Before Internship 

I will be doing my internship with an esthetician which is exactly what I wanted to do for the internship. I hope it will be everything I want out of an internship like being able to learn about skin, learn more about businesses, and learn how to do treatments. My dream would probably be to be able to actually treat real people and have a hands on experience. I don't know if I'm actually allowed to do that though. My fear is that I end up not liking what I'm doing at my internship because I cant fully put all of my effort into something if I don't enjoy it.

Week 1

What type of work do you plan to do? What are your hopes for your project?

​What I really want to do is to get hands on experience. I want to learn how to do facials and treats clients. This week I got to watch my mentor do all types of treatments to clients and it makes me very curious about them. I just really hope to practice and become comfortable using machines like the HydraFacial. My main plan/goal is to help my mentor grow her business on social media. I’m going to work on consistency online and making sure everything she posts looks professional.

Week 2

Blog 1: Describe your internship project
My main project for internship is growing my mentors social media platforms. Sites like Instagram, TikTok, and Yelp. The final product will hopefully be more activity on her accounts and new clients. Skills I’ve been expanding on is my photography skills and editing skills. I have to take a lot of photos and edit videos for her so I’ve been improving on those skills. This will hopefully all be worth it in the end and will gain her business more popularity.
Blog 2: How has or do you see your internship changing the way you consider that paths your future will take?
I talked to my mentor about wanting to go into dermatology when I’m older and she gave me some advice which kind of altered how I’m going to go about things. She suggests while I go to school for dermatology I do facials and esthetician work to make money on the side while it still having to deal with skin. Which sounds perfect for me and I’m definitely going to look into it when the time comes.

Week 3

Blog 1: You are probably more than half-way through your project. How is it going? What challenges have you faced? What have you learned? What are you doing to ensure a successful completion of your internship project.
I’ve updated my mentors yelp completely and gained a 150% increase in activity on her yelp since. So I would say it’s going well. The biggest challenge for me would be getting more activity on her social media’s. I’ve learned that most people like seeing photos of the treatment being done rather than just an after. I’m going to keep just working on getting her Instagram for activity.
Blog 2: What are social interactions like in your workplace? Do people spend a lot of time socializing? Are people isolated, doing their own things? Lots of collaboration on work projects? Not much collaboration? How does the social dynamic impact or reflect the organization's work?
It’s just me and my mentor at work so most of our social interactions are with clients. I would say there’s 2 types of clients, the one that sleeps and the one that tells you all of the drama in their life. I think it’s a good balance because I don’t always want to talk but obviously I’ll get bored if we never speak.  Giving someone a facial is typically a one person job so I’ll just take photos and listen to my mentor explain what she’s doing. 

Blog 3: What are you thankful for in your internship experience?

I’m thankful for how kind and patient everyone has been with me. It’s a very supportive environment and everyone has given me some kind of advice to take with me as I grow. As I practice giving people facials I’ve accidentally scratched a couple of people but they’ve never gotten mad at me or blamed me so I’m very thankful for how kind everyone is.

Photo essay

1. This was taken on my first day of internship. This client and my mentor were very kind to me and made me feel comfortable with them. They gave me life advice and told me about their struggles.
2. This is dead skin from dermaplanning that I thought was just satisfying to see. A lot of clients get this done so it’s osmeth8ng I see often.
3. This was a post I made on her Instagram. I try to post as often as possible and figure out different ways to get engagement on her account.
4. This was the second facial I’ve done and it was super fun because I got to talk to my friends while learning how to perform treatments.
 5. This was my first time seeing someone getting micro needling and it was so cool to see

Week 4

Blog 1: Are you planning to continue working with your internship site or mentor after internship is over? If so, how did these plans develop? What will you be doing?
My mentor actually offered me a small job where I just continue taking photos and managing her social media’s for her which is pretty cool. I’d have to figure out how exactly that would work with my current job and school schedule. She just brought it up when I told her I was saving up for a car so it was very nice of her. 
Blog 2: What is going well with your project? What challenges are you facing?
My mentor said she’s been getting a lot of more people contacting her which is good but I still want to see more activity on her instagram. Her yelp has grew a lot more and I want to grow her instagram now. I put out an ad on her instagram so hopefully that will help her gain more attention on there. 

Final week 

Blog 1: Describe your POL preparation process. What presentation tools are you planning to use? Are you relying on notes, a memorized talk, something else? How are you preparing for questions you might be asked? ​
I like to put in a lot of work into my slides to make them look nice and have them be easy for me to look at and remember what I’m going to say. I don’t really like having note cards or having a memorized speech when I do presentations because every time I do that my mind ends up blanking. I get nervous doing presentations but I just feel like it’s more natural when I just go up there.
Blog 2: How do you feel about returning back to classes next week? Do you anticipate a different experience of school now that you have been immersed in a workplace? What are you looking forward to about coming  back? What are you going to miss about internship?
I’m actually a little happy to go back because I miss my friends. I feel like internship is fun but I miss talking to people my age. I don’t think my school experience will be any different because I had a job prior to internship that’s 30x more stressful. I think I’m going to miss being able to work from home though because my parents never let me miss school.