Summary: Sindi Kulla is the president of Villanova University’s Veteran’s Club. Already involved and interested in Veterans, she heard about this internship and thought it would be a great way to learn more about Veterans outside of her community.
Sindi Kulla, an economics and business-analytics major with a minor in political science, received an email from her school pertaining to her interests. The email detailed information on a Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS) VA internship. Already being the president of the Veterans Club at Villanova University, she thought this internship would give her an opportunity to gain a new perspective on Veterans outside of her community. Being interested in sharing Veteran stories, she thought this internship would be a perfect fit for her.
Sindi applied as a social media intern for Instagram. Her duties include finding stories off of Facebook, gaining approval for posting the posts and scheduling them for Instagram. Her first attempts were not fruitful. But, with more attention to the guidelines given to her, her next submissions have all been approved! Working at this internship has exposed Sindi to different programs such as Slack, Trello and Sales4Studio. Her acquired knowledge of Trello has become useful for Sindi because a club she is involved in at school started to use it as well. Another great opportunity that has come from this internship has been networking. Sindi could not believe how much her connections grew on LinkedIn.
Even though Sindi is a social media intern, it does not mean that she is limited to her department. She has taken the initiative to interview Veterans in her community and shares these interviews with the writing department in hopes that the Veteran will be written about. She has also worked on content calendar as well as other opportunities fellow interns or department leaders have shared on Slack.
Sindi has found this internship to be incredibly beneficial. Her understanding and usage of social media has made her sign up for social media related classes to further develop her skills. She believes tools used during the internship will help her in terms of communication and teamwork in the future. She is also more open to different programs because of the exposure to the different programs she has had to use this year.
Sindi’s advice to future interns would be to value communication throughout the internship and “find other projects to work on because you’re not [limited to one department], you’re able to work [on] other projects.” Branching out to other projects creates a meaningful experience in this internship and has helped her gain a passion for interviewing Veterans.
Writer: Michelle Martinez- Bonilla
Editor: Julia Pack
Graphic Designer: Mohogany Bridges