By: Kelly Donovan ENGL Dept. Social Media Intern
It is crazy to think that this will be my final blog post for this internship; time really does fly! I have really enjoyed both the vocational work I have done as well as the things I have learned on the academic side. I get excited when I complete a course that I know will help me in the future. Since I have talked a lot about things I have learned through this internship in many of my blog posts, I would like to shift gears a bit and talk about something that I am currently working on that has been very fun for me.
A few months ago, Dr. Wright and I started discussing options and ideas for a social media campaign. Thinking of a COVID friendly idea was somewhat difficult at first, since we cannot encourage people to interact in person nor offer an incentive (such as a delicious pizza party) to the winners of my contest. I communicated with one of my advisors to ultimately come up with the idea to post trivia questions crafted by students from all SP21 English courses. We thought of this idea when students first became eligible to sign up for summer and fall courses. Ultimately, the goal has been to draw attention to the English department and spark an interest in English majors who are looking for new courses to take. I started by sending an email out to all of the faculty in the English department followed by a second one which went out to all of the students. When I realized how many people I was addressing in these emails, I got kind of nervous! However, it also made me excited to think about the amount of people I could possibly encourage to get involved in the social media campaign.
Well, things did not go that way right away. I started to get nervous that no one really liked the idea because I had only received a few submissions from classes. Luckily, Dr. Wright supported me the whole time and continued to encourage students and faculty to participate via email. Even though I still haven’t received an abundance of questions, the ones that I have been able to launch have been a huge success! So many people are getting involved in answering the questions that I have posted. It has been so much fun to see everyone take their guesses on the Instagram polls. I have also really appreciated the questions that I have received because they have been so creative. I’ve come to learn that sometimes the quality is more important than the quantity. In fact, if I had one more semester left I certainly would enroll in some of the courses I have learned about through these trivia questions.
This internship truly has been a great experience and I am grateful that I was able to have fun while growing as a student. Congratulations to all graduating students, go Dukes!
Building Bridges 