Wow, first week of my summer internship. First day jitters are a real thing, I would know, I experienced them the morning I woke up Monday! Or was that lack of sleep? Who knows? But I know this summer is going to be the most rewarding experience in my school career.
This summer I will be interning with Interior Elements. I heard about Interior Elements my fall semester of my junior year at a Lunch-and-Learn. Shelia Banks (a USM Interior Design Alum) came to speak on behalf of the company. Her position with IE is the Vice President of Interior Design (my dream position)! Interior Elements is a commercial based design firm. They do a lot of work with education, office spaces, and sometimes health care. They have five locations, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina. I am currently interning at the Mississippi location in Ridgeland, Mississippi. Here, they have three designers. Two of which work from home but come to the office often. The third one, Amanda Granberry, is the designer I will work closely with this summer. I hope to learn a lot with Amanda and get to see the real life behind an Interior Designer.
MONDAY
Today is the day!!!! The day I've been waiting for since I got the email on March 1st offering me a summer internship with Interior Elements. I am very nervous but very ecstatic to being this journey to my dream career. Walking in I was greeted by Meredith, one of the designers. She gave me a tour around the showroom and office space and WOW! This place is amazing. I've never seen a more organized office. The space is filled with different brands of furniture, a large benching system in the middle, with lounge furniture in front. To the right is the receptionist desk, a private office space, a fully equipped kitchen, and two large quite rooms. To the left is a smaller benching system with height adjustable desk and task chairs, the interiors library and a copy and plotting room. I was put to work real quick but, hey, you've got to start somewhere right? One of my first jobs was to organize the interiors library. This was a great way for me to get familiar with the brands they use and where everything is located at. I also organized the plotting and printing room. This was a quiet day but I loved it!
TUESDAY
My second day started off by finishing my to-do list from the day before. The Allsteel rep came in around lunch time and sat down to teach myself and another designer, Amanda, on how to use their new website. She also taught me how to order memo samples from their website. I organized a little more throughout the day and took a trip (or two) to target (it was for office supplies of course)!
WEDNESDAY (hump dayyyyy)
This week is going by fast, but I'm not complaining because the weekend is near!! Today started off kinda slow. My to-do list was finished and the library looked so clean and organized (I would know, Amanda complimented me on it) wahoooo. It was just Amanda, me and Jessica in the office this morning so I took some time to work on my internship packet and my website. Around lunch we ordered from The Trace Grille (which was soooooo yummy). And later on in the day, Meredith, one of the designers, emailed me and asked me to pull some finishes for the a new project she is working on. (yesssssss!!! some real fun now!) She gave me a list of what to pull and I was on it. I am a very organized person and you will see that later on in the summer so as I was pulling the finishes, I made a finish board to display them all. All those material boards and mood boards I've made in school have finally paid off! Another thing I learned today was how to "part count". Part count is a skill you learn when in commercial design. It's when you take the floor plan with the new furniture already to scale and compare it with a spec sheet. All you do is go down the list to make sure you have all the correct pieces for each room. 5 o'clock came fast and it was time to go home.
THURSDAY (Friday eve)
It's Thursday or as I would like to call it, FRIDAY EVE!! Today, I started out by searching for fabrics online for one of the designers. She sent me a email saying she wanted fabrics in the colors white, cream, grey and light neutral. I was on a mission! I looked at Momentum, UltraFabrics, and OFS Textiles. This was a great way for me to learn how to navigate the manufactures websites. Another designer asked me to find stock images of the furniture she was using for a project for show for her upcoming presentation. She was using KI International, OFS Brands and Allsteel. After I finished those task, I went back to the Allsteel website and started playing around with the product configuration tab. Later on in the day, I went through our finishes and ordered more samples (and organized a little).
FRIDAY (WAHOO FINALLY)
My Friday morning started off GREAT! There wasn't any traffic on the way to work so I was 15 minutes early so I decided to go get Crispy Cream Donuts for the office! (best intern ever, I know) First things first, Amanda let me do my first ever part count all by myself!! She gave me the current floor plan and spec sheet to go with it and I went to work! After I finished, she showed me a couple of renderings, floor plans, and elevations of her past couple projects. WOW! (she talented with a capital T) I was amazed at what she designed and Lunch time came around and I took my dad to lunch at a local diner here in Jackson called Brent's Drugs (if you are ever in town, GO! You'll thank me later) Arriving back at work with a full tummy, I finished a couple of organizing projects and ended the day at 3:00. (we close early on Fridays) IT'S FINALLY THE WEEKEND!!
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