MRC Student of the Month - February 2002

“A Taste of the Real World”

I needed a change of pace, a change of scenery, and of course, like every other college student, I needed money. I was given the opportunity last year to kill these three birds with one stone and gain some real world experience. I am a senior majoring in Marketing, and in June of 2001, I started a seven-month internship with Johnson & Johnson consumer Products Company (the folks that make the Band-Aids and Baby Shampoo).

I relocated myself to the outskirts of Princeton, NJ, moved in with other interns, who later became good friends, and started my run as a quasi-professional. I was assigned to work with the Customer Marketing team, who are part of the sales force, and act as a liaison between field sales and marketing. I worked specifically with in-store promotions; tracking the sales of recently launched promotions and managing promotions that were not doing as well as had been expected. I was even given the opportunity to call on a few customers and conduct sales of my own.

Spending the semester away from school and becoming a member of the working world gave me an immeasurable amount of experience. It gave me the chance to challenge myself to grow as a person. Not only did I learn how to be a part of a working culture, I learned the valuable life lessons of working as a team, adapting to new faces and places, financial responsibility, and just seeing if I had it in me to make it on my own without having the comforts of “home.” And frankly . . . the real world isn’t so scary.

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