Kelsey Price will be a freshman this fall at Salem High School in Salem, Indiana. Last month she spent a week of her summer vacation shadowing the Willow Shrubs. Each day she spent time with a different shrub, giving her the opportunity to learn a little (or sometimes a lot) about the various departments here at Willow and the people that make them up. After four and a half days of torture we bestowed her with the highest Willow honor possible – a spot on the Willow blog. (We decided she had earned it.) So if you’re wondering what it would be like to be a fly on the Willow wall, read Kelsey’s recount of her experience. She noticed more than we expected….

Before job shadowing at Willow Marketing I knew absolutely nothing about marketing. To me Willow was always the business that Uncle Brad and Aunt Becky worked at, until I had to start thinking about my high school classes and my future. I had already set my eyes on going to college for a Fine Arts degree. Then my mom looked at my career survey I had done in school and said to me, “Kelsey, you’ve got more options out there. You just have to look. See this? You scored the highest in creativity, technology, writing and arts. Why don’t you call your Uncle and talk to him about interning or something at Willow Marketing?” After that short conversation in May, it didn’t take long until I was all set to intern in June.

My week started off on Tuesday with Kaloni in the Graphic Design department then a few minutes with Marizka in Web. Wednesday I worked with Katie in Public Relations, Thursday I worked with Andrew in Account Services and Friday I worked with Doug in Video.

On Tuesday Kaloni and I sat down at her desk and she guided me through her typical morning. I watched as she did her “quickie” projects and then started in on the projects that took more time to do. It was very interesting seeing all the different things that graphic designers can do. Then I got to proofread some menus for her, after that she set me up to view a client’s website and write down three things that I could tell from just looking at the site. After that I wrote a review for the website and made a collage of photos representing the things that I identified in my review.

When all work I had with Kaloni was done she took me over to Marizka. I really enjoyed my time with her because I’ve never seen a website being made. I was really impressed with the way she would code something and then refresh the page and there would be a border or words that I saw her input on the page. Sadly after some time with her, my day was then done and it was time to go home but I was really looking forward to the next day.

Stay tuned next week to hear about Kelsey’s adventures with some of our writing and account management team members.