My Experience at The Bender JCC of Greater Washington

By
Trey Branch
 4 years of college experience did not prepare me for the last 7 weeks I just endured. I never

really wanted to go through the internship process because I didn’t want to be the guy who

brings people coffee every day, files papers, and gets mistreated at the office. My stereotypes of

what being an intern quickly changed once I started working at the JCC. Being a communication

major, I never thought I would get into the marketing field. Until I got accepted to work as a

Social Media Marketing Intern for the Bender JCC in Rockville. Initially I wasn’t thrilled to be a

marketing intern because I hate the aspect of business. I am an artist and all I want to do is create

media content. When I discovered that this internship would let me be able to use my creativity

and skills in social media I was thrilled. Before I go into what this essay will discuss, I want to

talk about how my internship relates to my communication degree. My internship heavily relied

on the interacting with tons of people to create amazing content. In my internship I did not just

interact with one department. I worked with at least 4 other departments creating videos to share

across various social media platforms. I also had to conduct formal emails scheduling shoot

dates, set ups, and sending videos for deadlines. There was never a time where I didn’t have to

communicate with someone whether it was face to face, email, calling, or texting. It was great to

be able to use all the skills that I have been learning in major out in the real world.

Prior to this internship I felt like I was always to I was destined to work in HR or become a

teacher. This was the most childish thought process I had. When you are a CMAT major there

isn’t any career that you can’t pursue because everything requires excellent communicators.

Communication is the key to excelling in any career. I met so many heads of different

departments, had conversations with the president of the Bender JCC, connected with numerous

employees. Even though my title at the internship said I was a “marketing intern” I still felt like I

was still learning about communication.

 To get into the premise of this essay I will be explain the process of my internship, what I’ve

learned, and how I will use this experience for my future career. In May I signed a 7-week

contract to intern at the Bender JCC. The responsibilities of the contract were as followed.

Developing marketing materials including writing and directing short promotional videos for

camp, arts, and culture membership and fitness departments. Revising and updating digital

marketing tactics for Bender JCC. Helping with creating content for Camp JCC’s social media

and Bender JCC’s Facebook working directly with camp and marketing director, to incorporate

new forms of media. Reviewing the contract prior to the internship I felt like it was going to be a

tough job. I was completely right. All these tasks were challenging in their own way.

When it came to developing marketing materials I first had to understand marketing etiquette. A

lot goes into being able to market your message the right way to an audience. My supervisor

Treva who is the Head of the Marketing department told me I am always supposed to tell the

audience a story whenever I make content. It also must be understood at first glance because you

always want to grab people’s attention. I went through many videos going back and forth trying

to develop a concrete story that people could follow. The videos that I made were very short.

Mostly promotional videos but they had to grab people’s attention and say a lot within 1- 3 min

video. I was new to this type of content because I was trying to market a whole organization. It

was incredibly intimidating to someone who only really made average video’s for college

projects. Nevertheless, Treva gave me incredible advice when I showed her my work and always

pushed me to make sure I was always getting straight to the point in all my videos.

The process of production of developing videos was a fun and tedious process. My first event

that I had to film and take pictures for was J-fest. a nerve-racking. J-fest was an incredible event

that basically was an appreciation of Jewish culture around the state and overseas. The event had
vender booths, arts n’ crafts, inflatables, food, music, and a spin-off singing competition called J-

Voice. It was an intense first event. I was the only person capturing content and it was only my

second day working the internship. When I got to the site I was given a 3-page list of things that

I needed to capture. All within a 6-hour period. 2 of those hours I had to set up for the event then

actually start shooting. I shot with two cameras, the marketing departments Canon ESOS, which

was a good DSLR to capture quick still shots. Unfortunately, the canon wasn’t good enough for

video, so I used my personal Sony a6000. It was hard to get adjusted to going back and forth

between the two cameras, but I started to get the feel of thing by the 4th hour. Learning that there

are always going to be technical difficulties in this field was a great realization. For about the

first 2 hours I didn’t know that my camera was on the entirely wrong setting so 25% of my

photo’s weren’t useable in post-production.

After I completed my list I was able to leave the event but then that’s when I realized that’s

when I discovered what the hardest part of my job would be. Majority of my job was editing,

editing, editing. Taking hours of content to edit for the marketing department to use or to just

have was tough at first. I used Premiere Pro and After Effects for editing videos. Learning how

to use this software was extremely difficult and sometimes I would barely make my weekly

deadlines. The editing process takes days to complete. It took longer when I had to edit pictures

and videos at the same time. Depending on the event I would take around 400 photo’s and have 2

hours of video content. All that would get slimmed down to around 100 photo’s and 1-5 min of

video. I quickly understood why desk jobs were time consuming jobs.

I had a rocky start my first week because I was trying to always be perfect with everything I

turned in, which made my work performance slower. I started to realize that I needed to just

work on my best work rather than try to fix all the bad content to make it salvageable. When it
came to my photography skills my supervisor was impressed with my shots. I usually try to use

more action orientated shots because they tell more of a story. With the marketing department

they love panorama because of the big events they want to show the population of the site. When

it comes to panorama you have to know the perfect angles to show population and size of the

site. I knew nothing about this, so I had to ask one of co-workers to direct me in the best angles.

This was a cool process because I feel like I was able to get so much knowledge on what I

needed to do for the entirety of the internship.

Revising and updating digital marketing tactics for Bender JCC was a skill that was also

difficult for me to work with at times. It was a process where I to constantly think outside of the

box to update content that was years old and give it a present feel to use for the next couple

years. A perfect example of me updating content was the motivational fitness videos that were

years outdated when my supervisor told me that I needed to make a couple new videos. The

previous fitness videos were not high quality, no direction, and only one angle was used. When it

comes to fitness videos you always must get different types of angles to show your audience how

to use proper form. I implemented different types of angles in the new videos to show proper

form. In the original videos there was no transitions and or cuts to describe techniques. These are

basic story telling tactics to try and get the audience engaged, learn, and perform the exercise.

Another example of me updating content was with the Hebrew word of the day clips. The

previous videos were filmed with a phone camera and Rivka the Hebrew instructor used a dry

erase board to draw a picture to show what the word of the day was. These videos were in

terrible quality and you could barely hear what she was saying. I took to YouTube to generate

ideas on how instructional videos are conducted. Usually they are in a well-lit room, clear audio,

and clear pictures. I used an audio recorder to try ad get the best audio for the clips. I also made
sure that Rivka wrote out the phrases big and clear. This helped with my inserting of google

stock pictures to make the video pop for the 30 seconds that it is. Revising, updating, and using

my own creative approach to things helped me develop an eye for trying to be unique in this

department. It’s important in the social media marketing field that you create content that is

unique and will make people want to pay attention to your company.

The last of important aspect of my job was working closely with the head of marketing, the

camp director, and the camp photographer to create new content for camp and general Bender

JCC social media pages. This was probably the best part about the internship. I was able to really

use my creativity and develop completely new content that the JCC never had. I had to pitch

ideas to my supervisor and other heads of the departments to try creating content that the JCC

needed but didn’t have the resources to do them. I wanted to create videos that appeased to a

wide audience since the community center has a huge demographic that watches their content. It

was hard to brainstorm at first, so I decided to just capture tons of footage at events to basically

show how much fun we can have in our community.

A perfect example of creating new content was the Camp Orientation promotional video. I had

a meeting with the camp director and he told me that he always wanted a cool way to recruit

more people to camp. So, I decided to make a promotional video showcasing the week of staff

orientation. This video consisted of a lot of B-roll and interviews to describe the nature of camp

all the fun staff gets to have before the camp start date. During the process of capturing this

message I wanted to get as much movement as possible. There were a lot of “Dance Breaks”,

staff games, and singing throughout the week so this made it easy. I took a lot of my ideas from

other videos to try and have the video be more personal. Therefore incorporated the staff

interviews. Retuning staff know camp the best, so they were able to represent the program very
well. The final product of the promo I was extremely proud of and I felt that a lot of what was in

the video could resonated with any re-hires/potential hires.

With all the proud work I created I my internship there were multiple times that I had to learn

that even the content that I work the hardest on will be my best work. This internship taught me

all about trial and error, taking constructive criticism, and always learning from my mistakes. A

perfect example of trial and error is when I made the first J-fest video. It took me all week and it

ended up being like a 5-minute video. I worked on it for so long and I was super excited for my

supervisor to see it. When she saw it, she was impressed but said “I don’t know how we are

going to use a video that long”. So, she gave me some tips about what I could do to make it

better and shorter. Granted it was definitely a hard task to make sure I took the best moments of

that video and slim it down. The final product she like way better. I turned in both the videos to

the preschool who wanted the video initially and they told me both videos were fantastic. I was

confused at first but then I realized that my supervisor was trying to teach me about always

trying to have videos that appeal to the audience in a short amount of time. She told me that if

she was viewing the 5-minute video she would get bored easily versus watching the 1:20 second

video that is short and sweet.

Learning from my mistakes was an incredibly hard lesson I had to deal with everyday of this

internship. When making any video I was consistently messing up or deleting hours of work.

One day when I was working on the first Fitness video I went to the bathroom, came back to my

computer, realized I didn’t save, and my computer was installing updates. Two days of work just

got deleted from my laptop and I was extremely mad. This taught me that I need to put auto

saves on every 5 minutes to prevent important documents from being deleted. Then lastly, I

learned to take constructive criticism very well. Creative differences will always occur but there
can always be a compromise made if you have a good pitch. For example, when I was finished

working on the orientation promo I submitted it to the camp director for feedback and was

excited to see what he would say. He thought the video was great, but he had another creative

vision that he thought the video would be. This was another form of criticism I had to get used

to. All of my work isn’t going to be favorited by everyone even the people that asked for the

work. I heard his opinion clearly, but I also gave him my reasoning as to where he could still use

this video. My objective of the video was to have a visual of what happens during orientation and

why staff keep coming back to this job. I felt it was personal enough and he gave me the benefit

of the doubt. We came to a compromise and he told me that he’d use it as an introduction to

show during the first day of orientation. This experience taught me that even if someone doesn’t

necessarily like your work, you can work with someone to try and reach a compromise.

When I comes to using this experience for my future aspirations I believe all this new-found

knowledge I can use to find a solid career path. For the last couple months, I have felt like I

should know exactly what I want to do for a career, but I am still spit between event planning

and social media marketing. Working for the bender JCC marketing department has got me

really into the marketing career. Being able to create new and original content for a business,

community, or event sound like the perfect job for me. This internship taught me that I need to

just dive in head first into an experience and learn as I go. I have always been adaptable, but to

be able to think on my feet and try new things is always important. Before this internship I never

created work plans, made professional media posts, or communicated with different departments

in a facility to create different kinds of content. These tools are extremely important for me to

use when I choose to pursue this career.

My progression throughout the internship is my biggest reflective model to help me in my future

endeavors. For the last 7 weeks I have never felt more like an actual adult because of how far

I’ve had to push my limits with this internship. Clocking in everyday working for 8 hours a day

realizing I am doing this for the experience and knowledge was a new concept for me. I have

only known to have jobs where you work hard and get paid for. So I learned that with this

experience I had to not only work this internship but also work another job to maintain a stable

living. This taught me about how to organize my life to the point where I needed to take the time

to cut a lot of my social life out. This summer consisted of me working around 70 weeks at

times.

As stressful as this experience was I am happy that I did this. I feel like I learned so much

knowledge, enhanced my skills, and overcome challenge I thought I’d never face. There were

times where I was disappointed I my work but strived to take this disappointment and use it to

make my next bigger and better. I have never prouder of my work ethic than finishing my last

day at the Bender JCC. Accomplishing my goals, I set for this internship at the beginning have

shaped my mind set for the future. I am now comfortably ready to progress in my life and pursue

a career in social media marketing.