All businesses love having interns, right? Having an intern means getting a bunch of free work from a kid who needs the experience and doesn’t mind working for nothing. Right?
That’s not how we see it at Well Done. For one thing, we don’t believe in free work. We always pay our interns.
For another, having an intern is also a lot of work for us. We believe it’s our responsibility to make sure our interns have great experiences. That means spending a lot of our time with them.
Which we love doing. And don’t get us wrong: We’ve had some great interns. (Whitly Charles, Turner Kendall, and Nick Honeywell spring to mind.) But when we don’t think we can do them justice, we don’t take them on. And this year, we didn’t think we could do an intern justice.
So last week, we did something different: We invited four students to shadow us for the week, learn about agency life, and tell us what they thought. The participants in Well Done Student Shadow Week:
- Ainger Alexander, a recent UIndy grad and budding fashion writer. Her favorite movie is The Devil Wears Prada, because she identifies with Amanda Priestly. Let that be both a recommendation to call her and a warning that she is someday going to eat your lunch.
- Ashlea Alley, not-yet-graduated from UIndy, and still getting used to calling herself a senior. Ashlea wasn’t sure agency life was for her, but is now convinced she’d love it. We apologize to Ashlea in advance.
- Quiaira Johnson, also graduated from the twice-aforementioned southside institution, who, like Magellan, has circumnavigated the freaking globe. Give her a call and wish her resumé was yours.
- Dan Sechuga, whom we expect will graduate next year with even higher-flying colors (which, from where he is now, seems barely possible) from IU’s Kelley School of Business. You will see his name in a year, if you’re lucky.
Our Shadows got a taste of every department in the agency. They sweated it out with account service. They had their minds blown by digital strategy and PR and traffic and operations and digital development. They saw the creative department for the good-for-nothings they’ve always been.
And, as it turned out, it was good for all of us. We met some incredibly smart, amazing young people whom, we hope, we inspired half as much as they inspired us. If nothing else, we learned that we are the Salt Bae of agencies. As we old folks would say, that’s groovy.*
*No one would ever say this.