Muhlenberg athletes are spending the summer of 2024 enjoying fantastic experiences on campus, in their hometowns, across the country and even around the world. Rising senior women's soccer player Grace Hoffman, a double major in media & communication and studio art, wrote about the practical experience she is getting as she looks to a career in the advertising industry, and how her Muhlenberg classes have helped prepare her.

I am interning at JPL, an independent marketing and advertising agency, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I am the social media and content intern for the summer. This hybrid internship provides me hands-on work experience on internal projects throughout the agency for JPL social media, various clientele assignments and separate intern-specific projects.

I decided to intern at an advertising agency, specifically JPL, because of the impressive amount of exposure to all the particulars of advertising. As a social media and content intern, I not only work on social media specific tasks, but also participate in video production, event production, marketing strategy/analytics, etc. The social media posts that I make have even been posted by clients!

I am particularly enjoying the team-based intern project that benefits a non-profit organization and allows the interns to experience a project with a client from start to finish. Our intern project is a 360-interactive tour of a Pennsylvania Children's Advocacy Center (PennCAC). My role for the project is to capture behind-the-scenes content, still images of the tour, and help to promote the tour on JPL and PennCAC socials and website.

I definitely think my student work experience in content production in the athletic communications department, as well as social media experience with the Office of Communications and Marketing, has helped me build my portfolio for my internship. My art classes at Muhlenberg, especially Digital Foundations, have given me the skills in design to prepare me for the type of work I do this summer, and my media and communication classes have also prepared me in understanding various media strategies, appropriate content usage and working as a team on projects. 

JPL has exposed me to the whole picture of marketing and advertising, which will help me to narrow down the specific area of advertising I'd like to search for a job in. My portfolio continues to grow at JPL, and my goal is to build those skills, gain a greater knowledge of the industry and create personal connections for my future in the world of advertising. 

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