Jared Valentine ’14– Going into the summer after my sophomore year at Wabash College, I was looking for an internship program that would allow me to pick up where I left off at the end of the previous summer.  Having worked in sales and business development in the summer of 2011 after completing the Business Immersion Program, I was determined to land an internship that would be focused in an area of business that I am very interested in and have not worked too intently in thus far in my career. With a heavy focus on product development and marketing, I am currently learning how to work in a field that I do not have a terrible amount of experience in, but enjoy.  Since participating in the Marketing Immersion Program during my freshman year at Wabash, I have always had an interest in looking into marketing and this internship is giving me that opportunity at last.  However, this program is giving me insight into much more than just marketing, for example: it is allowing me to witness the long, enduring process that is product development; it is presenting me with the opportunity to studying a wide variety of business strategies; it is giving me the chance to advance my communication, professional, and interviewing skills through meetings with an array of financial professionals and prospective consumers.  I have had all of these insights and I am only in the third week.

Brian Mantel '93, Jared Valentine '14

Since it is as if I am consulting on a product launch, I do not need to be at an office or with my boss every day.  Instead, I am working from the comfort of my own bedroom in rural Jay County, Indiana.  With an office located in Naperville, IL (the greater Chicago area), I am required to make semi-frequent trips to the area to meet with my boss, Brian Mantel, as well as to other places so to meet with professionals of the financial field and consumers for research and other business purposes.  While working from home has its disadvantages in the communication department since Mr. Mantel and I meet via phone on occasion and rely on email the majority of the time, there are definite advantages such as flexible lunch breaks and morning pajamas.  In all seriousness, it does force one to be responsible and make sure that they are staying focused on the task at hand and meeting deadlines for projects and other work.  In this way, it’s a burden which ultimately leads to better time management and a stronger will to avoid distractions from friends, entertainment, and younger siblings who are on summer vacation.

I am only three weeks into this internship program and am already working on multiple projects and learning more and more every day for current and future work.  So far in this internship I have mostly focused on research so to catch up on the current problem that my product is focused on working with and am more recently working on a few different projects in the market research area.  The program is heading in a direction that excites me and is very flexible to my desires of what I want to get out of this summer.  I look forward to what the remainder of the internship and what it has in store for me as my work transfers from research to more hands-on work in marketing, finance, sales, and a other areas of business.  Hopefully this program will help me narrow my interests and allow me to have a better grasp on what it is that I want to do after graduation.