Week 3 began with some proper work, looking into the needs of cancer patients in digital – exploring the different attitudes towards digital as well as the different ways patients use it. This, firstly, involved investigating a list of various health apps currently on the market and seeing how they worked, different features they had and in what ways they’ve hit the target market. Funnily enough, this involved actually having a play around on most of them so if I’m ever in need of health-restoration, I know exactly where to go!
With everyone at Macmillan being so friendly, people in other departments are kind enough to give you an induction into their area of work, answering any questions you may have. I leapt onto this opportunity and tried to explore various other departments such as social media, evidence engagement and video. It was fantastic to see how, for example, Facebook and Twitter are so carefully used from a company perspective, as well as how the research gathered by Macmillan is efficiently and accurately portrayed to the public. Most importantly for me though, I really enjoyed talking to the video team because of my aspiration to one day enter the world of documentaries – talking to them helped me understand the steps I might have to take to gain more experience in this industry.
We also had our first meeting for our intern fundraising event. It was pretty obvious after a few minutes that a pub quiz was the most popular option which made it quite easy to decide. With about 3/4 of the interns helping, it allowed us to fairly split up the work amongst us – with me being on questions! I met up with a Macmillan pub quiz master to teach me the ways of conducting a successful pub quiz and it seemed that it was much harder than originally thought! But thanks to him, we had the building blocks and key knowledge of how to host a great pub quiz so fingers cross…
The weekly meetings with my manager helped to keep me on track of what I was doing, ensuring I had enough work to do each week. Allowing me to sit in on various meetings and debriefs, I gained more of an understanding about our project which may eventually allow me to contribute to how Macmillan develop their digital presence in the future!
The end of week 5 has left me hitting the ground running, making it much easier to get on with work as I have a much deeper understanding of what’s going on now! I hope the second half of the internship well be even better!
PS I’ve got a great view of Imperial College’s Queen’s tower from where I’m sitting – spectacular.