looking for scholarships for Latino students made me realize how important education is in the Latino community. Of course education is important for everyone, but I think it’s especially so for Latinos who have a higher high school drop-out rate than whites and African-American. This realization has inspired the capstone project I plan to take on this fall semester. I would like to create a informational communication campaign that relates to education in the Latino community. I must still do a lot a research to discover how to shape the campaign, but I look forward to challenge.

Second, my work at holaciudad.com has made me certain that I would like to a pursue a career where I can use Spanish. I think at this point Spanish has progressed beyond I thing I study to a part of my life. I am proud to say this, and also I am happy that I feel more confident about by everyday Spanish since working at holaciudad.com. I still have a ton to learn, but I know it’s worth it.

As a closing note, I would like to mention how important professional relationships can be. I got the internship at holaciudad.com because I woman I became close to at my last internship recommended me to Laura (my boss at holaciudad.com). As I leave holaciudad.com I am happy not only because of the opportunity but also because I had the chance to be mentored by Laura. I look forward to maintaining our relationship in the future just as I look forward to continuing my relationship with people I have learned from in past internships. So guess what I mean is, the Career Center and everyone says how important networking is for your success. But, I think networking is more than just success, it’s another way to say keep up with friend whether they be professional or social.

Share/Save

As always I continue to be busy, during the course of the semester I have written over 20 articles for holaciudad.com. I have drafted the five articles that are part of my ‘”free activities” series for the website. The articles are on: the Cherry Blossom Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Art Museum of the Organization of American States/ the Smithsonian Latino center, the National Zoo, and the Library of Congress.  The articles on the zoo and the library have yet to be published.

As always I continue to add events to the calendar and write stories about scholarships for Latino students. I am currently working on an informational article about the state DREAM Act that passed in Maryland on April 11. Maryland it the eleventh state to pass a DREAM Act without revoking it (so far).

Last week it seemed that my internship started to wind-down. I’m not sure it’s just me or if it’s because my duties at the internship have become routine.  Either way, I am happy with what I have learned this semester and what I will learn this week. I feel like my Spanish writing, speaking, and understanding has improved. But most important it has been great to use my Spanish in a context where it is secondary to the work I do.

As I have said earlier internships are a great opportunity to learn and prefect skills. Also, as I approach senior year I have been reflecting on my internships and their atmospheres. What kind of organization would be the best fit for me? What kind of work can I see myself doing for more than a semester? These are some of the questions I have been asking. I’m still not sure of the answers.

Last week and this week so far it has hard to balance my schoolwork and internship. Most of my professors this semester decided to assign projects due by the last day of class rather than have finals. Normally, I would be thrilled by this, however I didn’t plan on it which mean even though I ended my internship before finals I still have to do most of my work around my internship anyway.

Share/Save

1. Interviews are not just a chance to prove you’re worth hiring.

• While interviews are a time that you want to prove to you future boss that you are right for the job, they are also a chance to see if the internship is right for you. Makes sure you ask questions about the work you will be doing, the expectations you will be held to, and the environment in which you will work (What responsibilities will you have? Will there be other interns? How many? Will you be in a cubical by yourself or in an office with a staff member? Etc.)

2. Even if it’s easy or you don’t have enough work push yourself to do you best.

• A lot of times working hard and asking questions can make you stand out. Don’t waste time just because you know your boss is out of projects for you to do. Complete all your projects in timely way and to the best of your ability. Find ways to ask you boss (or bosses) for more work and if they have nothing for you ask what you can do or things you can read that will expand your understanding of what the organization is and the work it does.

3. Get to know the people for whom you work.

• Everyone says interning is a great networking opportunity; it’s true! Expect when it’s inappropriate always say hi when you come into the office and bye when you  leave. Ask the people you intern for how they are doing, how they got to their positions, or any other small talk you can to start building a relationship.

4. Internships can give you great connections, not just a resume line.

• Once you build relationships with the people you are working for they will know you better. This will help them find projects for you and give them a reason to recommend you to someone else.

5. Some internships just aren’t worth it.

• Often organizations that have interns do so for a reason. Do your best to tackle the project you are given; find ways to gain the trust required to take on projects that really help out the organization. If you realize that you are not valued and therefore can’t really contribute; it might we wise to consider quitting. I know that sounds harsh, but there’s about a hundred more valuable things you can do than  sit at an internship staring into space. The only exception might be if the organization is a big name and even if you don’t gain any experience you will win by having the name on your resume.

6. Go into an internship with the mission to help.

• Internships are a chance for you to help out an organization. It’s not just about you gaining a resume line; you can also really make a difference. Do your best to tackle challenges and move the organization forward. Remember, just because  your there a short time doesn’t mean you can make a lasting difference.

*Stay tuned for a blog this weekend on what I’ve been up to at holaciudad.com.

Share/Save

As I gear up for the last stretch of the semester I find myself busy inside and outside of the classroom.  I have been at holaciudad.com long enough to understand my role well enough to create work for myself in addition to the work Laura gives me.

It’s exciting to be able to take on projects that really have an impact on the site (or at least on the local portions of the site). The series I am writing about free activities in D.C. is a great chance to learn more about D.C. and to write. Since my last post where I discussed the article I wrote on the Library of Congress I have written two other articles—one on the Cherry Blossom Festival and one on the Kennedy Center. We decided to publish the Cherry Blossom Festival article last week instead of the article on the Library of Congress because it was more time sensitive. The Library of Congress articles sits, waiting and ready, to be put on the site.

In addition to the series of “Free Activities in D.C.” I have been writing short articles (alerts really) about scholarships and other opportunities for young Latinos. I was surprised to learn how many resources there are for young Latinos, just as I have been excited to learn how many different events there are in D.C. I continue to be frustrated that despite the reach of the Internet there is no central place to go for all the resources for young Latinos or all the events in D.C. Instead, gather information for both topics requires looking at hundreds of organizations’ individual sites and trying to discover organizations that might offer resources or host events. As I look for events for the site calendar and think about places to gather information to help me write articles, I have come to hope that holaciudad.com might be able to become a central resource for Latinos in D.C.

Reflections:

As I continue to love my internship—because I like the atmosphere of the office, the projects I work on, and the learning I am doing—I still find myself thinking about the summer and next semester. I am sad to leave, but also glad that what I have done at the internship could be base for what I do in the future. It’s really exciting to see how much better my writing and vocabulary in Spanish are. Writing a page in Spanish used to take hours, but now I write several articles during the four-hour blocks I spend at my internship. While I still forget or don’t know how to say words in Spanish, I find that words I used to kind-of know I now know.

It’s not that everything about the internship is perfect, however the time and the freedom I have to shape what my work at holaciudad.com is has really given me the chance to explore topics that interest me.

I don’t even dread the portfolio and the project I have to for the “academic” part of my internship. I find myself feeling rather geeky that I am excited for the opportunity to further reflect on what I have done, what I have learned, and what I want to do next.

Working in a bilingual environment and looking at the community both on the national level (like I do when I look for scholarships) and on the local level (like I do when I look for events) is giving me insight into the complexities of issues relating to the Latino community (and any community). I look forward to the rest of my weeks at holaciudad.com and to finding out how what I’ve learned there will serve me in the future.

Share/Save

Happenings:

This past week I began writing a series of articles for the community part of holaciudad.com. The topic as I mentioned before is “free things to do in D.C.” The plan is I will write one article a week until the end of my internship. Each will be published in the event section of the website. It is my hope that visitors will find the articles both informative and interesting. This week’s article (written this past Thursday for publishing sometime this week) is on the Library of Congress.

While searching for events for the regular calendar of holaciudad.com I stumbled across the Library of Congress as a great events venue. Previously I thought the Library of Congress was simply a big library, but I have learned otherwise. While the library does have book talks with authors of dense books it also screens popular films like “Robin Hood” and hosts classical cello concerts (to name a few events this March).

The project of writing the series and particularly writing this article on the Library of Congress reflects the wok I am doing in class. For example, today I visited the rare book collection reading room at the Library of Congress to explore dime novels for as a project for my PR Writing class.

As another example, while I plan to write about different types of events most that I have found are either cultural or art events. Exploring what is happening in both fields relates to my PR Research class. The client for whom my class is conducting research wants to learn more about attitudes toward the arts and interest in internships among college students. Our client’s main goal is to have information that will help it decide how to spread awareness of its dance productions. In the research I’ve done so far a major deterrent from the arts among college students seems to be price and not hearing about the events. Both issues I think my articles will help to remedy in the greater art community.

Reflection:

What I enjoy most about my internship continues to be the chance to write and work in Spanish outside of class. I began studying Spanish in eighth grade. I am excited to take Spanish beyond the classroom and make it part of what I do as a worker and in my personal life. It is really cool to take what I’ve loved to do in school and see it become a part of what I do in the “real world.” Also, my interest seems quite timely because Latinos are the largest minority in the U.S. and their population continues to grow.

Holaciudad.com is showing me how a bilingual office operates. It also provides the chance to work from both the news and PR prospective. Holaciudad.com is a news site, so articles I write are news articles. However, I read and use press releases and organization websites to find information. Further, my work always has a goal beyond informing the public which is increasing the number of hits, clicks and visitors that holaciudad.com has. With that in mind, during my remaining time at holaciudad.com I my new mission is to learn more about the traffic of holaciudad.com and the site’s strategic plans for expansion. I am getting tons of great hands on experience which I would like to compliment with more theoretical contemplation.

Share/Save

During the meeting I proposed several ideas for my project: a series describing legal processes such filing taxes, enrolling in school, buying a house, ect; a series profiling main organizations in the D.C. area that work with the Latino community; and finally a series telling about free activities to do in the D.C. area.

The first idea, describing legal processes, seemed too broad and difficult to narrow down. Further, holaciudad.com already provides information about things such as funding college and buying a car.

Though we decided I won’t do a series on organizations, I might write profiles on them  for existing pages of holaciudad.com. Also, the site will be launching a new page on citizenship an issue on which many of the organizations work.

I look forward to writing about free activities in the city because D.C. has many such opportunities, and as a college student I’m always interested in finding things that fit within my budget. One of the things that I like about D.C. is the many free events it has; however the trick is to find them because they are not always well advertised. Almost everyone knows about the Smithsonian museums, but fewer people realize that there are free film screenings, talks, and concerts offered by many of the organizations in D.C. By writing the series I will add to the original content of holaciudad.com and hopeful help encourage more people to use the site. I will also expand my knowledge of what D.C. has to offer.

Share/Save

As midterms and Spring break loom, my internship with holaciudad.com is about halfway done. It is amazing how fast time flies; it helps that I am always busy at my internship.

This past week I worked on two articles. I wrote one article about an internship program the Smithsonian Latino Center offers Latino students between their senior years in high school and their first year of college. I also drafted an article about a program AT&T’s HACEMOS (a Latino association) and Junior Achievement offered high school students. The program is called “National High Technology Day” and provides students the opportunity to shadow engineers and other workers who use math and science at AT&T. The program seeks to increase the number of minority students who study math and science.

I continue to collect and update events to put on the website calendar. An interesting development on this front is that after spending so much time trying to find out what’s going on in D.C., I now have a good list of venues and event sites to reference not only for using during my internship but also when planning my own weekends.

Last Friday I was greeted with a pleasant sursprice when I arrived at holaciudad.com just after lunch. All the women in the office were gathered in the conference rooming watching a new telenovela that premiered this Monday on Telemundo called “La reina del Sur.” We spent about an hour watching the first episode and eating pizza. The telenovela is about a women in Mexico who married a man involved in the drug trade and how she must fight for her life after he is killed by other men in the gang.

Stay Tuned:

This week I have a “midterm” review with my boss, Laura. She and I will go over how things are going and also discuss a project that will be central to my work for the rest of the semester.

Share/Save

Last week my time at holaciudad.com was mainly spent on two articles for the education page of the website. The goal of the educational page is to provide resources for Latinos to continue their education as well as to highlight success stories.

The first article centered on three programs offered by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) that provide Hispanic youth educational opportunities. CHIC offers scholarships for students attending community college, a four-year university and graduate school. The institute also offers an internship program for undergraduate students and a fellowship program for graduate students.

Second, I researched and wrote an article about the sixteen interns at CHIC this semester. Three of the interns are from holaciudad.com markets, but all the interns have interesting stories and are great examples of successful young Latinos. I wrote a generic news story about the interns and also helped created localized stories using quotes from the three interns from our markets ( Fresno, El Paso and Orlando).

Also, the article I wrote on Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is and how it is implemented was published.

Reflection:

I use internships to explore career paths, gain experience in the work force, learn new things and expand upon skills/knowledge I already have. So far, internships have helped me. From past internships I know that I am not interested in working for a small communication firm if my job in any way involves scrambling to find new clients and I also know that the government bureaucracy is too hierarchal for me. From holaciudad.com I am now confidant that pursuing Spanish as part of a career is something I want to do.

Share/Save

My time as an intern is split between three main tasks: researching, writing, and updating the website.

Researching:

Because holaciudad.com is a news site, I must constantly keep track of what is happening in the world. My general knowledge of new comes from scanning typical new sites such as the New York Times and El país. But also, I have a Google Reader whose content was gathered by my boss which proves news that relates to topics and organizations that are of particular importance to holaciudad.com’s mission and to the Latino community.

Other research I do involves looking for story ideas. I keep up with what is happening in the community to look for local stories, to find information that could be added to holaciudad.com as a resource for our users, and to find events I can add to the site events calendar.

Writing:

Currently I have three main writing projects underway. The first is writing short informational pieces on scholarships and other resources that can help Latinos attend college. The second is developing a letter to local non-profits asking them to add holaciudad.com to their media lists. Community partnership is important so that holaciudad.com can develop further as a resource for Latinos. And the third is writing longer pieces for the site.

Last week I began a short informational piece about what Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is. This was prompted by two studies that came out at the beginning of the last week. The first was a report on how Section 287 (g) is impacting Latino communities put out by the Migration Policy Institute. The second study was an update from the Pew Hispanic Center on how many undocumented immigrants are in the United State, where they are from, and how many of them have jobs.

Section 287 (g) was a particularly interesting project for me because the topic was inspired by my research. Also, immigration is an issue that I hope to work on once I leave American University.

Updating the Website:

As an intern, one of my main tasks is adding events to the events calendar on the website. Because holaciudad.com is still a new site, outside users do not yet contribute enough to the calendar to make it both useful and self sufficient. I add local events to the calendar to ensure that there are enough to make it a point of reference for our users. Also, after I have written pieces I enter them into the website using website managing software called “Backend”.

Share/Save

Internships are one of the main reasons I chose to come to American University (AU). Between studying in Washington, D.C. and the many resources at AU, internship opportunities seem endless. As a second semester junior, holaciudad.com is my fifth internship.

I am a double major in Public Communication and Spanish Studies. I have always been told that if you can write well you can do anything. And to me that’s what studying communication is: a way to learn skills I can apply to any career I do. As for Spanish, since high school I have loved the language and been intrigued by the many cultures of Latin America and Spain.

In high school I studied abroad in Spain. The experience convinced me that Spanish is something I want to make part of my professional life. Holaciudad.com is my first internship where all my work is in Spanish, however all of my internships have been within the field of communication. Before interning at holaciudad.com I interned for a start-up website, a small communication firm, an interest group and a government agency.

About holaciudad.com:

Holaciudad.com is a website run by ZGS Communications, which is an affiliate of Telemundo and owns Spanish-language  radio and TV stations in nine markets in the United States. Each of the nine markets has its own holaciudad.com portal.  While ZGS Communications is an American company, many of the people who contribute to its products are from other countries such as Mexico (where most of the news writers for holaciudad.com are located) and Argentina (where the website engineers are located).

Holaciudad.com is a Spanish language website that serves two purposes for each of its markets. First, it acts a source of news and provides information about the programming on ZGS’s radio and VT stations. Second, it supports the Latino community.

About My Internship:

All of my work is in Spanish. My main role as an intern is to support Laura, the content coordinated for holaciudad.com for D.C. I scan local and national news as well as press releases so that I know what is  going on and to discover story ideas.

I add events to the calendar, write stories for the local page, and update content on the educational page of the website. In addition, I have been researching organizations in D.C. that work within the Latino community and will begin asking them to put holaciudad.com on their media lists. Local organizations are important for holaciudad.com because they act both as a source of local news and as a resource for those who use holaciudad.com.

While I am still settling into my position holaciudad.com, I am excited because I have more responsibility than I have had at any of my previous internships. I look forward to learning as much as I can and doing good work as the semester continues.

Share/Save