Rachel’s Internship Wrap-Up

As I reflect back on my time at Decision Innovation Solutions, I feel so grateful for my experience! I could not have asked for a more perfect internship during college. DIS always challenged me to be more creative and work on items I had never worked on before. I have become proficient working with Excel, Hootsuite, Mailchimp, Canva, Google Analytics, and Spinternet. If before this internship, someone would have asked me to use a few of those websites, I would not have had the first clue on where to start, but since I worked for DIS for about 1.5 years, I had so much time to really hone in on specific skills I had never used before.

One of my favorite parts of this internship was being able to put together weekly Iowa Crop Progress report posts to go out on social media. Creating these always gave me a reason to check in on how farming (either planting or harvest) was progressing throughout the state and allowed me to use my creativity to design Canva posts to reflect the information from those reports. I loved that DIS allowed me to use pictures from my own farm in those reports. I enjoyed being able to use the pictures I have taken during all seasons of the year on the farm in those posts. Below are a few examples of pictures I have used on social media:

Another thing I loved about my internship was creating the monthly e-newsletter. It was always interesting having the DIS team send me their different blog write-ups about what they had been working on and I enjoyed sharing those with the newsletter subscribers and on social media. The DIS team puts so much work into their different projects, it was always fun to showcase what they had been up to!

In addition to making the newsletter and weekly crop progress reports, I enjoyed when I would get pulled in to help with different projects! I was mainly a marketing-communications intern but would sometimes help where I could with different project items. It was always great to have an inside look at what goes into creating the different studies and research projects DIS works on. It also was fun creating social media campaigns to showcase the information from the studies and projects.

All in all, I am so thankful for my time with Decision Innovation Solutions. I grew so much during my time with them and know I will be able to use the skills I have learned through this internship as I move onto my full-time job and into the real world! The DIS team was always so willing to help me and answer any questions I had, and I felt welcome from my very first day on the job. They took a chance on me, and I am forever grateful for my year and a half spent with DIS and I cannot wait to continue following along with their different projects and happenings on social media.