Internship Reflection
For my internship, we worked on a mural within the school. My role was to pretty much cooperate and put in an effort, as well as everyone else there. We were responsible for painting over the old mural, and discussing where things should be placed on the new one and if we want a message incorporated within it. I selected this assignment because I love to have an end product, and I knew doing a mural would be satisfying for me. And it was also very relaxing to be painting on a large scale.
My mentor was my art teacher Melissa Jones. She told us about her experience in LA painting movie sets and gave us useful tips when it comes to painting large areas. She reassured us when we thought something didn’t look right, saying something like, a gradient can always be fixed. We learned different ways of how to apply paint to make it look the best it could be. She also taught us to step back every once in while, and appreciate the work that had been done.
The main challenges we faced was the weather and wall texture. The weather was an issue because when we would want to work on it, it would either be raining or it would be very cold to the point it wasn’t fun to be there. The wall texture was a whole other issue because one side of the wall was nice and smooth while the other side was rough, and it was hard to get the paint in the texture evenly. So on one side of the wall you had to spend a lot of time on everything you did, and the other side was hardly any effort at all.
Personal growth I experienced was probably being more appreciative of things. When you step back and see all the hard work you put into something, you realize how much it was worth it, which makes you want to put more effort into other things too.
Transferrable skills would be concentration and working with others. These are needed because in a real job you need to be focused on what you do, but also be willing to help others within all this.
I can say that this career study was different than I expected. I can say I expected it to be easier because you think painting wouldn’t be that hard, but it is all the factors that add to it that make it hard, like the weather, textures, and all the detail included. And Ms. Jones told us that when this was her career, they had a time crunch as well. So they would have to figure out how to deal with all this in a shortened amount of time. I found I am pretty good at it, but that is with hardly any super detail. This is a career that I find interesting, but I do not think I will pursue it as my own career.
