What Did I Do in Atila?

Over the course of my internship at Atila, I worked on a couple of projects like designing the layouts for the Youth of GTA Instagram series. I was also a part of the Diversity Marketing Experiment team where I learned how to use analytics software like Facebook Ads. I also took part in the website building tutorials and even briefly worked on the front end of the Atila website. 

Creating our Product

But the most memorable project in my internship was definitely creating the Schools and Jobs Ebook. In fact, I’d say that was my favourite project to have worked on because of the tangible and intangible skills I acquired through the process. I learned how to use visualization software like Tableau and Flourish. And while it was fun building knowledge about those programs, the most precious lesson I learned was perseverance. I’d even go to say that perseverance was the overarching lesson that this Atila experience taught me. Whether it was struggling to understand what an error message meant in my code, or wondering why the graph in Tableau didn’t look the way I wanted it to look, or quietly resenting my boss for making me figure things out on my own when I knew he could have saved so much time explaining it to me, all these experiences tested my patience. And in learning how to be patient, it taught me how to be independent when faced with obstacles. I started approaching my daily life with a “Google it” mentality. 

How Atila Changed Me (for the better)

I’ll give you an example. Over the summer, I was heavily involved in the online children’s summer program at my local church, serving as a content creator. Prior to this, I had little to no experience in video editing. All I had under my belt was a pirated version of Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 installed into my laptop. In the two months that I was involved with day camp, I can comfortably say I am no longer a beginner at video editing. That’s not to say I’m extremely proficient but I can get by! All of this was due to the persistence that Atila had taught me. When you want something bad enough, sooner or later, it’ll hit you that you have to do whatever it takes to get there. Even if it meant searching up “How to convert Premiere Pro file into MP4” on Google, feeling like an idiot. 

Improvements...

If I had to improve one thing about my internship experience at Atila, I would want to have a greater sense of purpose in my job at Atila. I found that over time, the tasks felt mundane and directionless. Interviewing people for YGTA was great initially, but I wanted to see Atila have an impact on people. I want to see Atila progress. At times, it felt as though the number of problems needed to be fixed about the website or other aspects of Atila put our goals in a tunnel vision where we focused too much on fixing the technical problems with no emphasis on achieving something greater. That’s not to say that correcting technical issues was a bad thing. I just wish that these technical issues (such as the font of the Atila webpage) could have been fixed prior to the beginning of my internship. To add to my desire for purpose at Atila, I wish I could have also seen tangible evidence of my progress in the form of money. However, I truly believe that this can be fixed with a bigger emphasis on more ambitious goals at Atila since the company is still in its early years of development. 

How it All Started and Where it’s Taking Me...

Unlike the majority of interns I worked with at Atila this year, I wasn’t part of the club that partnered with Atila in recruiting interns. It’s actually laughable how I came across this internship at Atila because of how informal the process went. I met Tomiwa at a club event panel where he was one of the guest speakers. Something about him intrigued me, and so I did what I normally wouldn’t do: say hi. Little did I know that that was all it took for the conversation to carry itself. As cliche as it is, my advice for future interns is to step out of your comfort zone. Many people, myself included, often get clouded by the pressure of marks and building extracurriculars so we can “get in” to something. Remember, you’re the one paying the tuition, so make University work for YOU! Go out there meet new people, don’t try to “network”, and just be yourself because you never know just how quickly things can turn up for you, like a new internship!