New Projects

One good thing about my internship is that once I finish a project, a new one is waiting for me. The GMCVB works with "Parent Perks" (affiliated with WVU), which is a brochure that is distributed within the Parent's Club program at WVU. This brochure allows local businesses to promote discounts to WVU students' parents throughout the year.

This week I was given the assignment to contact each business that advertised a discount last year in the Parent Perks brochure. There were about 25 local businesses such as Ramada, Carvel, Gibbie's, Keglers, Qdoba, and various others that advertised the previous year. This activity required me to write their address on the envelopes, make copies of the letter that GMCVB sent out explaining the brochure and asking for the business name and discount they were willing to provide, and copies of the brochure page showing their ad from last year. Then I, feeling as if I worked at UPS, used their postage stamp machine concluding my project for the day. I finished this in two days, and I still have to do Step 2 and call the business managers' to do a follow-up and let them know that they should be expecting the letters. Step 3 of the project would (providing that some businesses decided not to offer discounts again) be to contact new businesses for the brochure.

Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I have been working a new project: The Heritage Project. This entails me to research restaurants and shops that are **heritage-related** and then write their name, address, phone number, web site, and a 50 word max. written description. So far, I have only came up with three heritage shops--The Old Stone House, Arrows Gifte Shoppe, and Arthurdale Gift Shop. I do not know of any heritage-related restuarants, so I am still researching.

Also, I have to revise a document that I created with MS WORD, because Cindy said she needed it on Excel.

Dealing with deadlines

I have had many deadlines to meet for class and work lately, so lately I've really had to budget my time wisely. The week before spring break was a very busy one as during the middle of the week, Cindy told me to compile my list of hotel general managers and their addresses on a list on excel, which I did. The task was not difficult but she wanted it done by the next day which I accomplished. I found the hardest aspect of the task was paying attention to the fine details. Such as, I had to pay attention to putting the correct address or phone numbers and spelling every name correctly.

Mainly many of the tasks I have had to do so far in my interning deal with data entry and organizational tasks. I've also had to contact businesses, which I am still currently doing. I also did not end up going to the NYC job fair and instead went to the WVU fair. I have lately been working on my resume and fine-tuning all the details. I also in am in the proces of writing my very first personal statement. I am well-acquainted with writing cover letters, so I am hoping I can use some of the same guidelines in writing the statement. For example, I'm going to give specific examples of my goals and what I ultimately hope to achieve.

I'm looking forward to this week and the different tasks set out for me.

On the Job

This week at GMCVB, I was put back to work on their website to make some changes to the businesses I added previously this semester. For example, some of the motels needed to be classified under hotels instead. I added new shopping areas (many of them located downtown). Mainly, I went into further detail with the businesses I added, because Cindy said they wanted to include very specific details about the business. Like when I edit the website, I can click whether they allow pets, what kind of business it is (antique, mens and ladies, home and garden, etc.), or what kind of food they serve (American, Chinese, Mexican). I finished the task in about two days, but I still need to work on classifying some of the businesses differently. Some of them are kind of ambiguous, for example I wasn't sure where to classify the Amish Furniture Store. I was in between "home and garden" and "area specialities" as it was definatly not "ladies and mens". I decided on "home and garden", but since ulitmately some of them are not clear, I am going to make my changes then print a copy out and ask Cindy for revisions. This was actually her suggestion because I came to her with the problem.

The rest of the week, I attended the WVU spring career fair with Cindy graciously allowing me to time to do that during my worktime at the Convention. I also plan on attending the NYC Career Fair since I thought it would be a good opportunity. I definately feel like I need to get extra prepared though, to go to NYC--fine tuning my resume, resarching the jobs, and getting the rest of my materials together. Wed. and Thurs. I worked on a massive bulk order which involved me putting the visitor's guides into packets along with four or five other select brochures about the area (the Rail Trail, Cooper's Rock).

This week has been a really busy one, but I like the variety of tasks I have been given thus far.