My internship for the summer of 2025 was spent working for Wabash alum Jake Jaworski on his project, HomeGymCon. This was the third year for Jake’s convention and his first time moving the location to the city of Louisville, Kentucky.
The first four weeks of my internship were focused on getting everything ready in the final lead-up to the convention. My partner, Sam, and I were tasked with reaching out to potential last-minute vendors and customers, doing everything we could to get as many people to attend the convention as possible. This was my first real experience in sales—and it was a rude awakening. Sending countless emails and getting little to no response is humbling at first, but it also teaches resilience.
I was also tasked with managing certain parts of the HGC website. I had very briefly dabbled in web design before this internship, and it definitely came with a learning curve from the start.
After the first few weeks, I headed down to Louisville for the convention. The week spent there was a long one. Each day at the convention center was nonstop preparation. From helping vendors set up booths, to delivering ID lanyards, to tackling countless small tasks—the days were packed. Seeing the behind-the-scenes of how an event of this size is put together was eye-opening and showed me all of the challenges and hard work that go into getting a project like this off the ground.
After the convention, one of our final tasks was creating a new and improved sponsorship tier system. Sam and I were given full rein to design the different promotional levels for vendors for next year’s HGC. We then presented the plan to our boss for his approval. This was a very interesting component of the internship, and I had a lot of fun figuring out creative ways to support our sponsors after all they contributed to the convention.
Lastly, I want to give a big thank-you to Jake Jaworski for allowing Sam and me to experience this alongside him and under his guidance. I learned so much from this experience and had a great time. I also want to thank Bryan, Cassie, and the rest of the CIBE for giving me the opportunity to go out and gain experience in such a wide range of fields.
