October, 22, 2021 (8 hours)

This internship has helped me a lot in my professional development, it has put my foot in the door in management without completely hanging me out to dry. I have been working on taking ownership for things in the club rather than just saying, “I can have my district manager call you.” Because it is my club, and what I am telling them is the exact same thing she will tell them. And I have this to thank for helping push me to that. This job has also helped put a lot of the things I am learning in school to work in a real life setting. I am taking a lot of the knowledge I have from my undergraduate degree to help members progress in their fitness journeys, and I am putting to work a lot of the business tactics that I have leaned so far in my masters program, like HRM and event planning. My supervisor has always been really willing to help me progress within the company. She checks in with me everyday to see what I plan on focusing on for the day, and giving me any feedback on what she thinks I should focus on and why. She was also almost immediately available whenever I needed help with a specific situation, and when she wasn’t she would almost always let me know when she would be so I could try to figure it out until then. This helped me figure a lot of things out on my own. When I went into this job and this program, I knew I wanted to be a collegiate athletic director, and that really hasn’t changed at all. That is still my career goal and I think this job is helping develop my management skills in preparation for this job. If I were to five advice to someone considering a job like this, I would tell them to make sure they have a lot of patience and be prepared to clean. None of the tasks I do in a day are really hard, there are just a lot of them and you have to be hardworking and self motivated to be able to get them done. It is also important to keep in mind that everyone will never be happy. Someone is always upset about something, they don’t like something about the facility, and that is okay. It’s not personal, they are not saying they don’t like you as a person, and that is also important to keep in mind. It can be a lot and it’s overwhelming at times, but if you like helping people work towards there health and fitness goals, this is definitely the field for you then.