Becoming part of the KWP Internship
So here is a little back story. I am one of those people who graduated college with no idea of what I want to do with my life. I graduated from UCF in May with a business degree. During my last semester of school and a little bit after I accepted a full time position as a an IT recruiter. Those six months in that position weren’t ideal. I didn’t feel like myself at all and knew that there had to be something else I could be doing with my life. Thats where the KWP internship comes in.
After a little soul searching I realized that I wanted to be an event planner. Then after a little more research (and a few online quizzes) I realized that being a wedding stylist was for me. So how does a college grad get into a field that has absolutely nothing to do with their degree??? You find an internship. Lucky for me I came across Kristen’s photography internship online from the prior year. I followed her instagram and patiently waited for her to post about applications for the 2019-2020 KWP internship. I honestly wasn’t sure if I would even get the internship since I was no longer in school, and had zero experience in photography or anything wedding related. During the interview Kristen made me feel so much better, and I got accepted in to the internship along with four others.
Internship Tasks
From the beginning we are paired up and told that there is a final project. It is a styled wedding shoot that we are in charge of putting together. We lost two of the interns pretty early into the internship, one of which was my partner for the final project. At first I was a little worried about losing my partner because that meant I would be putting everything together myself. Thank goodness I had Gabby, Lexie, and Kristen there to help me. They all gave me recommendations for vendors, and when I was stressing the week before about things not being ready in time Kristen and Gabby were there to assure me everything would come together and it would be great. Which it was!!! The shoot was named “West Hollywood Heatwave” and you can read more about it in my other blog post.
Throughout the internship you are given assignments bi-weekly. These assignments range anywhere from making blog posts, styling shoots, and taking videos of cute foster kittens. I am proud of all of my assignments that I completed throughout this internship but a couple of them stood out for me. One being the video I made of Sir Peter, our orange foster kitten for The Pixel Fund (he found his FURever home). The other being the beauty shoot that I conceptualized. I found inspiration pictures for what I wanted the shoot to look like, found the model and got a makeup artist to come in to help bring it to life. The shoot was inspired by the show Euphoria and ended up being published in Surreal magazine (SO COOL). It was moments like this that made me realize I am exactly where I want to be.
The Chicks
Coming to this internship is something I genuinely look forward to every week. Even if it means I am going to be filling out thank you cards until my hand cramps, making silly tik-tok videos so Kristen can get her weekly post in, playing with the foster cats, or trying to perfect my wind blower abilities for shoots (it is harder than it looks). The remaining three of us in the internship named ourselves “The Chicks” and all became pretty good friends. Our personalities all mesh so well and I am going to miss my fellow chicks. We will always have target, connected toes, Culvers, mini brands and mini cows to celebrate.
I am forever grateful for this experience and the friendships I have made during this internship. I can not thank Kristen enough for all that she has taught me in the last six months.
