I had the privilege to continue my summer job in St. Norbert College’s ITS Department from last summer despite needing to work remotely due to COVID-19. Since we couldn’t be in the office, my workload became more project based and I solely focused on academic technology. I decided up with a general list of perks.
Perks of working from home
- I see my cat 24/7 (he actually lays behind me as I work)
- On nice days I was able to work on my patio
- Not having to drive to work every day
- Getting a full kitchen for lunch (aka the ability to make a box of mac n cheese)
- Not having to fully pack up my electronics for work
While working from home was great, there were many aspects I missed from the office
Perks of working in the office
- Full department meetings at the beginning and end of each week
- Helping faculty and staff in person. We still can help them virtually, I just prefer the face-to-face interaction.
- Delicious potlucks (don’t even get me started on the homemade cheesecake)
- Scott’s homemade popcorn (actually the best popcorn I’ve ever tasted)
- The work environment with all the ITS staff especially seeing those who aren’t on the academic technology team
This summer we had more students working for Academic Technology so the AT Team had the ability to specialize projects. For example, my friend Cassie worked with me and she is really into web design, so they gave her a whole website to design. I’m huge into graphic design and actually fully designed the whole look of the Tech Bar, so I was given the unique task of developing a brand identity PDF for the Tech Bar.
Along with being able to use my graphic design skills, I used downtime between projects to learn more skills, specifically in video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. It had been something I wanted to learn for a while, and learning these skills could be beneficial to the Tech Bar.
Favorite Projects
Brand Identity
In this project, I had the opportunity to revisit the logo I designed for the Tech Bar and complete the branded look of the Tech Bar. Until this project, I had never had the opportunity to revisit a logo I designed and really spend time improving it. This was also the first time I could take my logo and designs to create a whole branded look. Looking forward, I want to dive into design elements behind creating a branded look because I thoroughly enjoyed this project!
Tutorial Videos
With basically everything moving online since March, the ITS department felt a greater need for tutorial videos on various online tools. I started with Google Meet and Loom videos, and now I have a repository of various tutorials videos on their YouTube channel. Below is a playlist of all those videos!
Resume Website
Besides assigned projects, we had our own creative liberty with projects if we were working on our own domains. I finally had the opportunity to set up a resume site for myself. Before the summer I had a site in progress, but I had an idea in my head for how I wanted my site to function, and it wasn’t going to be finished until I accomplished this. Check out the final product here.
Overall I’m very grateful for this experience, not only to make money (because college is expensive) but to also get experience working remotely. I’m sad that this is my last summer working for SNC’s ITS Department, but I’m happy I still have two semesters to continue working for them!
