The Final Week

Monday was a slow start to the week, but I kept busy. Steff and I finalized everything for the next day of delivering our Christmas in July materials. I cut out more cards and punched holes in the top left corner of the 85 cards, business cards, and magazine issues. I then worked with Steff to create the delivery list specifying who would deliver where. That took the rest of my time in the office.

Tuesday was pretty awful in terms of stress. Steff texted me in the morning and said that the business we were getting our cookies from for Christmas in July had their oven break, so the cookies would not be done on time. We ended up heading to the office to put together marketing material for our family fitness issue.

Fitness marketing material: card, banana, business card, current magazine issue.

We then started to deliver those, but did not get anywhere near finished. 

Boxes full of fitness marketing materials. Jillian and I delivered a few together.

I picked up the cookies once they were ready and headed back to the office to have a meeting with Steff and editor Hannah. We talked about article ideas for the fitness issue. That was when I was told that I get to write the cover story for the issue! I’m super nervous but excited. It’s a great honor, it will be great, and it will get my name out there! I will also be writing another article for the same issue, so that is double exposure. After that amazing meeting, which was the highlight of my day, we bagged cookies and got that marketing material ready to go. 

Christmas in July campaign material.

Amazing-looking cookies included in campaign material.

Issues occurred, but we did our best to deal with them in the most practical matter. I was supposed to be out of the office at 6pm, but I ended up working until 9pm. It was a long, stressful day. And I knew more was still to come in the next days.

Wednesday, I did more delivering. It was very stressful since the delivery list was not sorted out into a route at all, so I did a lot of back-tracking. It took literally all day, and I was exhausted by the end. On the plus side, I got 31 businesses crossed off the list, and Steff told me to keep doing whatever I’m doing because someone I talked to the day before had already called her interested in advertising. So, that’s great! However, I’m still only halfway done. I’m taking a break to relax and lessen the stress load. I’ll get back to delivering next week.

Thursday afternoon, J & L Harley Davidson was hosting Hot Harley family night. Hood was in on the action. I was the first one from Hood at the event, so I checked in at the information table and got the table and chairs we needed and set everything up. They had a tent set up for us, and we had kids of all ages do what is called “yarn bombing.” We basically just had them throw the yarn around, over, and inside the tent. It created a huge web. Kara, the creative ideas director for Hood, came up with the idea and called it a huge art project with no rules. 

The beginning.

The end.

The kids loved it, and it was so simple. Tear down took only about 5 minutes. We just took scissors to the poles and along the top sides of the tent, and it all came down. We rolled it into a pile and were good to go. It was honestly so much fun and was the stress relief I needed.

This is Kara after cleaning up.

Our tent is even on Argus Leader's website 

My time at Hood has been amazing, and I have gained so much knowledge. This internship has solidified my decision to go into the career of writing and editing, and that is exactly what I wanted to take away from this learning experience. It turned out perfectly.

I performed several different tasks at Hood including writing copy for ads, proofing/editing Hood and MED issues for print, making sales pitches to prospective advertisers, organizing/filing, brainstorming, and working events. A lot of my time was spent on the computer reading articles, writing copy, and updating documents. Other times, I was out and about talking to clients and making events fun. I now know every aspect put into getting a magazine issue published. Knowing all the ins and outs has put me at a great advantage for the future, since these experiences and skills will be utilized in years to come.

Since I have completed my hours for this internship, this will be my last post. However, I am still going to work at Hood until the beginning of August. If you would still like to follow along on my journey, you can keep reading here.

Exciting Week

Monday was a tiring day. We met at Steff’s house to load our cars with magazines to deliver to various businesses around Sioux Falls and surrounding towns. 

The sky was pretty weird that day.

Steff told me I was going to be on my own for delivering and gave me a list of businesses and addresses. I don’t know my way all that well around those parts of Sioux Falls, but it turned out to be okay, because I was at a business close to home, so I went home and grabbed the GPS. That helped tremendously. There were 2,400 magazines weighing down my car while I made a seven hour trek around surrounding Sioux Falls areas. I was pooped.

There were 12 boxes in my car. More were in the backseat.

Tuesday morning Steff and I went to Ally’s house. She is the design director of Hood. We sat down and talked about ideas for the media kit and the next magazine issue which is going to cover family fitness. After that, Steff gave me her key to the office and let me head there while she ran to a food place of my choice (Jimmy John’s – yum) and got me a number nine – Italian Night Club – my favorite. She said it was working so hard the day before. Daw, that’s sweet of her. It’s the third time she has paid for my food.

After I downed that sub, I worked on writing copy, changing advertisement rates, and updating a delivery list for Christmas in July. We deliver next week, and I’ll be sure to bring a GPS this time.

Thurday, I got up early and met Steff at the KSFY news building so she could show off a 4th of July recipe and the current issue of Hood. I was there to be Steff’s photographer, and it was a pretty fun time with Shawn and Nancy from KSFY.

Shawn and Nancy on air. The better pictures I took were on Steff's iPad.

After that, we went to the office where we picked a winner for the animal drawing contest for a family pass to the zoo.

These were three of my favorites.

The rest of my time was devoted to Christmas in July. Cards were made for businesses that we are going to deliver cookies to next week in hopes to persuade them to advertise in Hood’s holiday gift guide in the next issue. There were many problems such as too much copy and not enough white space, and printing out blurry. It finally worked out in the end, and I spent a while personalizing each of the 88 cards, printing, and cutting each out.

Happy 4th of July weekend, blogosphere!

Time Flies

I can’t believe it has already been a full four weeks since I started this internship! I really don’t even want to leave.

Monday, we had a meeting with Hood panel members. The panel is made up of mothers who give us ideas of themes for magazine issues and individual articles. They basically decide what to focus on for future magazines. It was a very great meeting, and I think that with all our brains put together we came up with really good ideas.

This is the conference room where the meeting was held.

After the meeting, Jillian and I created a social media report. Basically, we planned out all the Facebook posts and Twitter tweets the Hood magazine will put out for the entire month of July. It wasn’t easy, but it was fun creating it.

After such a productive day, things were bound to go wrong, and they did. Steff was informed that things went wrong at the printers, and we spent some time trying to correct the errors. Also, a lot of other things got messed up, and it turned from a great day to a stressful pain in our butts.

The day was made better when Steff bought me a brownie from Panera. Yum.

Wednesday was a productive day. I sent the MED Magazine mailing list I have been recently working on to the person it was done for. I also wrote an invoice notification letter and mailed those with overdue invoices to advertisers. A random job I was given was to write Thank You cards for a group of businesspeople Steff golfed with at the South Dakota Lions Eye & Tissue Bank Charity Golf Tournament. I sent those out in the mail along with a picture of them together, a business card, and the latest issue of MED. After that, I flipped through various magazines to get ideas for future articles and photo shoots.

Folding invoices and getting ready to mail.

I worked from home on Thursday and researched ideas for future magazine issues of Hood. It wasn’t that fun, because I was just staring at my computer looking up different events, article topics, and picture ideas. However, I came up with a full six pages of ideas and got to work in my PJ’s. You can’t beat that!

Running at Snail Pace

At home, I completed the third (and I believe final) round of proofing for Hood Monday morning. It was starting to get stressful because some of the formatting was off in the magazine, and it was hard to correct. I got it though! And, I felt really proud because I feel like I’m making a difference to this magazine business. The design director emailed everyone with the third round of proof and said she needed either the editor (Hannah) or the intern (little ole me) to help her with deciding what to put on a specific page in the magazine. I figured out the changes and emailed her back as soon as I could just to beat the editor to the punch. I made an important decision, and that makes me happy.

Take a look at the pinkish-red bubble. I feel important.

At the office Monday, Steff and I went through the final proof of the next Hood issue. I learned a lot, such as how to get huge files that are too big to send through email to the printers. I also learned a lot about media kits. I was given the task of writing copy for a two-page spread for Hood in Family Fest magazine. It didn’t take me long, and Steff was surprised and impressed. She then made a list and explained the tasks I would be assigned this week. Basically, I was going to be looking at and researching examples of categorized gift ideas for Hood’s “Christmas in July” spread. I would also have to write messages to past, present, and perspective clients about being a part of our future issue It sounded like I would be busy the next few days, but that’s okay, because I’m having fun.

It was a maze getting to work Tuesday since the day before we had a terrible thunderstorm that left everything flooded. A lot of roads were closed, so I had to find alternate routes. I eventually got to work, and I was right on time. So, always leaving early for work finally paid off!

This is Harrisburg where the elementary school is completely surrounded by water and has about an inch of water in 1/3 of the building.

At the office, I started working on Steff’s other magazine, MED. I went through the issue being worked on right now and checked all the ads to make sure they were in the right place and were the right size. After that, I went through the list of clients and added new ones along with checking to see if the current ones were correct. That took me around four or so hours to complete, and my day was then finished.

Thursday was the slowest day yet at work. I dealt with updating the mailing list for MED. After all of that, it would be okay with me if I never again had to look at an Excel spreadsheet. It got so old, and I was getting antsy and just wanted to leave. But, I am on the bottom of the food-chain in this business, so I tried not to let it get to me. Once that was finished, I started getting into the “Christmas in July” gift list for the next issue of Hood. That was pretty agonizing as well, and I still have more to do. So, Thursday was not the best, but it hasn’t scared me away.

The Holiday Gift Guide correlates to "Christmas in July."

The last day of my work week was mediocre. I worked with Jillian to edit the ad I wrote Monday. We also created a letter that will be sent to advertisers in Hood’s Family Fitness issue. I also helped tweak the “Welcome” letter they send to new clients. After that, I got to work on proofing the July/August issue of MED (Midwest Medical Edition). As I’ve stated before, proofing and editing is the best part of this job. I love every second of it, even if MED has only medical topics. Editing, no matter which subject matter, is awesome.

Happy Proofing!

Monday was a full five hours of demonstrating my organizational skills. It did not entail much. I organized more magazines that were mostly MED (another magazine Steff owns). I got them out of the storage/conference room, put a couple of each issue in the filing cabinet, and put more in the bookshelf organizers. Then I started to clean the long counter in the office, because it was full of junk and needed to be organized. I felt a lot better once it was neat and clean. I’m O.C.D., so sue me.

Wednesday was glorious and reminded me why I love being an English major. I worked from home and proofed the July/August magazine issue. I was given a check-list and looked for things such as grammar, alignment, placement, and flow of the magazine overall. I had so much fun, and that is how I know that this line of work is my calling. Most would find editing a magazine boring, tedious work. I find it enthralling. It might only be my second week into work, but I seriously love this internship.

Thursday. Yet another day on the job has proved to be even more fun. I met Steff at the design director’s house. Ally, Steff, and I went through all of our proof corrections and made changes to the magazine computer document. It took hours, but it was absolutely great to sit around and discuss the English language for hours. This is what I love.

My love for this internship didn’t stop there. Once all of those changes were hammered out, I went back home and waited for the new version to be sent to me through email. At five, the email came through, and I hunkered down for the second round of proofing. I thought that it would be a breeze, but I actually found many more things that needed to be changed that were not caught in the first round of proofing. Published author and mentor Sara Zarr has taught me that your work will never meet your expectations 100 percent. At some point, you have to tell yourself that it is as good as it will ever get and send it to the printers to get published. There will always be things you want to change. So, after this round of proofing, we will be finished. We will call it good and send it to the printers. The July/August issue of ‘Hood Magazine will be published before we know it.

Saturday was a big event day. It started off over in Brandon, SD where “Lunch on the Farm” was held. This year was the seventh year, and Hood Magazine has been there for five years. It was a great event, minus the wind and rain.

We were in charge of a tent where kids would color cow-patterned sheets of paper, and then we rolled them up and taped them so they could put their mouth up to it and moo at the dairy cows. It was something so simple, but the kids loved it.

We were right beside child singer Phil Baker’s tent was. I remember him coming to my school in elementary to sing. So, he’s been around for a long while, and he’s not bad! I had the pleasure of even meeting his son over in our tent. He was drawing amazing pictures of people. I was stunned by how good his pictures were and asked how old he was. Nine! He is only nine and can do more with markers and crayons than I could ever do at age 21!

There was also another nine year old boy who taught me everything there is to know about Texas while he was coloring. He cracked me up. It was a good time.

When that event ended, we headed back to Sioux Falls over to the Sanford Research Center for “Science Fest.” That was pretty fun, as well. It was indoor, thank goodness, so the downpour of rain didn’t affect us. We were in charge of a booth that had a girl’s science project of a solar and wind-powered dollhouse. We also had long sheets of paper on the floor kids could draw on to demonstrate how to save the planet, and we stuck those on the wall behind us. We also, of course, had Hood magazines for people to take home with them.

When that ended, I was ready to go home and relax for the rest of the weekend. But, I got a text from Steff saying I have another round of proofing yet this weekend. I just want to sleep. It has been a fun but tiring week.

Fast First Week

I have worked for my parents for as long as I can remember. Working on the farm, in the fields, and at the family owned corn maze have been my only work experiences. How would I ever get an internship required for graduation if the only experience I have is working for Mom and Dad? That’s not a real job, is it?

I applied to 20 different businesses for a summer internship. The amount of rejection emails I received dampened my spirits and made me feel worthless.

I went into the interview with Hood Magazine thinking it would end in yet another rejection. Little did I know that my quest for a summer internship would stop here. I was offered the job on the spot, and knowing that the internship position I applied for was right up my alley, I accepted.

Example Hood magazines on the office table.

My first day went great! I got there, was introduced to everyone, and was given a mini-tour of the office. Once I got the feel of things, my supervisor, who is the president and publisher of the magazine, had me write copy for an ad to be placed in the next issue of Hood. It was nerve-racking, but I felt so important at that moment and gave it my all. After that, I sat down with my supervisor to brainstorm creative ideas for photos that we were going to have taken the next day at a photo shoot to be included with each article in the next magazine. After we had the photo ideas ready, I was assigned a final task for the day. I relocated to the conference room where boxes wall to wall sat with heaping mounds of past magazine issues. It was unorganized and cluttered. My supervisor wanted me to change that. So, I sifted through all the boxes, put them in piles and in chronological order, and placed two of each past issue into a filing cabinet and bookshelf organizer.

The next day was not as awesome as I thought it was going to be. We met a photographer at Apple Tree Children’s Center to start the shoot. My supervisor, Steffanie, sent me to get glasses for the shoot from Vision Care quickly. It was the exact opposite of quick. The traffic in Sioux Falls was awful, and it seemed like no matter which street I took to make the long trek to the clear other side of town, I got nowhere quickly and hit almost every light red. When I got back to Apple Tree with glasses in hand, they had already finished shooting the outdoor pictures, and we were now going to go to the photographer’s studio. We were there for maybe half an hour when Steff let me go home early because of the scary-looking sky and tornado warning. So, yes, I spent most of my limited time driving around Sioux Falls, but she said that getting those glasses for the shoot helped her a lot and made the pictures look so much better. Therefore, I’m glad I was able to be there to help.

This is a glasses picture similar to the one we shot.

Friday flew by super quickly. I was instructed by Jillian to continue organizing past issues of magazines. I finished before Steff got to work, so I vacuumed the office and conference room. They were both on the nasty side, so vacuuming made me feel better.

When Steff got there, and I did a lot of miscellaneous things like filled out and sent a wedding RSVP for her, divided cupcakes into fourths, and gave her dog treats (no, I didn't give the dog cupcakes).

Then came the big one. I helped her make a “dummy” of the next magazine issue. Basically, that means doing the layout of the magazine from cover to cover deciding where articles and ads are going to be placed. It was a frustrating task, but together, we got it done.

We later had a meeting with other staff members. We discussed a few things that I didn’t find very enthralling, but Steff saved the best for last. Hood Magazine had an essay contest for Father’s Day. The contestants had to answer why their father was the best in order to be in the running for a $200 Scheel’s gift card. There were 49 submissions, and we sifted through and chose which ones we liked best. That was the best part of my day. I loved reading all those stories, and some were serious tear-jerkers. Kids can write!

Excitement has consumed me waiting to see what is still to come!