This week’s Campus Celebrity article was meant to focus on someone who had an interesting intership this summer. After sifting through a few really cool stories, I had the pleasure of interviewing BU senior Daniel Fernandez about his internship in Brooklyn with Amplify.
Amplify is a company that develops web curriculums for children in order to teach them through games and other applications- teaching without “teaching”. The subject material includes topics such as math, science, English, and even Spanish. Daniel’s responsibilities at Amplify included supervision of the children during the beta testing as well as collecting and entering their feedback from surveys.
A creative writing major and music minor, Daniel has been considering going into music therapy for some time now, although recent activity in musical performance has opened up his options. Because he didn’t have any career set in stone, he wanted to get some experience working with either young children or the elderly, as such exposure would be applicable to various career paths. He stumbled upon this opening by using various search engines online, specifically idealist.org. For anyone looking for future internships, this site allows you to filter your search with features such as full time vs. part time and other useful preferences.
Daniel said his favorite part of the intership was working alongside experienced professionals and getting to interact with them both inside and outside of the workplace. The ability to work part time while simultaneously do well in school and other activities is a major confidence boost. He explained that the demands for time management truly were a “step up from college”. Between commuting, working, eating, networking, and various side projects, he was forced to really schedule down to the minute. Curious about the transition back to college life, I asked how these first few weeks back have been, to which he replied, “Stressful.” Between registering for extra classes, rehearsing with the Binghamton Crosbys, and everything in between, this kid has a packed life.
For all our readers, I asked Daniel for some advice regarding internships and professionalism. “Spread your net wide,” he said. “Don’t go into it with the mentality that your first job will be irrelevant to your goal.” Sometimes we have to get creative in order to make things work. Although this internship was not in the immediate field he is looking to enter, he gained valuable experience and money to fund his other interests, like an EP album that he wrote and produced himself along the way. That being said, he also advised that it is important to always have some sort of goal. “Don’t get sucked into the current.” It’s easy to get comfortable somewhere. It’s never a bad time to network, as employers often “look after” their teams.
If you’re interested in Daniel’s work, his recent EP “Love in the Grooves”, released under his stage name Francis Aud, is available for download here.