Alas, my last day as an intern at GroupSwim has come. So, what have I learned?
For starters, I learned that I don’t know half as much as I thought I did about the Internet. As a college student, I assumed I knew about the latest and greatest web sites, short-cuts, and tricks on the computer – but I was wrong. Some of the conversations I overhear in the GroupSwim office might as well be spoken in a foreign language because there are words, terms, and phrases having to do with technology or computers that I have never heard before and certainly do not know the meaning of. So, after realizing I wasn’t as technology-savvy as I had previously thought, I learned a few “tricks of the trade” like websites I had never used before and ways of utilizing the Internet. For example, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Jigsaw the past few weeks – a website that I had previously never heard of, but that I have come to consider a most essential tool in my creation of a customer database. Another useful website which I have become familiar with is SalesForce. When I first created an account with them in June, it looked like a boring, useless site; but now, I can’t imagine my life as an intern without it.
Interning for GroupSwim taught me a lot about the business world in general. I learned how hard it is to grow a small start-up company because of how challenging it is to get your name out there and attract new customers. In doing research on the fastest-growing companies, I learned how many companies are out there trying to make it big. And in witnessing firsthand the struggles of a start-up company, I have realized how hard it is to make it big in today’s economy as a small tech company. Reading about how much success the founders of Google and YouTube have had somehow convinced me that anyone can do that – a slap of reality was all I needed to realize this is not true. In my doing my previously mentioned research to find new customers, I realized that not everything is “just a click away” on the Internet. Jigsaw has become a lifeline for me in that it provides an enormous database of dependable contact information which I cannot seem to find anywhere else. But even this isn’t easy. Everyday I tell myself “one more contact” as I build up my points, to then watch as they disappear when I “buy” contacts’ information.
Helping out with a project the team was hired to do early on in my internship gave me another slap of reality – that designing and creating websites cannot be done with a snap of the fingers. Granted, I’ve never looked at a website and thought that I could have designed it just as well, but I definitely did not know about the problems that can arise when websites are being programmed. I learned about such problems by sitting in on meetings with programmers and designers, and hearing about the challenge that even the smallest of icons on a website can pose in the creation process.
All in all, interning at GroupSwim has been a pleasure. I’ve gained valuable experience in the business world and have firsthand witnessed the inner workings of a start-up company – a rare experience which I am grateful for. I’m confident that GroupSwim will become another rare case of a small start-up company that finds tremendous success.
