Meet Sidney, the newest intern to join the OFL Marketing team! A recent OFL graduate, Sidney’s alma mater is continuing to help positively shape his future. Here is what he has to say about his time working for OFL:
Opportunities For Learning has been incredibly good to me. The teachers were amazing and helpful, the trips were fun, and I will always be thankful to OFL for helping me earn my high school diploma. After I graduated in 2015, I attended a technical school in the City of Commerce for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning installation and maintenance. I had just finished my training in February and was starting to look for work when I received an email from OFL about a marketing intern opportunity. It was something I’d never really seen myself doing, but saw it as a chance to try something new.
Interning at OFL’s corporate office has been a wonderful experience. The OFL team is just as nice and supportive as the OFL teachers. Some of the projects I’ve worked on have been updating center information using Excel and Google spreadsheets, sending out packages to different centers, researching upcoming events and festivals where we could possibly be a vendor, contacting different event managers out of state, tagging and organizing photos, and helping out on a commercial shoot.
These have been very valuable learning experiences. For example, I previously had no idea how to use or create spreadsheets in Excel. Now I have a good understanding of Excel and I’m creating spreadsheets and editing them all the time, something I know will be useful in my next career opportunity. Even though I’ve only been here a short while, I have learned a lot already, and I can honestly say I want to pursue a career in marketing. I look forward to learning some of the elements of graphic design and managing Google AdWords accounts, two skills that will help me continue to pursue a career in marketing.
The project I’ve learned the most from is researching different events and contacting the event managers. Talking to strangers over the phone can be a little intimidating, but it pushes me out of my comfort zone and it really improves my speaking skills. As I speak to different people, I learn how to converse and get along with different personalities and that’s a big benefit.
I want to thank OFL for giving me another wonderful opportunity. They’ve continued to open doors for me and introduce new experiences that have transformed my career ambitions and given me the tools to achieve my goals.
