By Mackenzie Roe
Over the past semester, I had the opportunity to participate as this year’s Social Media Intern for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University. As a Social Media Intern, I was able to manage Brock University Faculty of Humanity’s social media accounts, conduct interviews with professors and professionals and gain important skills for my future.
Mackenzie Roe
As my first assignment, I was tasked to write a blog post about all the clubs that the department of Humanities offers at Brock University. Through the process of creating the blog posts I reached out to individuals who represented the clubs in which I was writing about which included conducting an interview with Liz Hoffer, the president of the Brock University Archaeological Society. Creating blog posts was a unique experience as I was obtaining small pieces of information which I was able to connect into a cohesive story for students at Brock University. It was almost like I was building a story from the ground up. Through the process of creating blog posts, I also was tasked to contact Administrative Assistants to confirm if clubs were still active or not. The blog posts help to clarify what clubs were removed, added or still running during this school year. Reaching out to representatives of the clubs helped to improve my personal interviewing skills and fostered an interesting story for both students and faculty to read.
On Oct. 9, I was given the opportunity to take over the Faculty of Humanities Twitter account. I was tasked to live tweet about a workshop MiniWarGaming was holding and inform students about the ventures and passions of the company. At the workshop, I had to actively listen to the presentation so I was able to capture, highlight and summarize the necessary information and then formulate it into a twitter post. Live tweeting the workshop allowed those who could not attend the presentation the ability to receive a detailed recap of the event. This task improved my listening skills and also required speed, accuracy and time management to accurately relay the important information to those who follow the Brock Humanities Twitter account.
I was tasked to film the Fall 2019 Convocation and to create a video that captured all the important moments of our graduating students. This video was meant to compile the experience so students can remember their accomplishments for a lifetime. This entailed filming the event for several hours and attempting to capture the right angles. Time management was key, as three days after the event the video was due. The editing process had to be done in a quick but professional manner. The video was then published and displayed on Brock Youtube channel for students to watch and reminisce. This task helped me to improve my filming skills and relied heavily on efficient time management and video editing skills.
On Oct. 21, I created my first news story for Brock University Faculty of Humanities. The news story captured an accomplishment of a retired Brock University professor; Angus Somerville. He had been working on creating the textbook Viking-Age: A Reader, which his new edition would replace the chapter on women with one that focuses more broadly on gender. The chapter hoped to open new discussions on gender and analyzed gender roles in the Viking world. The writing of this news story improved my writing skills, and also required investigation skills and time management.
During the week of Nov. 11-15, I was given the opportunity to manage all the Brock University Faculty of Humanities social media accounts. I was given the ability to curate all the content released on every platform during that week. This required writing and proofreading skills, effective time management, and the ability to be available at short notice to make any adjustments needed for posts.
In conclusion, I am extremely grateful for the experiences, skills and knowledge I have obtained over the course of this internship. Alison Innes’ mentorship has helped to foster and improve skills that I can use in the future. Seeing both the passion and skills Alison uses for as the social media coordinator for the department was a great eye-opener to what exactly goes into Brock University Faculty of Humanities social media platforms. The skills I have learned for both completing tasks and watching Alison will continue to help me in the future. I would like the thank Alison for the opportunity as I have seen my existing skills grow immensely and some new ones take form as well. This internship opportunity will continue to help me grow in my future endeavours and I will always be thankful for this position as a Social Media Intern.
