Sleeping Bear Cruising with Internships

In 2020 I decided to take on my first Intern. And my second, third and fourth….

Having spent most of the last decade operating as something of a sole-trader and only taking on extra help as needed, growth wasn’t really my focus. Following the COVID lockdown however, everyone on the client list started to need more help, then new clients emerged, and they referred other clients and within 3 months, business was about 10 times bigger than ever before.

One day around the middle of 2020 I was talking to John Gartland, the Senior Placement Officer for UniSA Creative (where I also work as a lecturer/tutor in web and graphic design). He asked “how’s things?” and I replied with a deep breath (having talked to him at length about the internship/project course at UniSA previously) “I’m so busy that I need my own interns”.

As the conversation continued, we eventually worked out that with the websites and online training platforms I was building, I could easily take on 2 internship students who would get some valuable experience in working with me.

I decided to pitch for a student to help me with communication and social media – to focus on the bits I don’t have time for, and another to help with website building – which I spend a lot of time doing since COVID-19.

In a matter of 2-3 weeks, I not only had Nikita Skuse and Maddi Sales on board in those roles, but also found the opportunity to work on another web internship project with Lilly Jones, and then Michael Zavos arrived to join the team from Adelaide uni and started fixing problems across a number of projects. So suddenly, I went from a team of 1 to a team of 5 – and it has been really really great fun.

Full credit to all these great students, they have been amazing from day one, and all just picked things up and ran with them. The enthusiasm, energy and time they have put in is fantastic and at times I have even had to check that they aren’t neglecting other uni assignments in favour of working on some of the Sleeping Bear client projects.

Now that the year is starting to come to a close (and what a year), I’m already trying to work out how to keep the interns working with me and looking forward to meeting some more in 2021. So, HUGE THANKS to you all, including John at UniSA Creative!