I wrote this two weeks ago…
What’s next for Oyinade? Everybody wants to know. Well, I want to know too! I wish I could see into the future but I can’t. I don’t know where I’ll be in the next five years or even what I’ll be doing next year. But I do know I have a bright future ahead of me.
Currently, I’m working two communications internships. One with the Cancer Support Community, a non profit organization dedicated to making sure no one faces cancer alone with affiliates all over the United States. The other with the Corporation for National & Community Service’s Social Innovation Fund, which is a key White House program initiative.
Both of these internships allow me to utilize what I have learned at Georgetown in the workplace. I have already written a press release, blog content, developed design elements and pitched bloggers! Not to mention, I’m continuously meeting ‘very important people.’ I also am constantly running into people who are graduates of Georgetown University or affiliated with the school in some way.
I truly believe these two internships will put me in a much better position than I was before in seeking full-time employment. I’m doing real communications work and I finally have the results to prove it!
Fast forward to today and I have officially accepted a full time position with the Social Innovation Fund. Now upon graduation, I said I would never take a government position. But this one is different. Here’s what happened…
I interviewed with the Case Foundation for an internship position and was turned down. Weeks later I received an email from a staff member from the Social Innovation Fund stating that my resume was passed along to them from the Case Foundation and that they would like to offer me an internship with their agency (I later found out that the former director of SIF was affiliated with the Case Foundation).
Mind you the internship that they were offering me was unpaid. However, I still accepted it because I would only be there two days a week and my other internship with CSC was paid. Plus, I needed the experience and knew having SIF on my resume was ‘a good look.’
On my first day at SIF, the Communications Manager who hired me said his last day was in two weeks. On my first day, the current director had recently announced his departure as well – to the White House to head My Brother’s Keeper. On my first day, I basically had an interview with the interim director who blatantly asked me “what do you need?”
Out of the two to three weeks I spent as an intern coming into the office two days a week, I received more ‘good mornings’ with smiles welcoming me than I ever expected. By my second week, I was given a brand new laptop with the whole Adobe Suite, for designers you know that’s rare especially in a government agency. By the third week, it was communicated to me loud and clear that I was ‘needed.’
Needless to say, four weeks into an unpaid internship that I didn’t even apply for, I have received and accepted an offer as SIF’s Communications Program Assistant.