My Internship Experience by Carly Winfield
Carly Winfield, a senior at the University of Mary Washington, interned during the fall semester at the History Center and focused on planning the 2014 Community Conversations series.This past fall I had the privilege of interning with the Valentine Richmond History Center in Richmond, Virginia. My role as the public relations intern provided me with the opportunity to perform a number of duties for the museum, but my primary job for the semester was to help with the planning of the spring 2014 Community Conversations series.
As you may assume, a lot goes into the planning of a series, and even though my advisor, Domenick, tried to warn me about it, I never really understood how much really goes into the planning of an event series until I experienced it firsthand. My main assigned tasks were to create a power point presentation for each series event, create press releases, post event information onto affiliated websites’ calendars, and post event information to the History Center’s website and social media platforms. Of course, before I could do any of this, I had to collect the necessary information to complete all of these tasks. This involved talking to those involved with the series to make sure I had the correct information for each event and researching in the History Center’s archives in order to find enough photos for the PowerPoint presentations. At times it was a challenge, but I managed to complete the projects by their due date, and it was such a fulfilling feeling.
My time with the History Center was nothing less than amazing, and I am so thankful that I was provided with this opportunity. The friends that I made and experiences I gained through this internship did nothing but confirm my feelings towards working the in the museum field.
– Carly Winfield
University of Mary Washington Class of 2015
