My last 50 hours of work at CS Systems provided new and interesting tasks that usually wouldn’t occur in a typical work week. Besides the typical device troubleshooting for professors and students in need, I accomplished several goals, including building stronger connections with new team members and using my art and graphic design skills to promote departmental resources. I found these tasks interesting because they had less to do with technology and required me to apply outside skills that typically aren’t in my job description. It changed how I view workplace skills, showing me that everyone has the potential to contribute something unique to the job, even if they aren’t as technically advanced as other team members.

In my last reflection paper, I mentioned how I wanted to build a stronger connection with the two  newer, younger, and more reserved consultants. Now that their schedules have been finalized, I’ve finally had the opportunity to connect with and support them. The first one I built a connection with is our youngest consultant, Brayden. I was able to help set up his workstation in our consultant office located in Dragas Hall. There are two important steps to setting up our consultant workstations: setting up a static IP on our designated subnet, and ensuring we install Crowdstrike on the device. For the static IP, I assisted Brayden by informing him which IPs were already taken by fellow consultants and which ones were available. Next, for CrowdStrike, I delivered a USB containing the software and a text file with our site server code to ensure he could successfully install our network-wide security system. Additionally, I got the opportunity to help him troubleshoot a network issue caused by an undefined VLAN, which served to be a valuable learning experience for the both of us. During these tasks, I got the opportunity to talk to him about the job and answer his questions and concerns. However, it’s his first year at Old Dominion University, and I hope that I helped him feel welcome in both our internship and in the University as a whole. For our other new consultant, Charlotte, I felt that I was able to connect with her on a more personal level. We had a situation where the head of our department gathered the entire team and asked each member to share the production related tasks they had completed over the past two weeks. Since Charlotte is still relatively new, she didn’t have much to report and was questioned closely about it. I could tell this had bothered her, and I didn’t want her to be discouraged from the internship. Later, I pulled her aside to reassure her that while our boss has high expectations, the other supervisors don’t expect her to handle production tasks yet. I encouraged her to stay positive and reach out to me or other team members if she wants to get more involved. I think this helped boost her morale and made her feel more welcome, as it was our first genuine conversation. Since then she has completed more tasks and even received praise from the professors she has helped and our department head who had previously reprimanded her. Overall, I like to think I played a part in improving the workplace environment in a positive way.

During these last 50 hours of work, my art and graphic design skills proved especially useful. I’ve been drawing since childhood and once considered majoring in graphic design, but I didn’t expect those skills to be so valuable in my internship with the Computer Science Department. There are two labs located in Dragas Hall, which are the Problem Solving Lab and the CS Makerspace. They are both designed for computer science students to study on their work, complete learning projects, and have access to advanced computing resources. However, it has been hard to attract attention to these labs, which makes the head of the department feel that he is wasting his money on resources that students will never use. To advertise the labs, I created two materials: a flyer for the CS Makerspace and a trifold poster board for the Problem Solving Lab. The trifold was more challenging, as I had to draw everything from scratch, highlighting what the lab offers, directions to find it within Dragas, and information on CS Systems. The flyer was simpler but required taking photos and incorporating them into an engaging design using the Canva application. My team is pleased with the results, and we hope these materials will draw more attention to the labs in the coming weeks.

In summary, I was able to use communication, team building, art, and graphic design skills to contribute to my internship over my last 50 hours of work. I’m glad I was able to come out of my shell and connect with my younger coworkers to help them feel more welcome as they transition into this internship. Now that we’re more familiar with one another, I believe it will be easier to collaborate, maintain a positive work environment, and communicate effectively to get tasks done. Creating the advertisements also gave me a chance to express my creativity in a way that wasn’t directly tied to technology. I’m excited to see how they impact student engagement in our labs, and I hope they’ll continue to be displayed in the Computer Science buildings long after I’m gone.