Sandra, Erika, Me, and Malin on the bridge over looking the river.
We recently went to take a tour through the city of Brisbane. Brisbane is not too large, but it has some charm to it. There was a cute shopping center, and some pretty sites to see. We spent most of the day here, and had a fun time. The weather was perfect, sunny, 80, with a nice breeze. :)
View of the river.
Sandra and Malin
Malin in a fancy Halloween mask.
The shopping area.
We had a wonderful time, but Brisbane is quite small, so one day was plenty of time to spend there! After seeing the city, we went to a looking point that overlooked the entire city. We took a small hike, and enjoyed a popsicle at the end of the day! It was a perfect treat!
Riding the tram to the airport with all of our luggage.
The Gold Coast...Surfers Paradise is in the far background :)
Hello to all you lovely people reading my blog!! I am FINALLY finished with school, and have started traveling with an amazing group of people. After fitting everything I own into a very small suitcase, Malin, Sandra, Erika, and I headed to the Gold Coast to meet up with Malin's boyfriend Anders, and begin our adventure!
Pre-Hike
The view from the top of the mountain.
Me, Sandra, and Erika post-hike.
After a good nights rest at Ander's friends house, we set off early in the morning to explore and go on a wonderful hike, with a spectacular view! The hike took about 4.5-5 hours, but was well worth it. We all got some nice exercise, and enjoyed the fresh outdoors.
Sandra making here way to the top.
The steep climb
The last part of the hike was more of a climb than a hike. But just wait for the next couple blogs to witness a REAL climb...
Until then, all the best to everyone! I love and miss you all!
Sorry to everyone who follows my blog! If you have wondered where I have been for the past couple of weeks, wonder no more. During my time abroad in Australia, I was enrolled in a Deakin University course, which required me to attain work experience as an intern. I ended up doing a two-part internship. The second part of my internship, was with Deakin University Marketing.
Here I am...Hard at work, doing some video editing.
During my time working for the marketing department at Deakin, I was able to experience a wide range of marketing tasks, as I was placed with different departments each day. For two days I worked with the E-Marketing Division of Deakin Marketing. I went through, and watched, over 200 videos that were to be posted on the Deakin site, for future and current Deakin students to easily access. There were multiple types of videos that first, needed to be viewed to make sure they were suitable for use, and then, needed to be edited. This task was given to me. I went through a plethora of campus tour videos, along with informational videos. Deakin has four campuses, all of which a student ambassador guided a filmed tour through. To make it easier, for current and future students at Deakin, to look up information concerning changing preferences, on-campus accommodation, scholarships, etc., a compilation of videos were created and posted on the Deakin website. I looked through all of these videos, and created a Microsoft Excel document which explained if the video was Usable/Not Usable, gave a short description of the video, and computed the at which time the videos needed to be cut or edited. This made is easier for my supervisor to pick the videos to post on the website. The following is a video I looked through, that made it onto the Deakin Website:
This, along with many other videos I edited, can be viewed on the same Deakin YouTube page as this video is located.
Moving on to another important part of my work experience at Deakin...Deakin hosts a range of events to help prepare their students for the future. I was fortunate enough to help run one of these events. The Post Graduate Informational Event is hosted by Deakin Marketing Department of Post Graduate Recruitment. These events are held multiple times throughout the year, and are geared to help students decide their post graduate direction. The event provides many lecture sessions describing different graduate degrees and specific subjects of study, that Deakin offers. Along with the lecture sessions, this event offers a bit of a career fair, which includes different tables set up for each graduate study department that Deakin has. The event allows for students to speak with professionals in their desired field of work, and gain more insight to the possibilities of studying at Deakin, at a graduate level. The following is the link that describes the actual event:
Going along with events, Deakin University holds an Open Day event each year, for all of its four campuses. A lot of planning goes into any event, whether it be the Post Graduate event or the Open Day event. However, the Open Day event requires a vast amount of endless work from many different departments at Deakin.
This program is an extensive event that provides information and guides students for their future studies at Deakin University. A link to describe this event in more detail is as follows: http://www.deakin.edu.au/arts-ed/future-students/open-day.php
Now, you may be asking, what I did for this event; and I will tell you. Open Day 2011 has already occurred, and was hosted in August of 2011. A great deal of planning went into the event. After all four of the Deakin Open Day events were over, a major part of the project was yet to be done. Most people do not even think about this part of an event, but after a major event, such as Open Day, is over, there needs to be and evaluation, which provides recommendations for the next event, in this case the 2012 Open Day.
This report consists of information from documents concerning planning, budgeting, how the actual event went, etc. What I did to help out with this process, was to organize all the files that were put together before, during, and after the event. Since I love organization, this was actually a fun task for me. Not only was I able to organize, but I was also able to read through each document. You might be thinking, what a boring task...WRONG. These are the documents that I might have to put together in the future. Therefore, being able to look through and read actual professional documents of this nature, will only benefit me for my future career.
There were countless amounts of documentation that needed to be sifted through, as they were simply floating through the 'My Documents' folder. Each needed to be put into major categories, and then into subcategories. I was able to create 9 major categories to put the documents in. To give you an idea of the different categories I made, and the types of documentation that went into each, the 9 categories are as follows:
1) Open Day 2011 Report
2) Open Day 2011 Planning Docs
3) Open Day 2011 Budget Docs
4) Open Day 2011 Collateral Docs
5) Open Day 2011 Logistics
6) Open Day 2011 Proposals
7) Signage and Flags
8) Stall Holders
9) Student Ambassadors
A couple days after that, I did one more task for the Deakin
This is a photo taken outside the Deakin library at the Burwood Campus (where I attend).
Finally, a university is nothing without it's students. For this reason, the Deakin Marketing Department of Undergraduate Recruitment is constantly hard at work. The final noteworthy task that I worked on during my internship with Deakin Marketing, was creating a list of students from different high schools, who attend Deakin University. The list was sorted from the greatest amount to the least amount of students, per year and per high school, enrolling at Deakin. This was a very tedious task, but it was of most importance. In order to better understand the markets an organization is trying to reach, research of this nature is extremely necessary.
I created an excel spread sheet which indicated the name of the high school, the number of students from that high school enrolled in Deakin from the years of 2009, 2010 and 2011, and finally gave a total amount of students from each high school, combining the enrollment numbers from 2009 to 2011.
Word to the wise...if you don't know how to use Microsoft Excel, learn, IMMEDIATELY. If your skills using Microsoft Excel are not the best, get better, IMMEDIATELY! In my experience, marketing, public relations and any business, for that matter, uses Microsoft Excel on a daily basis. My skills have improved drastically while interning this trimester. I plan to continue to use Excel documents, because 'Practice Makes Perfect'.
'Two Thumbs Up'
I give this internship experience a 'two thumbs up'. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience working for Deakin Marketing. Even though I am majoring in Public Relations, I gained a lot of useful insight and experience in marketing that can be used towards public relations, as well. I may even want to attain a job in Marketing in the future. I think I learned and grew as a person during my time interning, and will take that knowledge and those lessons with me in the future. A great lesson learned, is even if a job is not exactly what you are looking for, go for it anyway! It might surprise you, and you might actually end up loving it. I originally wanted to intern in public relations, but this great marketing opportunity was offered to me instead. I cannot thank the people I worked with enough, and I describe in words how grateful and appreciative I am to have been able to participate in this internship experience.
The second part of our trip, we went to Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. Surfers is a big tourist attraction in Australia, and there is lots to do and see there! Sometimes it gets a bad name by native Aussie's, because of it's tourist appeal; but if you are a tourist in OZ...you definitely need to check out Surfers Paradise! It has a cool feel, the weather is perfection, and it is up-beat and never boring!
The Gals and I getting at the entrance.
A little bit of a view from a different ride.
Believe it or not, crocodiles here actually get that big!
The snake just slithering along...
Me and the lovely group of gals I traveled with on this trip decided to head to an amusement park one day. The amusement park was called 'Dream World'. It was not as thrilling as Six Flags Great America, or Cedar Point in Ohio, but it was fun for the day! There are lots of places to go like this, such as a huge water park and a movie themed park, sort of like Universal Studios in Orlando. Australia's theme parks may not be as grand as the ones in the U.S., however, you may get to see Aussie wild life roaming around...as we saw a wild (and vennemous) snake slithering along in Dream World!
The beach, and city in the background.
The small town area with all the shops.
Me and Veronica in a nice chair, in the middle of the shopping area.
Neat benches along the beach walk.
For the rest of the time, we enjoyed relaxing and lying out on the beach and at the pool. The hostel we stayed in was actually pretty nice. It was attached to a hotel, and was the old part of the hotel that they turned into a hostel. There was a nice pool and spa area, along with a bar and game area. It was quite nice, and we enjoyed the pool and hot tub almost everyday/night. The beach was lovely, and the weather was perfect the entire time we were in Surfers. Right off the beach, was the main tourist attraction, with shops, cafes, bars, and nightclubs. It was the main place to walk around, get souvenirs, and have a nice, refreshing, cocktail.
Jumping for joy...because I was in PARADISE!
Me and the gals posing of a nice photo on the beach :)
Me and Jodi, on the beach walk while the sun was going down.
This trip was phenomenal, and I could not have asked for a better spring break. Almost every morning my and my friend Laura woke up and took a nice long run along the beach walk, which stretched as far as the eye could see, along the beach. It was so quiet and lovely in the morning, and I will never forget those moments. Taking it all in while running along the beach with a good friend, was definitely a high point in the trip. Also, I got a pretty nice tan, so that never hurts!
For now, I am just finishing up with school, then I will bet getting out of Melbourne, for about a month and a half of traveling adventures through Australia. I cannot wait to be finished with school!! Going on a short trip, has made me catch the travel bug, and I cannot wait to see what's out there in Australia!
