Brock Holm recently completed an internship with the Itasca Economic Development Corporation. This is what he had to say about the experience.
Through this opportunity at IEDC this summer I have learned a lot. I would say that the most important thing I’ve gotten to experience is the office environment; how things operate, working as part of a team, how meetings are run, etc. It was important to me to experience this before graduating college and looking for a job. It provides a lot of insight into what I’ll be looking for in a job.
The office space runs on a lot of coordination, there are a lot of projects with multiple people working on them. In order for these projects to be successful, there must be a high level of communication. I got to see others, and be involved, in coordination with projects such as the Forge project, the FFS Event, the Meet and Greet event, and also the Community Asset Mapping project.
Working on these projects and coordinating with others gave me a chance to work as a team. Although I did not do much for the Forge project, I got to see how the whole office has come together to get this project done. Everyone involved in the Forge project is doing so on top of their normal assignments. This is pretty typical of IEDC as they do a lot of different things as a corporation, so there are a lot of projects where everyone is just coordinating as a team to come together and get the project done.
Over the course of this summer, I’ve gotten the chance to attend a lot of meetings. Apart from weekly staff meetings, I’ve also been to a lot of meetings about different projects we’ve had going on over the summer. An example would be the Forge project which is an ongoing project. One meeting that I got to go to was an APEX board meeting. That was a cool experience as it was a bigger more formal meeting. It was a good experience to sit through, and I’m really thankful for the opportunity to get to go.
Overall, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with a great team. The team went out of their way to make the experience more educational for me and to make sure I learned a lot. IEDC is a great organization to work for and I’m really glad they chose me to be their intern this summer.